Class #5 - Drama and Mental Health

Week 5         

          This week's class was a difficult one. I entered class with a negative outlook, completely overwhelmed by the multitude of projects, final assignments and upcoming presentations due within the next two weeks. This was a particularly bad day to enter the class with such a negative attitude because my final drama presentation was for this class. On another note, today's class was focused on addressing the integration of drama and physical education, in particular, mental health. I would say that at the beginning of class I felt depressed, isolated and anxious. In that moment I realized that these characteristics are all feelings that people with mental health issues face everyday. Personally, these feelings are not daily happenings for me and I often have the positive reinforcement of family and friends to help me through the difficult, stressful moments in my life. Today was not one of those days.

Postpartum Support International. "You are not alone". [online image] Retrieved from www.postpartum.net. March 27th 2017.

 
          On a more positive note, today's class helped me to see another benefit of a strategy that I discussed in one of my earlier reflections - storytelling. Our instructor was addressing character education principles through storytelling. At the time, the story could have been addressing any form of educational principle or learning theory, however, I wasn't hearing any of it when the story began. My focus was so far gone from the lesson that I felt bad for being so withdrawn. As the story began, our instructor completely became another person. Her presence when storytelling was magnetic and she pulled me into the story's plot line. Slowly, I became more interested in the story. Pausing at specific places in the story, our instructor encouraged us to think about being educators and asked us what we would do with our students at this place in the story. Each time she did this, I noticed that I was more involved and more interested in taking part during the lesson. By the end of the story, I needed to know what happened and was fully invested in the story. At this point I realized that all of my anxiety, feelings of isolation and depression had washed away. The story changed my psyche by taking me away from my present situation.

Miyata, Cathy. "Week 5 PowerPoint notes". [PowerPoint picture] Retrieved from week 5 resources on Sakaii. March 27th 2017.

          After I noticed the change to my psyche, I began to think about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. At the start of class we were given a warm-up activity that encouraged us to form several mini-tableaux that connected to a character's feelings and had us conveying those feelings by using our facial expressions, body and vocal tone. Connecting this activity to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, we were addressing the self-esteem and self-actualization sections of the pyramid. When the lesson began, however, I was not in the right frame of mind to make those connections or to realize the benefits of the warm-up. Later, after the storytelling activity, when my mood and focus had completely changed, I was able to see how the creative process of the warm-up activity and achievement of all involved, connected to these sections of the pyramid. I then began to think about student needs and wondered if maybe Maslow should have included a section called psychological needs. Although self-esteem and self-actualization focus on elements of psychology like confidence and acceptance, it doesn't address mental readiness. Taking part in the storytelling activity helped me to be mentally prepared for the rest of the lesson and my presentation and helped me to see as a future educator how important it is for students to be ready to learn. This will be an idea that I keep in the forefront of my mind when I am teaching in the future.

Class #4 - Gallery walk tableau

Week 4         

          In today's class, we learned about two strategies that spoke volumes to me. The one strategy is known as a gallery walk. This is something that I am familiar with but the ways in which it was used helped me to see its versatility in the classroom. Previous to this class, I've always used the gallery walk as a way to allow other students to reflect on their classmate's work. Learning from our peers is an effective way to share information and to encourage meaningful conversations.  In today's class we used the gallery walk as a way to facilitate self-reflection. Self-reflection is an important process of any lifelong learner. Knowing how you feel about something, why you feel that way and addressing your next steps based on those reflections can be a difficult process. Using several nature images - such as fire, trees and eagles, to name a few - our task was to choose a picture that resonated with our experience in the teacher education program.

Dekker, Z. 2017.

     
          After choosing an image, we were asked to discuss our reasoning behind choosing that picture with the others who gathered there. In this way, our instructor encouraged community and cooperation by creating a small group setting that had us sharing personal information.We weren't required to share this information with the entire class. It created a safe space for those individuals who might be uncomfortable with this process. As a future educator, I think that I could use this strategy to encourage those students to come out of their shell. Watching their peers take part in this process might help them to open up, to look within themselves and to use the process of self-reflection as a learning tool.
          Another way that our instructor used the gallery walk was even better than the last. Displaying a series of cultural celebration images, our class was asked to choose the picture that we identify with most. Having recently traveled to China, the image that spoke most to me was of the lantern festival that takes place at the end of the Chinese New year.

Dekker, Z. 2017.

          I absolutely loved this use of the gallery walk for the purposes of cultural inclusivity. In a world where the majority of our classes are filled with students from various cultures and backgrounds, this activity put a real face on our future classrooms. When students see themselves and their culture represented within their learning environment, it helps them to see their classroom as an extension of their home and to feel safe. In each of my former teaching placements, my classrooms have been predominantly Caucasian. I don't feel as though I have had the necessary opportunities to plan for or encourage cultural inclusivity. This activity will be one that I definitely use in the future and can be easily adapted for a variety of learners and various concepts.
          The second strategy that I wanted to focus on was the open and close tableau. During this strategy, groups of students were encouraged to create a series of tableau scenes about a given fairy tale. The rest of us were encouraged to close our eyes each time the group was creating a new tableau. What I really liked about this strategy was the connection that it had with theater and the process of going from a completely blacked out stage to a fully lit one. Each time we were asked to open our eyes to view the next scene, it was as if someone was turning the lights on to reveal something important. This activity also created a high level of student engagement. Keeping my eyes closed encouraged me to want to know what was coming next. I found it very interesting to see the next created scene and to piece that image together with the last one that I saw. Thinking about my future classrooms, this strategy could be used during a book review to display particular scenes from a book. This would encourage students to use the reading comprehension skill of visualizing to recall the information that they have retained from the book.

