Lesson 11: Final Project

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time." -Thomas Merton

It was finally the day we had been waiting for! Each student eagerly gripped his or her play, anxious to finally share what he or she had been working so hard on for the past 6 weeks.

My plan to read the plays aloud proved to be much more complicated than I had intended, so I had to do some last-minute adjusting and improvising in order to make sure that every individual could read his or her play. After splitting the class into groups, they were off!

Back to what I said about the computer lab, that REALLY would have helped in this case. We would have been able to print off enough copies of the script for every role in each play rather than passing around a single copy. This slowed things down quite a bit. Also, the scripts would have been much easier to read if we had done this.

Although we didn't have time to read through the students' plays in their entirety, I gave them about one minute to select volunteer readers and four minutes to read each to ensure that we could get through everyone. We tried to balance it out as best as we could by rotating between readers so that everyone who wanted the chance to read could. The students were so excited to finally get to act for each other again!

One of my biggest challenges during my experience teaching was that I found it so difficult to get time to both act and write in each class. I tried to balance it out lesson by lesson and make up for it the next time, but things would often go wrong or not according to plan, and I'd have to adjust, cutting performance time or splitting the students into smaller groups for performances. If I do this experience again, I will definitely place a heavier importance on performing for each other in larger quantities.

Examples of the students reading their scripts aloud can be found here. I'm afraid I can't post as many videos as I would like! I suppose I wasn't very careful and accidentally recorded the faces of some of those whose parents did not give permission for me to post photos or videos of their child on my blog.

This project helped me to see sides of my students that I had never seen before! One of my students that was rather on the quiet, polite side shocked me with his natural directing ability! He took charge and was very decisive in selecting readers, and also gave them a bit of background knowledge and direction before they began to read aloud and during the performance! I was very impressed.

When one group finished reading their plays before the other, Miss Richins gathered those students and talked with them about what they had learned. I took note of this because I think that this reflective time is so important, especially with children this age. I wish that I had included more moments like this in my lessons. I will definitely keep this in mind in the future. Gosh, Miss Richins is such a great example to me.

As I prepared to leave for the last time, my students surprised me with handmade Valentine cards. I was brought to tears at such a sweet gesture that they had done for me! I couldn't help but tear up as I read through the cards later to find that many of my students had written their favorite memories from my lessons. I have included them, along with some of my other favorite Valentine card narratives, in the album here. I was so flattered at how personalized many of them were for me! I was touched that my students remembered so much about me, such as how much I love Disney.

I hope that my students continue to do theatre. I can tell that many of them would truly blossom on the stage, and many of them already have an impressive natural ability for various aspects in theatre, be it acting, directing, designing, playwriting, or stage management! If they continue to participate in theatre, they can not only develop theatre arts skills,  but they can develop communication skills and confidence as well as numerous other skills and abilities as well. In addition, they can make friends and create memories that they will cherish for the rest of their lives.