I believe that Shakespeare hit this one out of the park, except let me amend the saying a bit: "Every classroom is a stage, and all the instructors are merely players: They have their exits and their entrances..." ~ Me.
This is my philosophy of teaching. Walk with me down this road of enchantment if you will. As a teacher you are part of an ensemble. Beginning back in kindergarten, a student is presented with a wide array of "actors." Each and every year, the student sees a different performance, but what is special about this type of a performance is that the student has the opportunity to learn and gain experience. Over the course of a student's academic career, he/she comes across several different archetypes of actors. You have the "Good, the bad, and the ugly" to quote the title of Sergio Leone's beloved western.
The "UGLY." You see the performance for the first time and you wonder if there is any way that you can trade you season tickets for another performance without hurting your dear ol' mum's feelings. (You know she is always going to ask you EVERYDAY how it was.) Unfortunately, the majority of the time, you must sit through each and every performance. Nothing is done right by this "actor." Timing is off. Cannot understand the words he/she is saying. These are the actors that make you hate this genre of performances.
The "BAD." Throughout all the performances that you see, you realize that the actor never fully steps into the role that he/she was assigned. Whether it is lack of organization or lack of experience, you can always take things away from the performance, but not every time. This can seem like a waste of time and energy to the audience.
The "GOOD." You ever go and see a movie or a play and you feel that you are actually in that world because of the way the actor(s) perform and even interact with the audience? You leave feeling as though you have stepped into another world where every thing makes sense.
Now, at this point you may be wondering what acting and performance has to do with a teaching philosophy. It is simply this: each and every day a teacher performs for her class. She gives it her all every time because she wants the student (audience) to fall in love with the world that she is portraying. This world can be literature, poetry, fiction, even teaching. Here's the kicker; just like an actor, the teacher may never hear or see the reaction of the audience. She will never know if she made an impression on the student because once the students leaves the class at the end of the semester, the teacher is no longer involved in that student's story anymore. Yes, you are able to see progress at the end of the semester, but how does this actually effect them in the long run? The actor will go off stage, many times, before he/she can see the audience's reaction. This is way each and every performance must be the best. This is the only way the "actor" can influence the minds of the "audience."
Hope you enjoyed walking the path of analogy with me.
3 comments:
Rachel,
I enjoyed your analogy about the fact that teachers are often performing for their students. I'm sure you are not the only one who views a classroom in this type of way. I often feel that way myself.
I do have some trouble seeing it mainly in this light, though, as so often this semester we have stressed the importance of focusing on the student's performance and how their experience and education is accomplished by our own. I think its important to remember that students are not simply an audience to a performance but are responsible for 'learning their lines' as well.
Nice analogy, Rachel. Teaching is always in part a performance. If you don't hold student attention, you cannot get them to learn. Of course, the challenge is to not let the performative aspects overshadow completely the content.
I deleted my last post to remove some typos. In a real performance, of course, you are out there, warts and all. Here you can only know I made mistakes, but not see what they were. I wonder why Google blog doesn't allow the poster to delete all traces of having been there, so there is not that ominous note about his having deleted a comment.
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