No Is Not Enough: Activism in the drama classroom

On my journey to school recently I've added some audiobooks to my playlists, in addition to the various podcasts I am already subscribed to (Radiolab, The Drama Teacher Podcast, Flash Forward, Under The Skin, to suggest a few). It's a great way to digest some content while otherwise doing basically nothing and I've been able to encounter some great new ideas this way.

The best thing I've listened to recently is an audiobook version of Naomi Klein's No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning The World We Need. In the book, Klein outlines some of the key factors that created social and political systems which Trump (and other global leaders) has been able to exploit while at the same time undermine so thoroughly. She then goes on to urge everyone who is currently fighting independently for any particular group's rights, or our planet's protection, to unite with a shared and common purpose.

“The crucial lesson of Brexit and of Trump’s victory, is that leaders who are seen as representing the failed neoliberal status quo are no match for the demagogues and neo-fascists. Only a bold and genuinely redistributive progressive agenda can offer real answers to inequality and the crises in democracy, while directing popular rage where it belongs: at those who have benefited so extravagantly from the auctioning off of public wealth; the polluting of land, air, and water; and the deregulation of the financial sphere.” 

― Naomi Klein, No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need

This book, which ties into many of the same messages in the podcasts I have been listening to since Trump's election and Brexit, has given me much food for thought and I've been reflecting on what I can start doing in my classroom and, not forgetting, personal life.


It is imperative that our students understand the need for a "genuinely redistributive progressive agenda" and as privileged, well-educated, young citizens of the world they have the responsibility and opportunity to offer positive alternatives to the current systems of power and wealth. As a drama teacher, I have always believed in collaborative methods of making work, but now even more I think we need to move further away from hierarchical, top-down methods of creating art. Traditional author > director > actor > crew hierarchies can be problematic; we need to use more egalitarian collaborative strategies as models and testing grounds for how our students can practise embodying these ideas once they become young professionals, policy makers, leaders and visionaries in the future.

What are some of the ways this can look in practice? Directive-Response-Response, is a method of making art collectively, which provides an alternative to director-lead work. I believe it is also important to offer alternatives to the unidimensional narratives of most popular culture towards complex, multilayered, even potentially contradictory or confusing representations of real life. The most popular products of the West End, Broadway, Hollywood and television, though often compelling stories, many of which even with positive, progressive messages, do very little to incite real change in the world. Developing 'moment work' as Tectonic Theatre Project has been doing for many years, is a great way to build multi-layered work, which can encapsulate a much broader range of views and ideas.

"[...] Any opposition that is serious about taking on Trump, or other far-right forces like him around the world, must embrace the task of telling a new history of how we ended up here, in this perilous moment . A history that compellingly shows the role played by the politics of division and separation. Racial divisions. Class divisions. Gender divisions. Citizenship divisions. And a false division between humans and the natural world. Only then will it become possible to truly come together to win the world we need."

― Naomi Klein, No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need

We should also think beyond the constraints of just making performance work though. I have been reflecting on the way students reflect and give feedback to each other during the creative process.
Liz Lerman's Critical Response Format is a detailed and structured way for artists to receive feedback, which I've used previously with success, but even something as simple as employing Think-Pair-Share in my classroom has increased overall collaboration and engagement.

Beyond this, I think the single biggest thing we can do in our classrooms is encourage students to use their imaginations. To imagine new worlds, new possibilities; ones vastly different from what currently exists.

"With unleashed white supremacy and misogyny, with the world teetering on the edge of ecological collapse, with the very last vestiges of the public sphere set to be devoured by capital, it's clear that we need to draw a line in the sand and say "no more." Yes, we need to do that and we need to chart a credible and inspiring path to a different future. And that future cannot simply be where we were before Trump came along (aka the world that gave us Trump). It has to be somewhere we've never been before."

― Naomi Klein, No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need 

Or as Douglas Adams wrote, "Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all."

