I have just returned from a three-hour teaching stint at a religiously affiliated university in Tacoma. Yes, it featured a drive which began at 6:30am, yes, it featured a Dean of Students with a charmingly heavy Southern accent, and yes, it featured an education undergrad wearing a yellow t-shirt with the words "Jesus was a passionate lover" across the chest.
I was planning on being all judgmental about it as, well, I do get all judgmental when I have to get up so early and am all nervous about my work. (I was nervous in this case because I'm, um, not a very regular theatre teacher and I get all scared about being too, um, arty, especially when the two other teachers I'm teaching with are all Super Fun Theatre Games Anyone Can Use in Their Classroom style.)
But it ruled. I ran around in my boots and sexy librarian glasses and said things like "Zero Population Growth" when I meant "now I would like different people to come up, but please let the number of actors remain the same" and "explode your choices" when I meant "your gestures suck ass little scaredy." (Okay, that last one really verges on too arty, but it worked in this case.)
As a result, when my group got up to do their forced-link poems in front of all the other groups of forced-link poems, they demonstrated strong and varied choices of level, shape, and vocal dynamics.
I'm not saying that the other groups were bad or that I am such a better teacher than the other two teaching artists (because that's not the case at all), just that I'm really happy that things worked out so well, especially when I used non-traditional methods in what was supposed to be a traditional class (aka "Ida thought she might get in trouble again").
Now I'm going to put on a Mountain Goats t-shirt and a Fat Boy sweatshirt and turn myself into Sophie Ducat for awhile. And just when too much of that admin gets to me, I'll have three luxurious hours of middle-school acting students.
I'm the luckiest girl in the whole world. (I've also consumed a quantity of caffeine.)
Posted by Ida at October 7, 2003 01:27 PM