I often get asked, “Why do you want to be a theatre teacher?  Why not something more practical for kids, like science or math?”  This kind of question is a typical yet exasperating one, as we all know that theatre arts are just as important to the education and development of a child and teenager as science, math, and history.  The theatre has a unique way of incorporating all of these other disciplines and supplying a creative outlet for students to explore them. 

As teachers, we have a profound responsibility to provide our students with the skills they need to succeed in their journey of self-discovery and in their interpersonal relationships.  The world of art and theatre is an ideal place for that to occur.  The very nature of what theatre is, getting into the mind of a character, allows us to teach students how to listen, respond, make decisions, and discover things about themselves.

It is important that the students I work alongside have an understanding of their community and their world.  They must not be passive observers; we must all engage with those around us and find ways to better one another’s lives.  In my classroom it is essential to provide a time and place for teens and youth to ask questions and have discussions- to talk about their lives and put what they are learning into the context of their personal world.  Social-issue based theatre work is what I have been involved with since I began teaching.  Using theatre to provide youth with the knowledge of how to enrich their day to day living is vital.  On many days in the classroom we would talk about important decisions the kids were making, or seeing others making.  Those discussions would then feed into the creative process of devising scenes and plays.  In my experience creating improv scenes and plays with social and political themes, reading and analyzing established texts, talking about how it applies to the students, and then having the students use their bodies and voices to tell their story is what educational theatre is all about.  As a theatre teacher I provide the means for children and teenagers to explore their world and their feelings, to test their knowledge and notions of what they see or experience.  These young artists are immersed in an atmosphere where they can develop their own ideas and their own points of view.  Through this type of socially aware theatre study, students come to understand things around them a little better.  The youth of the world need to be socially minded- to think about how art, both performative and applied, can bridge gaps and make connections between people.  I have seen this happen in instances when my students have toured original social-issue based plays to other classrooms and have then engaged in follow-up dialogue with members of their community.

In the end, the goal of my classroom is to reach students in a way that they can begin whatever education and career path they choose and use the skills they have learned, be it intrapersonal, interpersonal, or theatrical in nature, and within their communities make life for others more enjoyable.  That is why I want to be a theatre teacher.