The reimagining of classics with minor updates, the regurgitating of the same canon of playtexts, the 'tried and true' formulas of making theatre, these are no longer enough if we want to fix the most pressing problems of our world. What we need is something else, something new, a format beyond what is currently offered in the mainstream cinemas and theatres of the world. And who better to build this kind of theatre but our young people, still able to imagine and play, who's future is still very much ahead of them.

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Pina- Pushing a pin into it

The work of Pina Bausch and the Tanztheater Wuppertal has had a profound impact on my work as both an artist and a teacher. If you haven't seen anything of their work, then watching the 2011 film Pina is a jaw-dropping, heart-awakening place to start.

Among so many of her ideas and principles there is one that particularly stands out and continues to define my idea of performance- the idea of evocative images instead of illustrative.

Bausch wasn't your average choreographer, with a pre-planned vision of every piece she made. The work was driven by the dancers in the Wuppertal, by their thoughts, feelings, expressions.

There's a great section in Royd Climenhaga's book on Bausch where he references a time while she was working on the piece Walzer (1982). Bausch asked the company to explore the idea of a display in a natural history museum.

"In museums you can see where they collect animals, stuffed animals. You can see how they are preserved and how they stand there, the animals. or with insects, how they mount them so that people can look at them. An ensemble member questions, Do you want us to put it into words? and Bausch responds, No, I want you to do it, or do it to someone."

 (Was Tun Pina Bausch und Ihrer Tanzer in Wuppertal? 1983)

Climenhaga goes on to explain that Bausch wants to capture the pain of being mounted by a pin, or perhaps the discomfort of viewing such animals mounted in that way. She doesn't want her performers to recreate the image, it's too literal. You can imagine some novice students making the same mistake as some of her ensemble members back in '82 —they tried to re-create the moment by pinning one of the others to the wall, and often we see students translate a prompt such as this into similarly literal expressions.

She wanted her ensemble to understand that  "It tells us about the feeling, but it doesn't give it to us. It's illustrative rather than evocative." She doesn't want to create an experience "where we may say "Ah, I get it, it's like animals in a natural history museum," because then you either get it or you don't, but in either case the image stops there, once the connection has been made."

(Climenhaga, Royd. 2009. 'Pina Bausch.' Routledge Performance Practitioners: 111-113)

This principle of "Don't show me the feeling. Give me the feeling!" is critical when devising work to have impact. It's turns one-dimensional scenes upon which the audience is but voyeur, into an opportunity for us to make our own connections and to experience the piece for ourselves.


If you don't know the work of Pina Bausch and would like to know more, then the film is a great introduction which you can follow up with Royd Climenhaga's detailed guide on her work. The book also includes many practical exercises to get your students creating in the same ways as the Wuppertal. Finally, although Pina sadly passed away in 2009, Tanztheater Wuppertal still performs many of her pieces all around the world, so if you can get to see it live, I would highly recommend it.

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Inclusion, Challenge and Success

An article written by Jacqueline Tordoir, the parent of a previous ISB student, and published in Dutch in the blog of education Think Tank- NIVOZ. You can check it out on this link: http://hetkind.org/?s=jacqueline+tordoir

ISB Middle School's recent production of The Jungle Book

My daughter Daniela went to the International School of Brussels. The mission of the school is: everyone included, challenged and successful.  Of the three mission components, “challenge” is the one Daniela has been covering since she was 3, when she was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Although her one-year intensive hospital treatment is now a distant memory, Daniela’s learning difficulties are a daily challenge.

My daughter was enrolled as a pupil in the ISB’s ‘Special Education’ programme, where she spent most of her school hours in a small class of six children. For Dutch and Drama class, she participated in lessons in the mainstream Middle School. While relishing her periods in the mainstream, she found it hard to have the label ‘special ed. kid’ attached to her and despite the wonderful guidance of her special ed. teachers, she often wondered why she couldn’t be like her peers and fully participate in the mainstream programme. The gap between the education levels at both sections is large. My daughter hovered between the two, intellectually, emotionally and socially. It was tough. Together with her teachers, we were on a continuous quest for the other two mission components: ‘inclusion’ and ‘success’.

