Drama Kids Reflection
Ray Smart Performance Evaluation
The week before I began my junior year of college, I received an email from a professor recommending me for a job with Drama Kids International. This was not a program I had ever heard of before, but it sounded fun, and I can easily say that it has changed my life. I started in the Fall of 2021 as an after-school theatre teacher for elementary and middle school students in Mankato and the surrounding areas. My classes are typically an hour long with eight and twelve students, though class sizes can vary dramatically from four to nineteen. Since I began, I have served a large variety of students, having been a lead teacher for at least one semester apiece at eight different schools and substituting at nearly every other school we serve. Each week, I deliver lesson plans complete with games, physical and vocal exercises, skits, improvisational opportunities (which are always kids’ favorite), snippets, and short scenes, and all classes and camps culminate in a showcase where many of these students get to perform for their very first audience. Becoming a teacher with Drama Kids has been so rewarding. It empowers me greatly in all aspects of my life, especially my confidence in working with children and my leadership abilities.
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Of course, this job does not come without its challenges, the largest being classroom management. There are a few reasons why this has been such a challenge. First, I am a young teacher with no formal training in education or classroom management. The students themselves are theatre kids- notoriously rowdy and frequently unfocused, and it only becomes more pronounced when you get many in the same room together following a long day of school. Additionally, the spaces we teach in are often multi-use spaces with numerous distractions and aren’t always well equipped for the space and sound needs of our class, so it gets extra challenging. These are not unique challenges to me- every teacher experiences this. I am lucky enough to usually have relatively small class sizes and an assistant teacher who can focus more on keeping specific individuals focused. Before I started with Drama Kids, I had usually only been a leader amidst my peers in activities and classes. My leadership style heavily leans on mutual respect and the needs of the individuals as opposed to something more dictatorial. I was worried that working with younger people would make it more challenging to stick to this style, but I’d say that it has adapted very well to suit the needs of my younger students. I need to be more stern as they are still developing critical social skills like respect, and many students are constantly pushing boundaries. While everyone learns these things at their own pace, a certain standard must be upheld in my classroom, and most students catch on very quickly. Student discipline is incredibly difficult, and the strike system is often ineffective. When there do happen to be students continuously acting out, even after conversations about the Drama Kids rules and boundaries with the student, I can reach out to their parents regarding what sorts of tools work for regulating their student specifically. Most parents are incredibly receptive to this, but occasionally there are situations where parents become understandable defensive of their children and their actions and removes their child from the class. This is of course not the ideal course of action as Drama Kids works many of key skills like teamwork, creativity, respect in a fun and engaging way outside of the traditional classroom, and these are often the skills those particular students need to develop most. My boss, Ray Smart, is a huge resource to me in these situations, as he has a master’s degree in education and is always willing to help. He has put a lot of faith in me in this position, giving me the freedom to adjust lessons as I see fit.
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The other major challenge I face in this position is the lessons. Drama Kids International provides all my lessons with games, scripts, and exercises for the students, as well as tips for the teacher on how to deliver them. These lessons structure the time of the class very well from week to week and cover a variety of topics, as well as do half of my work as a teacher for me. However, these lessons can often feel very sterile or excessively convoluted, and simply don’t fit the needs of my students. I can usually simplify the complicated lessons by skipping a few pieces of the extra complicated activities and adding in an extra game, or if I have done a different activity in my educational experience that accomplishes the same goal, I’ll substitute it. This aligns well with my Gallup StrengthsFinder results of Activator, Strategic, and Command, as well as my HighFive strength of Problem Solver. I find that doing this makes the students understand and engage in it much more, and I enjoy teaching it more when I add my personal flair. These lessons also don’t account for the level of focus I can get from my students in the hour I get to see them each week. Some of my go-to solutions for lack of focus are breathing and speech exercises and jumping jack competitions. These lessons, even with their flaws, have taught me a lot about lesson planning and structure that I’m certain I’ll be able to apply to my work with students in the future.
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Theatre can be a critical tool for social and emotional development. These classes were never something I had available to me as a child, and it’s so rewarding to see the growth these students experience in confidence, volume, and physicality. Becoming a teacher with Drama Kids changed my life because it has made me more patient and assertive, more confident in my ability to maintain the attention of youths, more efficient and articulate in my communication, and also helped me grow so much as a performer. These students, their creativity, and their impulsivity have taught me more about improvisation than any theatre professor ever has, and I carry that confidence with me in all aspects of my life.