Dekker, Z. 2017.

Class #3 - Placement and Drama

 Week 3        

          During our last placement we were required to think about an action research project that could potentially bring about changes in the teaching profession. My focus was on integrated curriculum and the possibility of potentially creating a formula for creating interdisciplinary unit plans. This formula would be created using qualitative data from student and teacher feedback as well as quantitative data from student assessments. With this in mind I used drama as one of my areas of focus. In my goal of creating integrated lessons I incorporated drama in two effective ways. One was focused on drama as a strengthening tool for student engagement and retention of information. The other was as a culminating task to display what they learned at the end of their language unit.
          Incorporating drama as a tool that encourages student engagement and retention of information was very useful in both language and science. In language we were learning about making inferences. The class went through several different lessons and activities that had them making inferences about pictures, text and pictures with text. At least this was the goal when I began. As I started getting the students to use pictures to make inferences, they were on board for about the first lesson. By the second lesson their interest in making inferences about pictures was beginning to fade. To switch things up a little, I began using small snippets of text and longer stories to get students to strengthen their skills in making inferences. More importantly, the focus was to connect those inferences to their previous knowledge and schema. Similar to making inferences about pictures, they quickly lost interest in this process. I then took a risk and used storytelling as a way to get students more engaged and to retain their inference making information. I used a traditional aboriginal story about the legend of the loon. During the story I took a very serious approach and told it with passion. I took pauses along the way and got student to make inferences about who certain characters were, what their intentions may be and possible conclusion outcomes. I knew my learners well by this point and was aware of their need to be animated and to let go of their energy. I gave students the opportunity to use the speaking stick to become part of the story and to make inferences about what they thought certain characters would say and how the situation would be addressed by the community elders. In this way, students who needed to be up and walking around were able to do so and the others were highly entertained and engaged in the process. The next lesson, students asked if we could do the storytelling again so I ran one more lesson with storytelling as the medium for making inferences. The reflections that I got from this process were very positive and students showed an increase in their level of engagement and retention of information.
          In a similar way, I used drama as a tool to help students retain information for their upcoming science test. The bonus of this process was that it also encouraged student engagement. Using what we learned during our drama lesson about the human body, I got my students to use the creative process to create a water filtration system using their bodies. Groups of students had to use their bodies to act out the process of filtering waste water. Throughout each stage of filtration, students needed to act out the actions, the sounds and the path that filtered waste takes when moving through the various stages of filtration. When it came time to their test and the written explanation portion of how the filtration process works, a majority of the class used the drama exercise to explain. Many students mentioned after that the tactile process of actually doing and being a part of the filtration system was memorable and engaging.
          Lastly, I used drama skits as a culminating task in language. On top of making inferences, the students were involved in literature circles surrounding Sean Covey's "7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens". During this unit they were working in groups and rotating through the various roles of: questioner, summarizer, vocabulary guru, discussion director and connector. Students took part in reading specific sections of their books and discussing the various ideas and concepts presented in each chapter. At the end of their unit, each group needed to brainstorm ideas for the creation of a drama skit that would incorporate one of the habits that spoke to them as a group. Surrounding a real life social conflict, students needed to present the ways in which their chosen habit could help them to become highly successful. What I liked about this culminating task was that it allowed students to show what they learned during the unit, it encouraged them to use their reasoning and problem solving skills to solve a real-world social conflict and it provided the students with lots of choice when choosing the habit they would focus on, the social problem or conflict and the ways in which they would solve the issue. When student began preparing for their drama skits and brainstorming their ideas they weren't really taking the task too seriously. I then showed them a couple of exemplars surrounding skits that other schools/classes have done for the same book. The class was completely silent and someone said at the end of one example, "that was like a real theater show, I want to do that!" At this point all of the students also seemed more interested. As a class we generated success criteria for the drama skit and one of those expectations was that the skit had to be believable and create viewer enjoyment. We then discussed some of these elements and the students finally took ownership over their culminating task. I was surprised by their continual level of engagement when creating and practicing their drama skit. Furthermore, I was blown away by the final products and how each member of every group of was physically and mentally present when performing their skits. The silliness that is common in these types of small drama presentations was non-existent and each group was able to successfully display what they learned surrounding their chosen habit of focus.