Eventually we saw it happening: inclusion, challenge and success seamlessly rolled into one when she performed her part of ‘Wolf 3’ in the school’s The Jungle Book production. I spoke to her drama teacher to find out more about his pedagogical approach. He involved around 40 pupils in his production of The Jungle Book, 26 were stage performers. Others were involved in costumes, backstage, masks, makeup and stage design. It took 48 hours of rehearsals over four months to prepare the play, with three performances at the end. In total, the students presented their work to nearly 500 audience members.

When rehearsals started I had noticed that it took my daughter a while to get into it. She showed no particular enthusiasm for going to rehearsals. Her drama teacher confirmed that she was withdrawn and frightened to make her voice heard. She would cower in a corner rather than step forward, whisper rather than speak up or shout out. He recognised her challenge: She was the only special education student in the group and together with another child, the only one from the lowest grade, grade 7; all the others being from grade 8 up to High School grade 12.

So how did we end up with a smiling Wolf 3, beaming on stage, exclaiming that this was the best time in her life, hugging and kissing her fellow thespians while gracefully receiving compliments on the delivery of her lines and her true-to-life wolf performance throughout? Better call her drama teacher.

His key message was trust. He considered that his first task in starting off any theatre production was to work on building trust for creating what he called the “ensemble”, the group coherence and collaboration. He worked on trust by means of various exercises. His aim was to make everyone feel part of the whole, to get everyone to feel that they too have something unique to contribute to the group and that difference is not just OK, but something to be cherished. He reckoned very few children will feel entirely confident at the beginning of rehearsing for a play and likewise in this group, my daughter was not the only one to feel fear and inhibition. The group also included children who had only recently learned to speak English for instance. Through trust-building exercises, children eventually ended up trusting themselves and each other.

My daughter’s drama teacher’s next step was to create a safe environment in which children were encouraged to take risks and to reflect openly on each other’s endeavours through giving critical, non-judgmental feedback. Children thrived by sensing that none of the feedback given was personal, that each comment served the purpose of increasing their skills and the quality of the group effort as a whole. Risk-taking was cultivated by giving children exercises to stretch their imagination, asking them to perform the impossible. Everyone took part no matter how hesitant they felt about taking risks. The secret was in the approach. How can you not take a risk when you are asked to work out a way to turn yourself inside out, or to find a way of seeing the back of your own head?

Another key to this teacher’s success was creating an environment for active participation. For his productions, he saw his role as a facilitator rather than a director. He used the creative input he got from the children to build the play. There was a script, but it was flexible. ‘Children have excellent ideas, I would be mad not to take them on. The process is more important than the end-result’, he said. All children in The Jungle Book were active agents in building it, they were treated as competent partners in shaping the process and the end-product.

So where was my daughter in all this? When her teacher noticed that his trust-building exercises did not have an immediate effect, or at least not as much as was required to make her an active participant in the process, he intervened. A small push did the trick. He took her aside and told her that she needed to be brave. That without her taking action herself there would be no reaction. That she should give the others the opportunity to learn from her, from her energy, from her physicality and that they in turn could help her with their feedback and with remembering her lines and “prompt” whenever it was needed. They were messages for trust and risk-taking with a safety net supplied. It worked. The next rehearsal my daughter acted out an angry wolf. Buoyed up by the feedback she received she continued to develop her role from strength to strength. No prompting was needed at any stage….

If it’s true that “all the world’s a stage”, Carl found a way of bringing the stage into Daniela’s world and answered our quest for inclusion, challenge and success.

Jacqueline Tordoir

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Theatre is not...

