Dear Kara,
All the world's a stage, and the classroom is part of it.
As far back as I can recall, I have always shied away from acting. I honestly, truly believed that I, the once shy-elementary-school-nerdie that I was, was not cut out to act. In high school, although I spent four blissfully innocent years atop Mt. Makiling studying art and all its variants, I purposefully avoided any such courses or electives that required me to render any kind of performance, particularly that of acting. (Incidentally, my Major was Creative Writing and my electives were Basic Drawing, Journalism, and Photography.)
For one, I hated to memorize. I had always felt it a tedious and bookish act, and the thought of having to deliver these memorized lines would always turn my insides to mush.
On hindsight, I believe that I should have taken that Drama class with my playwriting mentor, Glenn Mas, had I known that I actually had it in me to act.
Yes, act. And by acting, I mean the kind of acting that I, as I teacher, "perform" daily in the classrooms I enter, and the students I entertain. I have been "acting" in this, my stage, for a little over a year now.
There is the "opening act" wherein I give them a spiel, a spiel I have memorized from Day 1, a spiel that is meant to capture their attentions, and spiel that is meant to instill discipline and order.
Then come the various scenes, my lessons, which, up until now, I plan on a weekly basis, complete with opening and closing lines, some of them I practice even as I prepare to sleep. (Haha, I can just hear the veteran teachers laughing.)
Finally, there is the "flourish" of the closing scene, planned with enough precision as to elicit a desired response from my young audience: learning, a teacher's climax.
Yes, in this way, teacher's are theater actors, and our classroom, the stage.Labels: musings, teaching |
