The Drama Teacher

Few times in my career as a drama teacher have I encountered the quiet drama class. But I’m there right now and I’m struggling…

This term I have had the 2nd quietest class of drama students in my ten years at my current school. Granted, its a small class. Thirteen Year 9 girls and about half the class didn’t choose drama as their 1st preference elective. But that’s not the issue. They are fabulous students who are more than willing to contribute to the best of their ability to activities. It’s just that they are so quiet!

As you can imagine, class discussion becomes an issue when half the class would rather be silent and listen to other ideas. Okey-dokey, how about some drama games and improvisation starters to get the ball rolling? Now that’s cool until we see the same six students contribute to every game. Once groups go off and brainstorm ideas for their comedy improvisations, small-group discussion seems even harder than whole-class teacher-lead discussion.

We are nearing the end of this term-length course. The focus of content has been comedy, specifically satire, slapstick and farce. I would argue the fact this has been a comedy drama course has made my job as teacher even harder. It’s difficult for even the most confident of drama students to successfully pull off comedy, much less a quiet student.

At times, this silence and quietness is unnerving. I find myself cracking lame jokes to keep the students entertained (not a good strategy). The start of most lessons begins with thirteen girls sitting on the floor in front of my desk waiting for me to take the roll without a sound to be heard. Do they think this is silent reading in English class, I ask myself? Because silent reading would be louder.

The quietness of this drama class has made me question my skills as a drama teacher. I set an activity. They accept it. In silence! Are they engaged? Do they find this task interesting? Do they understand it? Should I scaffold the task better? Are they bored?

While some of my colleagues out their in drama teacher land may be reading this post and thinking how lucky I am to have a quiet drama class, trust me, this has been more of a challenge than the noisiest and most unsettled of drama classes in my past.

We never stop learning in teaching. I’d love to hear other colleagues’ experiences and tips on how best to tackle the quiet drama class…

While other teachers may have been winding down in classes at the end of school term, my Year 9 Drama students have been going from strength to strength, maintaining their focus until the final lesson.

A few weeks ago we realised their short solo performance, the last task in this whirlwind term-length unit, would not make it onto their school report. We simply ran out of time undertaking other tasks. Not phased by this situation, I soldiered on in anticipation of many in the class not taking the task seriously. After all, they are teenagers motivated by semester reports, right? Wrong!

Fully aware the task was not making it on their report before we began, these students decided their first attempt at the all-important solo-performance in a drama class at high school was worth the effort.

No problems. Can you assess us anyway? We need the feedback.

After I picked myself up off the ground, for the next three lessons I watched my 14/15 year-old students in Year 9 work like a disciplined Year 12 Drama class the day before exams! I couldn’t believe it. At the end of the day, it was minor stuff: a two-minute solo performance in class. But I was amazed how seriously they undertook their preparation. This was what I call the open-ended solo performance: one that comes entirely from the student’s imagination or partially from observation of people in the world around them. So off my students went, researching their solo character, writing short scripts, learning how to block themselves in the space, grabbing a prop or two, adding costume and learning the lines.

The final performances were very warm and fuzzy. Here was a culture of respect and appreciation. Students were encouraging others in the class to perform next, clapping at the start and end of each solo, watching in absolute silence during performances and then being keen to get a grade from me on a sticky note that would never count towards their official assessment in Drama. Some students appeared more interested in this grade than the previous grades that did count!

So why did a group of Year 9 Drama students take this solo performance task so seriously? How keen is keen, I asked myself? Very keen, is the answer. These students were off the radar. While some who teach senior Drama cherish the maturity and sophistication of the older students, in recent years, I don’t have a “favourite” year level for teaching Drama, anymore. This is just one example of the gold to be found in any Drama class at any year level on any day of the week. It’s out there. You just have to keep searching until you find it.