After reading the January 2016 edition (Provocative Theatre) of Scene, a monthly Journal from ISTA, I was reminded of my slightly more 'anarchic' days as a student and contemporary theatre maker, in particular by the words from Jess Thorpe in her contribution These bridges, these walls. Discussing the value of arts practice in the context of a prison, she reminds us that
"Theatre is not just about entertainment - although it is important to find enjoyment in it.
Theatre is not about showing-off - it takes a brave person to stand up in front of others.
Theatre is not a soft option - it requires a huge amount of hard work to create something authentic.
Theatre is not a treat - from the beginning of time humans have used creativity to respond to the world around them and to reflect their experiences. It is part of who we are."

When I reflect on the role of drama here at ISB, in a school community that is by most comparisons incredibly privileged, I am always asking myself 'What impact can art have on these students' lives?' and in turn 'How can these students have an impact through art on their community and the world in general?'

I feel very lucky as a teacher, to be given the freedom and respect to choose the content of my course and also have the flexibility to make plans based of the particular interests and requirements of each group. But I also feel a responsibility to these principles of theatre/art/performance/whatever, that the things we create to be shared with the world should have other values than just entertainment.

Myself, back when I was a high-schooler devising a piece called Charity with my local youth theatre; as a student learning about the Performance Art of Marina Abramovich, Ron Athey, Stelarc and others; studying Sarah Kane, Moisés Kaufman, Pina Bausch, Goat Island; and as a theatre-maker with our company Trace Theatre, I wore the mantra of 'changing the world through art' on my sleeve. I turned my back on all forms of theatre that were escapist, masturbatory, money-grabbing or any other derogatory definition I would give and became passionate only about performance that was socially and politically engaged.

A little older and little more experienced I have since broadened my terms of validity in the art world, but I still long to see and make work that has impact. Now, I have a responsibility to make work with my students that is engaging and catches the student's attention for longer than a single 40-minute block. At the same time, it is our duty as conscientious citizens of our community (/communities) to make art that is not just for entertainment
is not stagnant or stifled
is not pretentious or entitled
is empowering, determined, passionate, considerate
is aware of and designed for the wider communities than just the drama classroom



In one of my classes right now, we are working on writing and performing Slam Poetry. It's not traditionally something you might encounter in a Drama class (but is more likely to appear in a class entitled Performance Works) and at first students were hesitant to jump into the topic. Can't we do a script? Can't we play more games? Poetry, seriously? - were some of the initial reactions to the idea. Yet, after a class chatting openly about what the students are passionate about, what angers them, what they would change in the world, etc, they eventually all warmed up to the idea.

We began the project by writing down their thoughts ('the writing's on the wall' in this case). I felt that the students were not just paying lip-service for an assessment criteria or other such nonsense, with the contributions they made to the conversation. They were genuinely passionate about the topics they suggested, as well as being reasonably well-informed about the initial arguments they might have on such subjects.

The poems the students are creating are powerful, brave, passionate and thought-provoking. Our plan is to film the Slams and share them with as many people as we can, because we believe that their work is important and should be heard. 

For the rebellious, often idealistic, mind of a teenager the thought of changing the world is not inconceivable. It is only older, with more defeats under our belts, perhaps, that many of us become more weary, more cynical.

Reading this edition of Scene and working with my students has shaken me up again, filled my energy tank with some fuel and once over reminded me of the power of art and performance.

As educators, if we can help students find their voices they will show us that are not afraid to use them; for making noise, for disrupting the peace, for speaking out.

We should look more to the passion and energy of the young. We should remind ourselves that art is not disappearing, it is not insignificant and neither are we.

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Making + Sharing

HS and MS students collaborating on a devising project with Action Hero

Of course, Making is central to a Performance course. Long gone are the sterile times of Theatre Studies, where a script is poured over again and again by students, to divine some great meaning from it. Furthermore, I'm an advocate for the messy exploration and discovery of Devising. The best drama classes bring Making to the fore-front, pushing ahead of the passive, reproductive presentation of ancient texts. Students are not practicing being actors (with a single mindset of one day going into the acting profession) but performance-makers and self-expressors, tasked with creating all aspects of the rehearsal/production process. 

