I taught a series of playwriting workshops at Roland Park Country School over the past couple weeks. One of the 8 amazingly smart kids in the class is a German exchange student. She's so brave, 17, here for a semester and living with a host family. She's quiet and blonde and sweet and English is not her first language. She was confused during freewriting and clearly worried about writing a ten minute short play in English. We workshopped hers last and she was nervous as a cat. But her play was brilliant, a scary little story about two people trapped in an old man's basement. When she realized that we loved it, she clapped her hand over her mouth to hold all the joy. She almost cried. I almost cried.
So, thanks, Anika, for reminding me to face my fears and showing me how beautiful teaching can be.
Awww that's an awesome story! Tell me, did anything from our pedagogy class come in handy at all?
ReplyDeleteYeah, actually the prewriting exercises (particularly brainstorming and clustering) have made the biggest impact on my teaching and on my own work's development. I've also been merging those comp exercises into theatre games that will further engage students.
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