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Health & Fitness

The Power of Drama in Education

We can easily see drama as a dispensable add-on in schools, an extra-curricular that's fun but not especially educational in this time of budget cuts and standardized tests. But Rob Schroeder, a drama teacher in Chicago, tells about a great moment that shows how it help students grow.
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I'm an English and drama teacher in the city of Chicago. While teaching at a neighborhood school on the Northwest Side, I won a grant to produce a student-written theater piece. I'll never forget when one drama student, George, a big, laconic, easy-going senior with special-education needs performed for the first time in any show ever. He gave a monologue that another student wrote about coming out. He was straight, but he auditioned for this monologue and was really good at it.

So it's the night of the show, right, and he went out on stage. Alone. Scared out of his mind. But he did it. He forgot a couple of his lines, but he did it. He stood there with the lights on his face and the audience in front of him and he performed.

He came backstage with a huge smile on his face; I'm trying to get students in their places, setting props, getting the next scene set, and he stops me in the middle of it all and says, "I did it Mr. Schroeder!" This kid. And what did he do? He read (which was very difficult for him, by the way). He memorized. he made inferences. He interpreted the text based on those inferences. He made meaning. He learned something new about someone else. he made an emotional connection to someone else's story. That's what he did.

To him it might have meant just that he got through it all in one piece without throwing up. But there's value in that, too! I wonder how many times he sat through tests or reading passages or math problems and just couldn't figure it out. Who knows how many times he was told he couldn't. But this time he did. And he knew it. He knew right away what his accomplishment was. So much so that he had to tell someone! By doing this, he knew what success felt like. And it felt good. And his parents were in the audience and people were applauding. Everybody saw it. Everyone saw George succeed.

You can't get that from a multiple choice test.

Augusto Boal, founder of the Theater of the Oppressed movement and pioneer of using theater as an educational tool said, "Theater is a form of knowledge." Indeed, there is no end to the research over the years showing gains in vocabulary development, fluency, comprehension, inference skills, sequencing, English acquisition and retention when students engage in drama in the classroom. This is across the board for all subjects, all types of learners, and all socio-economic populations.

Boal also said, "Theater should and can be a means of transforming society." That sounds pretty lofty, but research also shows that students who engage in drama show improvement in self-confidence and acceptance, trust, social awareness, and tolerance.

None of this is news. It's easy to Google any research about the effects of drama in the classroom. And really, anyone who has ever done reader's theater or role-play in a classroom, or knows a student who performed in a school play, already knows these things without the research to prove it.

But it's not because of the research, even though it's pretty conclusive, that teachers should use theater in classrooms. It's for the George moments. And the more George moments we have, the more we can, as Augusto Boal said, "Build our future, rather than just wait for it."

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