6
Incite/Insight
Lesson Plan Exploration
Summer/Early Fall 2018
Relevant Learning is Crucial
to Student Success
A
s educators of any domain, we
often hear from our students asking,
“How will I ever use this?” Truthfully, they
pose a really great question. In a general
sense, how will my theater students
benefit from playing slightly varied rounds
of “Whoosh” for the hundredth time? Is
this really relevant to the basic theories
of acting? While I do feel strongly that
group warm-up activities are essential
to activating creativity and developing
an ensemble, it gave me pause when
one of my most committed theater
students came to me at the end of last
year asking how playing warm-up games
are relevant to her when her professional
aspiration is to be a doctor. This question
required some deep soul searching
and reflection of my teaching practice
because my knee-jerk reaction was that
as a theater educator, I have failed. This
question launched a personal journey
to better help my students develop an
understanding that the educational
value of theater is universal, regardless
of professional ambitions. I believe that
personal AND cultural forces shape artistic
communication. Therefore, the arts, in turn,
shape the diverse cultures of past and
present society.
One of the lessons I created in this
endeavor explored the theme of
privilege using Image Theater based
on scenarios devised by the
students. The objective was to
help students synthesize the
causes and consequences
of privilege through
brainstorming and
by Jay Gerlach
image work. The primary resources for this
lesson came from Michael Rohd’s book
Theater
for Community, Conflict, and Dialogue
and Making the Leap: Theater of
Empowerment A Practical Handbook for
Creative Drama Work with Young People
by Sara Clifford and Anna Herrmann. The
warm-up consisted of a series exercises
using the body to create nonverbal frozen
images as a way of telling a story. Students
observing the extemporized simulation
would respond to prompts such as, “What
relationships do you see? Does one person
have more power than the other? Do you
see any examples of cause and effect in
this image? Wh