The Endless Audition

I graduated from a culturally diverse, statistically underperforming high school and my experience taught me so much about the teachers who stood before their classes on a daily basis. My experiences left me with a sense of preparation for the unknown abyss that can sometimes be “public school”. I’ve learned that preparation is key and this preparation should begin far before the first day of school. If your classroom and materials are ready for the first day and you are prepared to welcome your students with open arms, you will foster an atmosphere of acceptance which will then allow students to expose their vulnerable side and form strong relationships with not only their teacher but their peers.

Teaching a classroom and performing during an audition possess a lot of the same traits. An effective performance is essential to ensure the success of not only yourself but the people around you. If a director does not choose qualified actors, the finished product of the show will suffer. If a teacher cannot perform effectively in the classroom, the student's performance will suffer. A teacher should be relatable and accessible to their students. The concept of “treating everyday as if it were an audition” can be phrased in other ways too to speak to the needs or desires of students. Additionally, “the theater can be both a lesson and an exciting game, a means of immersion in another era and the discovery of unknown facets of our time. It helps to assimilate moral and scientific truths in the practice of dialogue, teaches you to be yourself and the “other”, transform into a hero and live many lives, spiritual conflicts, dramatic character trials. In other words, theatrical activity is the path of a person to universal culture..” (Portnova 3). Phrases like “treat every new situation as if it were a job interview” or “even the smallest details matter” can be brought into so many realms of a student's life inside and outside of theatre and it's important to have a an instructor behind them, pushing these values while also encouraging students to relate to these scenarios in the most effective way possible.

Once you become a licensed educator, you are signing a contract to do your best as an instructor and to do what's best for your students inside and outside the classroom. “, most high school theatre teachers are critically evaluated more on the quality of their productions and less on the artistic and intellectual growth of their students. Despite this limiting and shortsighted assessment of a theatre teacher's effectiveness, preservice teachers must have the opportunity in their training to understand and appreciate all aspects of their art” (Brown and Urice 1) When you take the time to appreciate your art and share that appreciation with your students, you can never forget that your students are human beings too, with emotional and sometimes physical needs and with those needs, comes the need for support right behind it. If a teacher isn’t supportive of their students and the things they want to receive out of their education, then you are nothing more than a human being speaking verbatim to a group of young people. In both the worlds of theatre and education, verbatim often doesn’t get very far. Differentiation and the ability to have creative control over yourself and creative influence over others is crucial. Practices such as teamwork, acceptance, treating others with kindness, and always having an open mind are crucial ideals for teachers, as human beings, these are the things we may often search for the most.