Teachable Moments for Values through Drama
"drama is a powerful tool in engaging students in reflecting, discussing and making moral choices in the given situations."
The PAL drama workshop was an enriching 2 full-day workshop in many ways. Freeze frames, teacher in roles and conscience alley are some jargons that have been used over and over again during my 2 days workshop. There is more to the enriching episode on a personal front but I will touch on them at the end of the article.
The teaching and learning of drama for a PAL programme is guided by the learning dimension of Making, Presenting and Responding. In addition, it has to be age and experience appropriate. Therefore, the connection with the glitz and glamour of a musical and theatre is far from the imagination. Throughout the 2 days programme, no make-up, costumes or major props were used. Instead, our imagination was highly engaged as we re-created scenes from a village, playground and even outer space. We conducted mock lessons in order to equip ourselves as future facilitators of the programme in our school. We participated in role plays, used movement, gestures and expressions to present our ideas and responded differently to the various stories and characters. The lead trainer, Mr Adrian Wong (who reminded me of Chua En Lai from THE NOOSE) was always reminding us that drama is a powerful tool in engaging students in reflecting, discussing and making moral choices in the given situations. Through the different phases, we learnt skills on setting the context, building belief, deepening belief, adding complications and finally achieving resolution. The different dimensions in drama also contribute to the concept of social emotional learning of the students in many ways. I fondly remember the lonely dragon character from whom I have learnt not to be judgemental. And so I can’t wait to share the stories of Alvina, Baz and many more with my Punggol Green munchkins. It will be an exciting journey as we will get to live out the FISH philosophy through PLAY using drama as a tool.
As mentioned in the beginning, the ‘enriching’ drama workshop was made even sweeter with the lovely company of Ms Cai Aimei and Mdm Yang Wenxia. And I also had 2 days of enriching meals of tissue prata and other delectable local food at the eatery near the training venue. Burp!
Mdm Yana