In answer to the questions posed by Ashley Bayles and Ben Doxdator's post But is it making?, in my pedagogy I highly value lots of the elements of the chart, some on both sides. As Will Vreugdenhil pointed out in Making PE Better there are skills and techniques to be learnt from teacher-led instruction and student reproduction, the same is true for Performance class. 

Gemma Paintin from Action Hero devising with ISB students

It's hard to pick a single element out and raise it higher than the rest; so many are intertwined. However, if you were to hold a keyboard (or a gun) to my head, I'd be forced to pick 'Learning with head, heart & hands equally valued'. The head has to combine all the generated material that the heart has dreamed of then the body has created.This principle is core to Performance, and Art in general and encapsulates many of the key-skills that I think are improved by studying the subject.

Art involves the mind, the body and the soul, in both the creation and reception of it.

As we strive to move more towards the right side of this chart I look forward to the idea of Making bouncing around between more people's ears. But at the same time as we concentrate on Making, here at ISB and elsewhere, we are shifting much more into Making + Sharing. There will be times when our work remains personal and private, but increasingly we are asking our students to share their work online, to broadcast, perform and present in digital and physical spaces.

I am excited for Performance (performing in all it's forms including broadcasting and public speaking) to become even more embedded across all aspects of education, not just in the drama classroom. For us as teachers, its an opportunity to combine our understandings of Maker, Performer, Audience and Format as we blend disciplines and subjects together into a vision of education which more closely resembles real life. 

The beautiful chaos of making performance

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21st Century Skills From Devising

Drama matters, now as much as ever, and devising is a particularly important and powerful part of the subject. In a recent post, my colleague Alan and I talked about why Drama = Life and here I want to expand on how devising supports this. If you're not sure what devising is, or want to her some of my take on it, then I have a blog post on it here: Devising: My Favourite Definitions.

This is also in response to the blog post 21st Century Skills In The Drama Classroom
written by Lindsay Price on the fantastic Theatrefolk blog.

The Four E's

Exploration

Pic: Frantic Assembly- Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime
(words by me)

Without the relative safety of a script guiding the rehearsal process, students find themselves exploring the realms of uncertainty. Devising provides us an opportunity to develop ideas without a predefined understanding of the final performance. We can discover surprising, new ideas and themes as we go, enjoying the ever-shifting nature of the process.

There is no script for life. Unexpected events happen all the time and having a positive, open-minded approach to the unknown is important to develop.

Egality

Pic: Forced Entertainment- The Last Adventures
(words by me)

With the strict roles of playwright/director/actor/crew and their associated hierarchies becoming challenged more and more in the performing arts, we find ourselves in a field were many people can be many things. Dancers make the costumes and have an influence over the content of their work. Performers have written their own scripts and created the video trailers to promote their shows.   

The best devising promotes collaboration in a more egalitarian hierarchies. By using the right strategies and methodologies , everyone involved can have an influence on the process, production and performance of their work. 

Expression

Pic: Tanztheater Wuppertal - Vollmond
(words by me)

Performance has always been about self-expression but devising puts it at the heart of the creative process; importantly, for everyone not just the writer and director. Devising harnesses the makers personal stories, thoughts, skills and ideas and embeds them into the art. 

Experimentation

Pic: Cupola Bobber- The Field, The Mantel
(words by me)

Without a script acting as road-map, without a single vision from a director, and with a wealth of stories and ideas to rub together, experimentation is the engine through which sparks of inspiration are developed into final material. Innovators are supported by their other collaborators, who are in turn innovating themselves. Together they can dabble or dive into all manner of disciplines, styles and techniques during the course of any given process.

