Reflection 2

I made it through the first semester, by the skin of my teeth. In my 16 years in education, I have never taught in a climate like this and I could not have guessed when I wrote my first Scope and Sequence Reflection what lay ahead of me. In fact, I intend to rewrite almost this entire plan for next year because the needs and wants of high school students have changed and I need to adjust for the times.

The students that took my classes this year are not the students that I knew when we went into School@Home in March 2020. Then during the 2020-2021 school year, we taught hybrid. The 40% of students that I spent time with on-camera did not return to take Advanced Theatre, Tech Theatre or Theatre Production. Frankly, I don’t blame them. The education that students received last year was the best we could do, but it was not good enough. We not only failed to reach them with the curriculum, they missed out on social and emotional growth that they would have experienced in the classroom.

When my students returned this year, they were immature and aggressive. Many of my first year students were reluctant to follow rules and were not intrinsically motivated to learn or participate. They also did not believe that they could fail the class, nor did they seem to care when they did. My older students were overwhelmed and hesitant to engage with others. As a class that had relied heavily on class participation and presentation before the pandemic, then became mostly reading and writing-based while hybrid, I assumed, incorrectly, that we would resume business as usual now that we were fully in-person again. I thought students would be excited to get up and move around. I thought they would enjoy using their hands and engaging in a way that hybrid learning had not allowed. I learned quickly that the world had not returned to normal and that the classroom was not ready to do so either. In fact, the very idea of returning to normal is a fallacy. These kids are traumatized and we are not prepared to give them the help they need.

That being said, I still had a job to do and I will admit that we did not get it all done. We got a lot done, but nowhere near the amount of information that I am used to disseminating in a semester. We took a long time just to learn how to be human again, how to interact outside of a screen and to control our faces without masks on.

All levels began the year “getting to know you” activities. This has often been a struggle with Theatre I, but this year, it was pulling teeth. They don’t want to get out of their seats. They don’t want to speak in front of or to others and they do not want to get the answer wrong if others might know. Something as simple as getting another classmate’s name wrong seemed like the end of the world. I’ll be honest, I got used to having their names at the bottom of my screen for a whole year. I still have to look up some of their last names and it’s already Christmas break.

Then Theatre I moved into Theatre Basics and Voice and Diction. They clearly had not been in a classroom in a long time. They didn’t respond to attention-getters. They didn’t want to do any work and they struggled with basic skills like sentence structure and time management. They wouldn’t find a seat and stay in it. They were antagonistic to me and one another. They were defensive and aggressive when redirected and their language was unbelievably crude. I tried to think of more interesting ways to deliver vocabulary other than copying or typing from the board because they couldn’t keep up and I was constantly losing my voice trying to speak over them. Some of this worked for some students, but, all in all, I really need to work on my vocabulary delivery and how to test them on it, because they don’t like lecture and they don’t like paper games. They seem to like video games like Kahoot and Quizizz, but I’m afraid that that will become “boring” too if I use it too much. It has turned out to be a very effective way to give tests and quizzes, though. I even had a Kahoot final exam and they did very well.

While Theatre I was working through Basics and Voice and Diction, Advanced Theatre and Tech/Production were working on the Fall Show and UIL Theatrical Design, respectively. We used a modified version of Kevin Rigdon’s Script Analysis and it wasn’t a hit, but it was very effective. The older students complained as they trudged through the play (The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon for Advanced Theatre and Murder on the Orient Express for Tech/Theatre Production.) Now would be a good time to point out that until this year, I had one or two Tech Theatre classes and a Theatre Production class. This year, because of lack of retention, we combined them. Technically, this should have put Theatre Production under Tech Theatre TEKS, but I’m trying to find a way to hit the high points of both with lots of adjustments.

Despite their apprehension, this Script Analysis did the job. The students found the information needed in a new way and it really guided their understanding and retention of the work. I intend to use this form of analysis in the future, but I need to find a way to make it more fun and shorten it a bit. Having done it over the summer, I see how it could be overwhelming and letting them work in groups to complete the assignment was helpful, but it was still a lot of work and took a large chunk of the semester to get through. Now that they have done it once, it will go quicker in the future, but this time it was laborious.

Design work in Advanced Theater was the most familiar I’d felt in the classroom all year. We worked through it together. Some students had breakthroughs, some did the bare minimum. Everyone was a little better artist when we were done. It’s a lesson that works and I’ll keep doing it. I wanted to push my Tech/Production class and prepare them for the second semester assignments. They struggled. We built 3D models for UIL Theatrical Design and they had difficulty with scale and straight lines. All in all, their projects were acceptable, but we need to explore these concepts further. They are content with “almost” and “good enough.” My goal for the spring is to push them to be more exacting and precise. They did very well with sketches because they were less rigorous. I saw how the analysis really helped them with this portion of the project.

This is when Theatre I moved into Storytelling and the beginning of the second six weeks grading period. It was an eye-opener for many. They realized that they could, in fact, fail a six weeks and, for those playing sports, it was a heartbreaking lesson. This is when some started to kick it in gear. We were a bit behind schedule in my largest class, so I combined Pantomime and Storytelling. Their project was a pantomime Fairy Tale in which the Protagonist and Antagonist were switched. This was their first big success as individuals and as a class. Everyone’s grade was dependent on someone else and everyone in class performed. The presentations were thought out and fun to watch. I was really proud of how much of a turn around there was from the beginning of the semester and I knew, finally, that I was making strides to help them realize their own small successes. Behavior was still a major issue, as well as Covid. During this time, my class of 31 usually hung around 20 with absences and alternative placements. Smaller class size was a contributing factor to our success during this time, but I will still count it as a win.

Advanced Theatre moved into Crankies, which was a success. It was independent work and they videotaped their performance, so there was more participation and less stress than a more traditional performance assignment.

Theatre I moved into Stanislavski and things got more difficult. A lot of this unit is getting up, working with a partner, and taking some risks. This did not go over well, but instead of fighting out loud, they just shut down. They would get up, but it would take forever for them to partner up and when they did, they wouldn’t participate fully or at all. I know that I will continue to teach Stanislavski, but I will have to change how I present the material and how I make sure students participate. One way I changed this assignment this year was to add more videos into my lesson. They seem to do well when watching short videos and enjoyed that more than listening to me talk.

We ran long on some of the units and there were more days off this semester for various events (our football team was one game away from state), testing and planning days, so we did not finish our Scope and Sequence in Advanced Theatre for the first semester. I will do some planning over Christmas break to figure out how to squeeze in what we missed while covering as much new material as possible during the spring.

This semester was one of learning, more for me than my students, I think. I have been successful in the past with many tried and true strategies and lessons that just didn’t work for me this year. I really had to focus on emotional and social issues for a majority of my students. I look forward to trying some new things in the Spring, but know that my focus is split between my classes and UIL One Act Play for most of the second semester. As a one person program, I am usually stressed and exhausted with the load I carry and now seem to be adding a lot more to it for these students that are struggling in ways that I have never encountered before. I’m lucky to have the administrative backup that I have, but know that it will be a stressful, tiring road ahead in the next semester to get it all done and do what’s best for my students.

-December 21, 2021