me arts ed

My Opportunity to Teach a Drama Class

English teacher and soon to be Theater teacher, Jason Bannister

I teach English/Language Arts, grades 7 and 8 at Troy Howard Middle School in Belfast (RSU 20). I am the drama club advisor as well. As a former actor with a B.A. in theater (and a Masters in Education) I have always looked for ways to teach through the arts. After taking a class last summer on The Performance Cycle (at USM with John Holdridge), I found many opportunities to incorporate drama into my English classes. We created tableaus out of scenes from books, memorized and performed Shakespearean speeches, and recited poetry. I was teaching them through the lens of drama, my first love; but something was still missing.

There were many students who didn’t like the drama focus in English class. They didn’t see the connection which made it difficult for me to be enthusiastic. I was trying to not take their dislike for what we were
doing personally. I felt that there was something missing. I was forcing the drama element onto my English classes every day. What would be great, I told my principal two years ago, would be to teach a drama class; to teach to the arts, not just through it.

I had done my homework and found that there are performing arts standards in the Maine GLE’s, coupled with the visual arts standards. I also gathered the staggeringly large amounts of research to support arts education. With this data in hand I developed a plan to teach a drama class at THMS, in addition to my ELA classes.

My principal and I worked out the schedule so I could teach one drama class each trimester, and students could choose to take it instead of music or art (which they would take another time). I now had my boss’s
support. But it would come down to whether or not enough students wanted to take the class. When we polled the students and had them sign up, we were surprised to find that nearly 70 students (out of roughly 275) were interested! That would be enough to have one class of 20-25 each trimester. SUCCESS!

So now I am spending the summer not only preparing for my English classes for next year, but also creating units of study for my new drama class. I am interested in chatting with other teachers who are teaching drama at the middle school as a class. I hope to blog about the first year of teaching this class. It will be
quite a journey.

Thank you to Jason Bannister for submitting this blog post. Best of luck in your journey Jason! I look forward to reading Jason’s blog and will post the link for everyone as soon as I have it!