If Performance is the body of the theatrical art forms, then for me devising is its soul. It has been the method by which many great contemporary performance companies have made their work. Personally, it forms the core of both my artistic and teaching practices and continues to accompany me through my life.

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Drama = Life: Why Drama Matters

the thoughts of two drama teachers...

Carl: In the electric blue-white glow of the computer screen, I take a look at my hands. Since the IT and typing lessons of my teenage schooling years, they have learned many new skills; how to manipulate the letters of a keyboard to create words, how to slide a mouse across the desk to control a tiny arrow, how to swipe and pinch and scroll and tap. These skills have changed my life, and allowed me to keep up with the changing world.

In the same light, I examine them more closely and I see that they have been learning other things also. My education in Drama has taught them things that no electronic machine could; they have learned how to gently handle another person's head while my ensemble carries their body as part of a team-building task, how to catch a person who has trusted me when they are falling, how to tremble and shudder and glide when I dance, how to hold tension when I want to have presence, how to stay still by my side when I am nervous.

I turn off the screen; it becomes a black mirror in which I study my face. My fingertips massage my eye sockets. These eyes, which are temporarily fatigued from staring at the vast landscape of the Web, have in other times seen such beauty on the stage. From the raw emotion of Pina Bausch's dances to the vivid compositions of Robert Wilson, from the sarcastic commentary of Forced Entertainment to the simple companionship of Cupola Bobber, my eyes have seen performances which have impacted my thoughts and my heart.

Drama matters to me, more than any other subject I have studied, because it has had the greatest impact on the skills and knowledge that I use on a daily basis and this is not just because I am a drama teacher. When I used to work in retail and when I worked in elderly care, it was the skills I had gained through Drama that were of most value to me, like understanding the power of eye-contact and being able to keep myself composed even when I was nervous. For me it was these that were the tools which helped me be successful in employment and in life.

I remember my job interviews as a recent graduate and thinking to myself- It's just another performance. Harness your nerves, just like before a show. And I got through them and for the most part I was successful in finding work. Not due the fact that I had a drama degree, but due to the communication skills and creativity I had developed during those studies. Drama also taught me to see the world and people in different ways, to have compassion and to understand that I had the capacity to make an impact.

Alan:

1970, Forest Hills Elementary School, Burlington North Carolina.

Margie Frye and her classmates performed a play using the song “The Age of Aquarius”....the moment changed my life.  I was 6 years old, watching a play at school and can still remember to this day how beautiful and impactful it was.  I was a small boy, in a very small town Southern town, and after seeing that performance I realized that the world could be beautiful and magical.  That’s why I think drama matters.  Drama matters because it allows people to dream.  It encourages thought and beauty.  It matters because it can make people think, question, feel, laugh, and cry.  Each day we become a little more enclosed in our own capsule of technology.  Theatre connects people; the cast and crew connect during the process, the audience connect with each other during the performance.  Having a shared community experience is becoming more and more important, and more and more impactful.  Ten years ago, I thought that theatre was beginning to lose its impact.  Now, I think it’s becoming more and more important.  

I truly believe the skills one develops in theatre make one a more well-rounded individual.  Theatre teaches you to be aware of the things and people around you.  I like that when my classes enter the room each day; I can quickly scan their body language, facial expressions, and energy and know how they are feeling.  I then like the fact that I feel comfortable enough, if they are having a bad day, to go over to one of them and give them a little more energy or focus.  Working in and teaching theatre taught me those skills.

The skills one develops while engaging in drama can be life changing, and to me, that’s what matters most.  Below are some core skills that employers have stated they are looking for in prospective employees.

