Drama = English = Drama

When you teach Drama, you are also teaching social skills, playing parental roles, dealing with emotions, building, creating, and teaching from core subjects. I know a lot of Theatre Teachers who do NOT include core subjects into their curriculum, but I find it a necessary task. It helps the students learn your material, but it also helps them look at their other classes from a different perspective.

A large portion of Drama entails being able to read and infer from the text given within a play. If a student is unable to do this, or decode correctly, then they are most likely doing poorly in their Language Arts class.

While I was student teaching, I noticed that with each test I gave there seemed to be one consistent problem from all of the students (who were mostly juniors and seniors). They could not write essays. Some wouldn't try at all, others would draw pictures, some would put their heads down, and a couple would just draw a big X. As I was administering the second test of the semester, I was walking around the room and noticed that the same thing was happening again. At this point, I knew it wasn't just one student, but an entire classroom that had been left behind. I immediately stopped the test and took them all up. They all thought they were in trouble, but instead, I pulled up a chair and said we were going to have a town hall meeting. I explained that I noticed that there were some issues with the tests that I was giving, and I wanted some honest feedback so we could fix the problem. It took a little prodding at first, but finally one young man raised his hand and said that he was fine with the T/F, Short Answer, and Multiple Choice, but he didn't know how to write a 5-paragraph essay. I was absolutely stunned because he was a Senior. This opened the door to a conversation where I realized that I had a duty, not only as a teacher, but as a human being, to teach all 37 kids how to write an essay. I told them to finish the test up to the point of the essay, and to attempt to write it, but that I would not grade that portion. Meanwhile, I went home to figure out how to fix this problem. I knew that they could not go to college and not have the ability to write a simple paragraph, or even spell simple words.

I decided to do the next and final unit on Playwriting. I made up a PowerPoint, which I will attach here and explained how to write a short scene, which they were required to do. They also learned vocabulary and other terminology that should have been taught as a freshman, possibly earlier. 

Here is a copy of the PowerPoint that I made for that Class

After teaching this, I started a conversation about what was causing the problems of writing essays. Some had anxiety, while others simply didn't know what to do. I took the time to stop and show them how to write an essay, avoid being anxious, and tricks to rely upon when they got stuck. It was a couple of long, sticky weeks, but the next test I received an essay on every single test. Some of them had a way to go, as far as writing style, spelling, sentence structure, etc., but they ALL tried and I knew that they had been listening because I saw some of the strategies I had given them over to the side, or by the way they constructed the essay. I had no doubt that as they continued in other classes, they would now have the confidence to improve with each and every essay they wrote. I was able to leave that experience knowing that I had made a difference, and that each of these students now had the tools they needed to succeed in this area.