Heather's Teaching- Post 3

I just love teaching theatre. Each day we go into the classroom, I’m just so excited to be there. I feel blessed to be able to teach drama classes. I think it seems so natural in a theatre setting to have student centered learning take place, and that alone makes the classroom a fun place to be. It’s been so great to watch our student learn and grow as each of our lessons has introduced something new for them to think about and apply to what they already know. Something I’ve found really rewarding is when we prepare the students for their next task (without them realizing it) and then we give them the task and they do it with excitement, with energy, and with confidence. It has been so fun to see how amazingly creative our students have been with our “Fairytale Deconstruction” playwriting project. Because we gave them the option to choose their story and we gave them the time to pick a new storyline and we let THEM have control of their learning, they have opened up and just really been creative with their ideas. One day we had them write monologues from the perspective of one of their new characters and the students were so excited for us to read them, and we were so impressed with what they had written. I have found that sometimes I set my standards too low for what the students can produce. I have realized that I need to place more confidence in my students, because they can truly achieve amazing things when we let them!