Student Influence

Teaching theatre to high school students is more than finding kids who have a skill and putting them onstage over and over again. Learning all aspects of theatre, everything from acting to set construction to directing, gives students skill that can be used in any field and in their daily life. The most important thing we can and need to teach our students is how to take and use the theatre as a tool to explore their lives. Every show ever written is about someone. It's about a particular person going through a specific situation that is unique to them at that moment in their lives. They should be given more freedom in choosing what productions they do and how they do it so they can apply it to their lives, and apply their lives to it. This gives them the best learning experience and teaches them through the process of their creating that they can have an influence in the world around them and that their opinions and lives are important. Because they are. They are the future, as cliché as that might sound, it's the truth, and they need to understand it. They need to learn to analyze critically the world in which they live and the part they do and can play in it. Our job as their teacher is to help them learn how to critically analyze and find solutions to problems, and give them the confidence and desire to do this. They have to have control and say over what they do and learn in order for it to become important to them. Along with this, it means we also must take an active role in discovering the lives of our students and tailor what we teach to what is important to them.