My artifact will be a filmed production of Pandora's Box that was performed by 7th period VAM theatre at Animas and has been Co-directed by Joy Kilpatrick and myself.
I am going to refine how I structure my class time so that I can be respectful of my students time while also maintaining a variety of activities and instruction on top of my classroom norms.
I am going to respect individual student needs in my classroom in a way that makes everyone feel included, I am also going to gas my students up, always, all the time.
I am going to get better about packing my lunch every night before bed, and better at giving myself enough time in the morning to gain presence in the world before leaving home.
I am going to inspire a love for improv, and writing comedy within the students in my classroom making them excited to come to school each day.
I will foster relationships with students in and outside of my classroom so that students feel comfortable asking me questions and signing up for my classes.
Inquiry for the semester.
In my semester of student teaching I have been tasked with creating an inquiry question for myself to explore throughout the semester a la project based learning. I think that this is a good practice to take into every semester I teach from here on out. This specific semester of Fall 2023 I came in with the goal of turning my 1st period comedy class into a community. I want to clarify my definition of community as it feels as though it is a common buzzword in classroom management, my challenge to myself was to create a real community. A classroom community that ate lunch with each other, high five each other in the halls, that got up to hijinks with improv teammates that happen to be in other classes. I want to create a classroom community that superseded any classroom, I want to create a community of friends. But upon starting the semester, I had to ask myself “How do I turn my classroom into a community that supersedes the classroom?”.
I didn’t realize the challenge that this task was. In all of my previous experience in a theatre classroom, in an improv troupe, this came with the territory. In a classroom setting there are barriers that are defined simply. 50 minutes a day, 8:30 in the morning, 3 different grade levels, pre-existing friend groups, and a portion of students that didn’t sign up for an elective and were placed in mine regardless of any want. These were barriers I had not considered before starting my semester, and now I find myself with a challenge to reach my goal of kindling friendship among my students. I regard it as necessary in a space of creation involving a group of people. Friendship allows vulnerability, it allows mistakes, it allows hijinks in other classrooms (good thing or bad thing, you decide). On top of this enormous want, I also wanted a productive semester of teaching students to perform improv from a place of comfort. I find these goals go hand in hand.
I started off simply, I had the students create their own classroom rules (I added a few of my own such as no phones, they weren’t willing to add that one on their own). This meant that the students had a part in upholding these rules, the classroom became our space instead of MY space. I also found it to be a good idea to do away with tables and chairs. To start each class sitting on the floor in a circle with my students. I was also a little bit more lax than I should have been at the start of the semester. The end result of these three things were, directly or indirectly, a really tough classroom to manage. On top of this, I was still missing a key component, students interacting with each other. This led to a teacher pushed too far, a discussion about what a productive learning environment looked like, and more partner games.
At this point, I have students hanging out in my class instead of the halls before 1st period started, I have broken ground. In teaching improv and showing the students games, an interesting opportunity presented itself somewhere in the middle of september. It was the middle of the week and a debate had started before class. The specifics of the debate need not be mentioned in this essay, but my noticing before starting class was that every single student in the class had an opinion, and was willing to discuss that opinion passionately with their classmate. My other noticing was that they needed a discussion moderator, and then the bell rang. We started class with our norms: phones in backpacks, a circle on the floor, a quiet class looking at me to discuss what learning was to happen that day. Instead, I gave my opinion on the debate and we discussed for about 30 minutes of our 50 minute class. I then proceeded to scrap the lesson and let the students play some of their favorite improv games. This was a break in the classroom community that I had not seen before. Since then my classroom has been getting closer and closer to my definition of community, although I believe there is still a lot of work to be done.