This week Iliana and I met with Dan Froot a second time to go over our lesson plans and ideas for the rest of our residency at Jordan. Dan is really supportive and confident in our outline for the next 5 sessions. He also gave us some great suggestions in terms of how to discuss our themes with our students and how to provoke discussion about their performances. The hardest part for me is making clear connections between the activities we're doing and their own lives. I do believe I am making connections when I work with them one on one/in smaller groups – it's easier to help them come up with ideas for scenes and characters when I tell them they can draw from their own life.
Today was interesting and revealed new challenges. I really wanted the students to keep working on the scenes we did last week. We didn’t have time for them to give each other feedback, and many students didn't have a chance to perform their scenes at all. So, I had those that did perform revise their scripts and rehearse them, while students who needed more time to finish their script could do so.
The most difficult task was trying to accommodate four students who were absent last week. I couldn’t spend the whole class-time teaching them everything we had gone over during the last session, especially considering the fact that there were groups who still needed more coaching in order to finish writing their scene. So I had to balance my time between three different "groups" – 1) kids who missed the last class and had to get caught up, 2) kids who were in the last class but didn't complete their scripts and hadn't performed, and 3) kids who had performed, but could still benefit from developing and performing their scenes more. I had a really hard time making sure everyone felt comfortable with what they were doing, while at the same time trying to encourage the kids who were already ahead of everyone else to figure out how to make their scene even better.
The students who were present but did not perform last week performed today finally, but we couldn’t squeeze in the kids who had been absent; so I have to make sure that in our next activity, those kids perform a lot. What was really successful about today's class was we had time to give feedback for the scenes that they did perform. Many of the students were able to note whether the actor needed to project more, or whether they used the space well, or whether or not their characterization was clear. Their dialogue was also much clearer since I emphasized that I wanted them to each write down all the lines in their scene, as well as specific stage direction. They are certainly improving, which makes me wish we could teach more often so that they could progress even faster.
Question: How can we best accomodate a large class when students work at different rates and levels? Has anyone else run into this issue?
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I definitely noticed the difficulty working with students at different stages today, but I think you handled it very well (and I hope I was of some help). I think the key is challenging those students who have "finished" or who are more advanced by assigning more difficult tasks for them. I think we already have high expectations of our students, but in some cases, like with Manny and Claudia, we can raise the bar a bit higher. I need to work on that with my class too...I have a tendency to just love everything they do and I have to keep in mind that having constructive criticism is more helpful than just saying that everything they do is perfect as it is.
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