1. How to Begin with Teacher in Role
- Why use teacher in role?
Many teachers consider TiR as a difficult activity. However, that when a teacher takes a role, he becomes 'attractive' to children, so there are fewer control problems because they are involved. Many times we witness teachers trained with children's classes struggling to get attention when giving instructions in traditional teacher mode. However, once they begin to play a role, they get that attention more effectively.
All of this introduces a series of interesting problems that children begin to experience and understand about their relationships with parents and about their relationships with the opposite sex. Even if the main purpose of this work is not the study of Shakespeare's play, that role can be used to open up areas that are very important for personal and social education that can be identified by children. That will motivate them and produce a very strong involvement with Hermia and then, if you introduce them, Egeus, and Demetrius and Lysander, rivals for his love. (See complete drama settings in Part Two of this book.)
- Teacher as storyteller
The teacher as a storyteller is something all primary school teachers will recog-
nise. Good teachers slip easily into it and use it frequently.
The teacher's role is to communicate the text in a way of life and interesting, hold their attention and involve their imagination. In making an assessment of the quality of this teaching method, critical questions will be around whether the content of the story attracts class interest and attracts their attention, whether the delivery of the teacher, namely: voicing, intonation and interpretation skills, both and, if relevant, whether the accompanying illustrations have impact and resonance. For many students, the time spent listening to their teacher as storyteller will remain an important moment in their education. The relationship between the teacher as storyteller and the teacher uses drama, lies in the fact that they both use the generation of imagined reality to teach.
- Preparation for the role
In preparing to be this kind of storyteller the teacher must have made particular decisions about this child.
Begin by asking the class out of role what they want to ask the child and the order of those questions. This not only provides the teacher with some security in knowing what is going to be asked, at least initially, but also allows some minutes to refine the planning, so that the teacher can be specific in answering their questions. The questions will, to a certain extent, be predictable because
they are largely generated by the circumstances of the drama so far and the role
the class has taken, which will be that of anxious parents.
- Teaching from within
We are describing using role as ‘teaching from within’ because the teacher enters the drama world, but it is very important to step out of the fiction often and not let it run away with itself. When using TiR, the teacher is operating as a manager as well as participant and must spend as much time stopping the drama and moving out of role (OoR) to reflect on what is happening and give the pupils a chance to think through what they know and what they want to do. This OoR working is as important as the role itself. It manages the role and therefore the drama; it manages the risk, establishes where the class is and helps pupils believe in the drama. It provides time and space for the teacher to assess and reassess the learning possibilities.
The requirements of working in role
The teacher, working in this way, is an important stimulus for the learning. It is not necessary to use role throughout the piece of work. It can be used judiciously to focus work at strategic points or to challenge particular aspects of the children’s perceptions whilst other techniques and conventions are used to support the work and develop it.
In order to make the TiR most effective, we need to look at educational drama from the point of view of the ‘audience’, an audience who in this instance are participants at the same time.
Disturbing the class productively
The teacher’s function is to provide challenge and stimulus, to give problems and issues for the class to have to deal with. The drama is developed through a set of activities that build the class role, which is usually a corporate role.
We have to help them into the drama, making them comfortable, and then disturb that comfort productively. The fact that, as in any good play, the class discover things as they go along provides the possibility of productive tension.
The teacher–taught relationship
If the class decide as a group they do not want to learn and they wish to make your attempts to teach them impracticable, they can do it. The power in the classroom lies with the class. Of course, it does not look like this when the class are responding and contracting into the tasks set by the teacher but should some or all decide not to, the cohesion can be broken. In drama this power relationship is made overt. We must start from the point of view that if the class do not want the drama to work then it will not.
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