Class #2 - Drama and the human body

Week 2         

          This week's class was another great way to experience integrated curriculum. In particular, our class involved the integration of drama and science. I never thought that it was possible to find connections between drama and the inner workings of the human organ system. What I liked most about this class was the way that the warm-up activities connected to the core activity. For our warm-up activities we were first encouraged to think about the way that the body works when simply breathing. Everyone breathes, yet not everyone thinks about the ways that the body works when it does this action. As a vocal instructor, I think about this process on a daily basis and I liked it that we were focusing on the expansion of the ribs when thinking about breathing with the diaphragm muscles. From the beginning of the lesson we were aware of the inner workings of our own bodies.

Teach PE (Blog). "Diaphragm Breathing". [Online Image] Retrieved from http://www.teachpe.com/anatomy/breathing.php. January 26th 2017.

          The next warm-up activity brought us even closer to the objective of the lesson. we needed to connect ourselves together to make a working machine. This machine would begin with an individual creating a repeating action and sound. The next person who joined the machine needed to connect physically and in-time to the repeating pattern of one of the people in the machine. By the end of each round in the activity, the entire class was connected in this rhythmic and noisy human/mechanic organic machine.

Miyata, Cathy. "The Organic Machine". [Online Image] Retrieved from drama class #2 Sakaai. January 26th 2017.

          The warm-up activity got everyone using what they learned in the previous warm-up activity because they were using their breathing to produce vocalizations of their particular part of the machine. It also served a double purpose as it got everyone just a little closer to the core activity, which would involve everyone connecting together as organs inside the human body, working together to consume and break down food that traveled through our created organ system.
          The core activity was a lot more engaging and interesting than I had first anticipated. I expected everyone to participate halfheartedly, however, each individual was giving this activity their all and taking it seriously. This was seen in the way that we refined the human organ system to discuss the pathway that the food would travel and to determine which organs would take part in breaking down the food and which organs would only use nutrients from the food. In this discussion and refinement of our human organ system we were addressing the expectation of 3.1, found within the science curriculum strand of "Understanding Life Systems - Human Organ Systems". In this expectation it states that students will "Identify major systems in the human body and describe their roles and interrelationships". At first, I didn't realize that we were addressing these goals and making these connections through drama. When we debriefed the class, it was interesting to see how these connections were made and I began to think of other ways that drama could be used to address other curriculum expectations. This interest has led me to choose the integration of curriculum as a focal point in my action research topic during my last teaching practicum.

Class #1 - Monday Jan. 9th

Week 1

          Today's drama class had us exploring the strategy of storytelling. Storytelling is a strategy that is central to Indigenous culture and traditions. The strategy of storytelling is something that I don't have any experience with and so when our instructor began storytelling I didn't see it's benefits. As the story progressed and we began taking part in the lesson, it was interesting to see how each person in the class was completely captured and engaged by the story. When we were encouraged to take part in the story, I could truly see how this strategy can benefit all students of every age.
          To begin speaking, each person needed to have the talking stick in their possession. Within many Indigenous cultures, the talking stick gives voice to an individual as a communication tool. While in possession of the talking stick, other members of the community must listen quietly and be respectful of the person talking. The first thing that I thought of when I saw this, was how the talking stick encourages such learning skills and work habits as self-regulation and cooperation. Another great thing about the talking stick was that it didn't put pressure on anyone to speak. If you wished to have your voice heard, you had to make the decision to take the stick and speak.

Native Arts Trading. "Native American Talking Stick". [Online Image] Retrieved from http://www.nativeartstrading.com/images/DSCN_Talking_StickA.jpg. January 10th 2017.

          When someone took it upon themselves to speak, the first thing that we were encouraged to do was role play. An individual from the class came up to the front and had to tell the community what had happened to them as a main character from the story. This task also encouraged the entire class, including the speaker to use such comprehension strategies as summarizing and sequencing to identify various components of the story and to tell those components in order. Later on in the storytelling lesson we had to employ the comprehension strategies of inferring and predicting to determine who we thought a particular character in the story was and what they're intention might be towards the other main characters. What I liked most about this process was that we weren't told we would be using comprehension strategies, we just did it and it happened from the very beginning of the story with visualizing. Throughout the entire story I was visualizing and forming images of what was happening and I can still recall those images almost a week later. It is a powerful form of teaching.
          The most powerful moment that I experienced from this lesson happened at the end of the story. The conclusion had a happy ending and a sense of justice for the main characters who were wronged. It presented an emotion in all of us that was righteous and encouraged a strong sense of morality. You could see in the faces of those sitting in the circle that we all wanted the evil character to perish and for the good characters to find redemption. What I didn't expect to happen was that this story was not only teaching a strong sense of values but was explaining something biological. At the end of the story, the guardian of the children was a loon and she was presented with a white necklace made from the tusk of a narwhal whale that had once been the evil witch who wronged the main characters. The loon was said to have kept the necklace for ever and never takes it off and that is why today you will still see the loon with it's white necklace markings around it's neck. I just thought that that was the most interesting explanation of something that differed from my scientific/genetic perspective that helped me to change my way of thinking just a little and to see the value in such storytelling strategies.

Miyata, Cathy. "The Origin of the Narwhal". Retrieved from drama resources week1 on sakai. January 20th 2017.