The students need to develop a work ethic, self-discipline, written and oral communication skills, and working as an ensemble. For our year together to be the most productive, the students must realize, as early in the school year as possible, just how they contribute to the ensemble, and what they hope to take away.
Most teenagers that I have worked with like to talk about themselves, but shun writing anything at all. In this unit, the students begin by writing about themselves. They assess their values, and write a mini-curriculum vitae. I think the students will be quite proud of how much they have already achieved in life but did not realize until they wrote it all down. They will learn more about their classmates, hopefully accepting and encouraging the multi-cultural and diversified school community in which they now evolve. Later in the unit, they write production reports and memoranda, expressing their own ideas about producing a play. They proceed to exercise creative writing skills by dramatizing a vocational situation. The goals remain to increase self-awareness and effective self-expression, through improved literacy and cooperative learning.
During class, I frequently remind my students, “I can not teach you anything. You can only learn.” I explain that the responsibility to learn anything at all falls on them. I do my part; they have to do theirs. It does not matter what I have to teach if they are not willing to commit to learning. They have to own their part in the process. Once a student understands that it is his or her personal responsibility to learn, I can begin to share with them something about acting and the theater industry. They receive rivulets of stage sense, and they are either a holding pool, or a sieve. It’s up to them.
Typical of a public high school, my students receive a college preparatory education. However, not every student intends to go to college. As an additional rationale for writing this unit, I want my students to consider what they might want to do for a living after graduation, and the steps they will need to take to prepare for their choices. Assessment of their values and previous experience, along with their production team role-playing, will reveal to them the necessity of specialized training and effective communication skills to attain their vocational goals.
When I was in fifth grade, a teacher with a hand puppet came to visit my classroom. She led us through a three-week series of sessions, with her hand puppet named Occu-Possum leading the way, exploring which occupations might fit our personal interests and goals. It was a great workshop, and revealed some things about ourselves that we had not thought to consider before Occu-Possom’s prompting. This curriculum unit sets forth similar goals of prompting students to consider vocational options, and to determine the requirements they will need for vocational preparedness.
Many of the students I have worked with in the last three years do not appreciate the necessity of critical analysis and effective communication. Most students shun both expository and creative writing. But in the theatre, and most other industries, every facet of collaboration relies on different components of writing. Concise, effective written communication is required by every person on all of the creative, managerial, administrative, and technical teams. Everyone on the production team must be literate, and even superior in his or her facility with language to keep them competitive in a brutal industry.
The script remains the fundamental tool in the legitimate theater. The script consists of words, written language that is meant to be spoken aloud. The better a student’s grasp on both spoken and written language, the easier it becomes for him or her to render dialogue in a style suitable for a particular character.
And then there is every-day life, and its demands for literacy. Below is just a sampling of the types of writing any person may need to use to communicate ideas to someone else:
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Job Application or cover letter
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Resumé
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Form at Doctor’s office, Emergency Room
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Complaint at Small Claims Court
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Complaint letter to a company
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Letter to political official
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Letter to family or friend
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Eulogy
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Wedding, birth, graduation, etc., announcement
Anyone interested in creative writing may write any of the following:
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Diary or journal
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Critique
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E-Mail / Note
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Comic strip - scenarios and dialogue
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Documentary
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Poetry
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Short story
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Play
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Novel
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Biography / Autobiography
Our future workforce demands literate workers. Engineers, bankers, nurses, every single profession, vocation and job requires that a person can read and write. To survive, every adult person must know how to read and write, or else be guided through life by a literate person.
In today’s global community, literacy and understanding serve as the required tools for a harmonious global society. Future global understanding relies on today’s youth to articulate the eradication of ethnocentricism and negative racial stereotypes.
