Knowing and using theatre materials and resources

City College of New York, Fall 2018

During Fall 2018, I received an email from Sobha Kavanakudiyil, a good colleague at City College of New York, regarding an opportunity to guest lecture in the Educational Theatre Department. I was thrilled about the opportunity to collaborate with the university and to interact with the students.

Perhaps, the biggest takeaway from my experience teaching higher education has been to be clear, concise, coherent, & concrete in my delivery on instruction to my students. Creativity within a clear structure is what functions best in a classroom setting. If I can implement these ideas throughout my instructional process within a lesson, then my probability for success dramatically increases.

I learned from watching others that effective scaffolding^[1] of exercises is imperative to the overall success of the activity. Likewise, whenever a group had clear instructions that seemed to build upon each other logically, the activity seemed to have more fluidity even as the directions would get more complicated. Contrarily, groups whose activities did not build as well or have the same logical flow from one activity to the next seemed more challenging to execute even if the overall activity itself was simple.

Besides being as clear as possible in the development of a lesson, one aspect far outweighs the rest. That is, the lesson has to be fun and engaging. A lesson can be by the book and have all the benchmarks; however, if the students are not actively engaged, then the lesson will not have the optimum effect on the students. I truly believe that some of the best learning happens when students are simply having fun while in activities. The task of the educator is to have an artistic or academic objective of merit worthy of the students’ time.

The two courses I taught were Drama in Education (D.I.E) and Non-Traditional Curriculum. A lesson plan for D.I.E is below:

DIE Class Outline 10/4/2018

10 mins Introductions: Tell the class a little about my background and experience. Allow each of them to tell me their name, where they’re from, and what they hope to do with their career

5 mins Student Warm-Up

10 mins Large group discussion What is research? Why is applying it to your practical work important? How can it apply to your work?

20 mins Share the TED Talk Dance Your Ph. D run time 11 mins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlDWRZ7IYqw

10 min video reflection

10 min- Break

45 mins Small working groups

Guided questions: What is an abstract? What makes an abstract strong?

· I will share 3 Arts-Based Research Abstracts with the class

· We will look at the purpose of an abstract and how it is structured.

· Then we will have students in groups of 3-4 develop an abstract together using the topic of one of the group members

· Each group will share out what they worked on to the larger group for feedback on how to improve their abstract.

15 mins Q&A & Final Reflection

Any final thoughts about research or how to incorporate it into your work?

Any anxiety?

^[1] Van de Pol, J., Volman, M., & Beishuizen, J. (2010). Scaffolding in Teacher—Student Interaction: A Decade of Research. Educational Psychology Review, 22(3), 271-296. Retrieved March 27, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/23364144