Entering my third year at this school, my longest tenure yet, I have some new goals towards advancing the Department. Be it for myself to build on my own Programme or to, more realistically, build up the students’ interest in and responsibility for their own success, both would, I believe, produce viable results that would go beyond whichever Director is helping them. It’s no secret to anyone that I desire to teach overseas again, or even move away from “classroom” Educational Theatre specifically. Whichever Path I choose to follow, however, the end result will be the same for my current students; those entering the Freshmen class this year will have a different Theatre Teacher than the one the have today.
This is no reason for their Programme to collapse and have to rebuild from scratch however! A Programme is about the students, and preparing them for achievement, not building up the ego of the Director. Empowering by educating the students is my goal.
I am an alumnus of Up With People. An international touring cast, we didn’t stay in hotels, we lived with Host Families. The idea, the rather lovely idea actually, was to allow the young cast members (17-25) to be absorbed into that city/state/country’s culture directly by living amongst its citizens. As a result, part of our pre-production training included lessons in How to Be a Good House Guest. Resolutely, one of the most stringent admonishments was to “leave the place tidier than you found it.” (Insert here, a nod to my mother and grandmother who had already pre-taught this lesson, but you know how kids are…)
Thus, that is my goal with these students, to leave my Programme more tidy than how I found it.
Now, my predecessors didn’t leave “a mess”, in the traditional sense. However, the culture of these students to “wait until you’re told to do something” rather than the more initiative-taking types I’ve taught previously, led to both I and my Music Director colleague being restricted to bed rest by the end of the Mainstage show last year from exhaustion.
Our jobs are challenging, and Divine Exhaustion is expected, even anticipated, from a Closing Night and a job well done. But this is not what we experienced. There were actual medical issues that resulted from so very, very many of our Performing Arts students not knowing how to help get a show on its feet or even WHY they should want to be involved in the process.
As a result, we will do less shows this year and our Mainstage will be one that involves a more mature Lighting Design and zero Set. Bare stage. Modern, teenager costumes. And I will spend those additional hours gained from not having to source a volunteer Set Designer and Carpenter, and beg/borrow/steal paint and brushes, and spend more time fundraising for costumes than I spend with the cast developing honest characters and enjoying their high school Theatre experience (!) instead on educating them on:
The process
The possibilities
The culture of students I work with currently are ones that don’t have freedoms at home that offer them opportunities to be independent and grow that soft job skill. If they work a job, it’s not for individual spending cash, it’s to actually help with the family finances or to even work, without pay, so as to keep another family member’s business afloat. Public transportation is a joke in this community with busses and a single,unreliable train that both run ONCE a HOUR. As such, the opportunities our area Performing Arts Center offers for free classes, workshops, and shows become unattainable for these students who would have a two-hour commute, both ways, in order to get to the venue that is merely six (6) miles away. (Side note to enlighten on the case of Haves and Have Nots, the performing arts school is directly across a small side street from this venue.)
In contrast, we hear stories of how J-Lo took her subway train, The Six, to get to her dance classes. Hers is not an atypical story for a New York kid. Her opportunity for independence has grown her into a mogul. Parallel that with my former students in Hong Kong who were given their own Octopus Card by age ten. With the freedom to run the city via it’s ever-present transportation coupled with a cultural mindset that you are responsible for the advanced education of yourself, the vast majority of those graduates are all studying from a dorm room in another country. Our students are barely allowed the freedom to attend a college outside of the county, much less the state or country.
I went to my Administrator recently with a supercharged curriculum that would allow me more hands on, interactive teaching rather than written responses for me to grade and respond to later in the abstract. Interactive instruction is a forte of mine. A mere single point from earning the coveted title of “Highly Effective”, my Administrator, as well, is aware of my strengths. However, when I asked if I would have his support in parent conferences that led to excuses about why a student was failing because they weren’t completing the online assignments, he looked beaten up,too. A fellow educator, he recognizes the millennial need for computer skills as well. Alas, with our non-independent demographic, the idea of our on-campus computer lab, free wifi, and multiple public library computer labs, he could not support enforcing that our students “step up” and find a way to make it happen due to the at-home obstacles. A double loss for our students.
As such, here are the samplings of Jobs my students will be offered to help grow the Department and Programme for a future far beyond my presence there, as well as offering them soft job skills for their own futures.
I wrote to them:
“Some ideas of what Department Duties need doing (but not all. What needs do YOU see?) These are the year-long assignments, not per show.
Warm-ups Captain
Props Master/Mistress
Costume Master/Mistress
Script Librarian
Publicity Director
Marketing Director
House Manager
House Music Manager
Dramaturg
Auditions Captain
Director of Development
Dance Captain
Crew Chief
Showbill Writer
Etc etc etc
What are some other student jobs you’ve created to help your Programme grow and flourish?
Miss Donni's Acting UP! 