Core Skills Most Sought After By 21st Century Employers

•  Communications Skills (listening, verbal, written). By far, the one skill mentioned most often by employers is the ability to listen, write, and speak effectively. Successful communication is critical in business.
• Analytical/Research Skills. Deals with your ability to assess a situation, seek multiple perspectives, gather more information if necessary, and identify key issues that need to be addressed. .
•  Computer/Technical Literacy. Almost all jobs now require some basic understanding of computer hardware and software, especially word processing, spreadsheets, and email.
• Flexibility/Adaptability/Managing Multiple Priorities. Deals with your ability to manage multiple assignments and tasks, set priorities, and adapt to changing conditions and work assignments.
•  Interpersonal Abilities. The ability to relate to your co-workers, inspire others to participate, and mitigate conflict with co-workers is essential given the amount of time spent at work each day.
• Leadership/Management Skills. While there is some debate about whether leadership is something people are born with, these skills deal with your ability to take charge and manage and interact/cooperate with your co-workers.
• Multicultural Sensitivity/Awareness. There is possibly no bigger issue in the workplace than diversity, and job-seekers must demonstrate a sensitivity and awareness to other people and cultures.
• Planning/Organizing. Deals with your ability to design, plan, organize, and implement projects and tasks within an allotted timeframe. Also involves goal-setting.
•  Problem-Solving/Reasoning/Creativity. Involves the ability to find solutions to problems using your creativity, reasoning, and past experiences along with the available information and resources.
• Teamwork. Because so many jobs involve working in one or more work-groups, you must have the ability to work with others in a professional manner while attempting to achieve a common goal.

[1] Source: www.quintcareers.com. Adapted from: What Do Employers Really Want? Top Skills and Values Employers Seek from Job-Seekers by Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D., and Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.

Carl and Alan: Now we find ourselves responsible for teaching those skills to our students, that we in turn use so often. As teachers we are tasked with ensuring that they are prepared for a career in the modern world, in whichever field or fields they may choose to be in.

We are privileged that our school acknowledges the value of Drama and gives us the time, resources and support to help our students grow. As an example of our school’s belief in the power of the subject, we recently hosted a special event focused on preparing students for the rapidly changing world they are faced with. Alongside the other ‘zones’ of study that you would expect in a future-focused day of workshops (designing with robotics, learning the basics of coding, 3D printing and laser cutting), expression was also one of the key areas of focus. Our management have realised that not only do students need to be at the cutting-edge of technology, but they also need the communication skills to be able to articulate and present their ideas. They need to be able to work within a team and creatively solve problems. These are essential skills, not something that we can afford to put on the sidelines.

As a student recently put it to us, following her first ever performance, “without Drama I probably wouldn’t have realised that my voice could be as loud as other people’s”. There is no doubt that the chance to work within an ensemble, towards a performance in front of an audience, has had a big impact on that student. She has gained skills that will one day help her to get her dream job, just as those skills once did for us.

But more importantly than that, she has grown as a person and has found another way to express herself. At the end of the year, or after a performance, students often write to express their gratitude for being a part of the class or ensemble. They often say how the experience was the time when they felt the most comfortable as themselves or how they discovered that they can have an impact on the world. Although employment is of course important, it is this that makes Drama really matter.

Thanks to Alan Hayes for collaborating with me on this post and for being a fantastic mentor and colleague.

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Haiku of my thoughts

haiku of my thoughts/
a fresh way to explain them/
makes feedback anew//


Why not ask students to give their feedback on their colleagues' performances in the form of a haiku? They will have to choose their words carefully and present them in a creative way. The haiku will encourage them to distill their feedback into it's most important components.

How To Write A Haiku
Haiku Inspiration

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Modern Teacher/Artist Profiles

Saw this blog post appear on my twitter feed from John Michael Mikton @jmikton, discussing a graphic from Reid Wilson @wayfaringpath  (-I'll be reading both their blogs from now on) and noticing the image first, I was reminded that it was promoting similar attitudes that are also promoted among the artist community, to which I belong, too.

Graphic from Reid Wilson http://www.wayfaringpath.com/ 

It's obvious of course, but replace the words teacher, students and colleagues with artist, audience and friends and you have all the same principles as The Profile of a Modern Artist. 

Starting my career as a theatre maker, specifically one who devises, I learned to enjoy delving into the unknown. I love making new connections by throwing unlikely material together and seeing what happens. 

Then immediately after my studies, jumping into some lecturing jobs forced me to be in another new situation, one where I had the extra responsibility of facilitating student's learning as well as my own. So I had to improvise. It wasn't enough to use the exercises I myself had been taught, those were either used up in the first couple of weeks or were not useful for the specific module I was teaching. I had to research new ones from books and DVDs of other artists, but more importantly I had to invent new ones.

And when I started improvising, in a very similar way to making theatre, I realized that I was alright, that nothing bad happened. In fact some of my improvisations have now become exercises that I call upon frequently in my teaching. If I didn't try to be an all knowing expert on theatre, but just someone with an experience that could be useful to others and a flexible and creative attitude towards problem solving, I felt liberated and I think that the students were able to connect with me easier as well. 

So I'm coming to the end of this quick blog post, and now I'm also thinking, if you replace co-learners with co-livers, their students with strangers, then you have The Profile of a (an ideal) Modern Human. These principles can guide you in so many aspects of your life.

It's something to strive for...

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A letter to Charlie...

I don't have a lot to add, just to say how wonderful this letter is and what a fantastic team they must have at Barrowford.

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Lessons to be learned: A teacher speaks out...

When Sam Burton began teaching three years ago, he was determined to thrive. But after spells at an academy and a special educational needs school in the UK, he's had enough. Here, he tells the story of how even an energetic young teacher can struggle with the demands of modern teaching.

And another-

An Open Letter Of Resignation From A Frustrated Teacher

I'm very, very, very lucky and grateful to be a teacher at ISB.

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Last Chance Academy

Last night on BBC1 was the show Last Chance Academy, a touching and inspiring insight into a school dedicated to excluded and disruptive students. And when I say dedicated, I really mean it. Those teachers don't give up.

Baverstock Academy have a promise, to get 100% of their students 5 C's at GCSE level, a seemingly impossible task. This is made especially difficult by both OFFSTEAD (who expect students to be present at school for a minimum of 25 hours a week) and by recent government education policy (which decrees that all students must achieve a pass in both Maths and English or face studying them again at college until 18).
For many of these students, attending school for two hours a day was a huge improvement on their previous situations, let alone focusing during this entire time. In 2013, 3900 students were permanently excluded from UK classrooms, so 2 hours a day for many of them was a near miracle. So Baverstock allowed them individual schedules, based on what they were capable of, not on the national minimum. So because of this flexibility from the school combined with achievable goal setting and personal support, they were getting students back into classes everyday and for increasingly longer periods.


Even with figures such as that 3900 students (given up on), the government in recent years has been increasing the weight of exams in the UK, particularly in the 3 R's (reading, 'riting, and 'rithmatic), and decreasing funding and support for more practical and vocational courses. But what about engaging students like this through more practical courses, teaching them that they can achieve first and then helping them pick up English, Maths and Science on the way. In many cases, I'm sure students avoid engaging in those 'scary' subjects because of the overwhelming importance that the government puts on them and therefore the overwhelming pressure there is on students to achieve in them.


But even with the odds that Baverstock were faced with they were keeping their promise. They had some failures and missed some targets for sure, but they kept their promise with their pass rate. 100% of students received at least 5 C's, even if that wasn't enough for the government. And this was because the teachers and management of this school were so, so committed to their students. Even when 5 boys ambushed and heavily assaulted another boy, normally an inexcusable offense for any school, the staff worked out a way to keep these 5 boys in the system in the hope of breaking the cycle they were in. So what did they do? The teachers stayed after school to teach those kids after normal hours.

Absolutely inspiring and impressive, Baverstock has shown Britain that it is possible for any student to achieve, as long as you never, ever give up on them. We need more places like Baverstock, and maybe all schools can learn something from them when it comes to disruptive and underachieving students.

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