CPMLE and the Theatre National Standards for theatre education are both a means to the same ends—both desire to help students develop “skills of expression” and to be “critical thinkers”. A teacher cannot hope to fulfill the content standards without the use of media, because media is a part of our culture, and “functions as a way of socialization and communication”. For example, when we tell students to study a play such as Much Ado About Nothing, they not only read the play, but also watch the film. The reason behind having students watch the film is to help them in their understanding. Sometimes it is easier to see words spoken in the context of a scene played about before you, rather than to read them on a plan black and white page. Teachers have been using media within their lessons for decades knowing full well that the media is sometimes the best way to help students to understand the point or message of a lesson.
Within the Theatre National Content Standards themselves is media. Content Standard 8 states that teachers must help students achieve an “understanding of context by analyzing the role of theatre and media in the community”. The more tools teachers use to strengthen their students understanding of the world around them the better prepared students will be to face that world. The whole point behind why teachers teach theatre is to help students attain a higher level of thinking and understanding. We perform Hamlet as a class not because Shakespeare wrote it but because through this play students can achieve a greater understanding of the world that they live in. "Media Literacy Education develops informed, reflective and engaged participants essential for society." It would be a shame if theatre teachers didn’t use every tool within reach to assist in the goal of creating more enlightened students. There isn’t just one way for theatre teachers to achieve the understanding they seek their students to gain, and that is what the media is here for.
I will use CPMLE as an aid for my students in fulfilling the Theatre National Content Standards. I would like at least one aspect of every lesson or unit to incorporate media in some way, especially in my student’s performances. A fellow student gave me the idea of recording each student’s performance on a tape and letting them look over it on their own so that the student can discover new ways to improve their work. They can take notes on their performance (how they felt about their efforts) before seeing the tape and after. Then at the end of the year they can have the tape with all their performances on it and see how they have grown over the course of the year. I think this idea will help students to fully complete each content standard because they will be able to understand them better. Content standards 1-8 for kindergarden-4th grade all talk about acting or visualizing performance in one way for another. For example, content standard 1 discusses “recording improvisations based on personal experience” which fits into my idea of recording my student’s work perfectly. I know that I can help my students to fulfill the National Content Standards through CPMLE in a way that will help them on the road to becoming lovers of learning.
2 comments:
Mackenzie you brought up several good insightful points. Being an educator in today's world we need to be knowledgeable about the media our students are using such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs so we can understand the media that is influencing their lives. Meida is everywhere and has powerful influence and power. As theater teachers we need to take advantage of our student's high tech knowledge and use that for our educating advantage. The CMPLE and Theater National Standards are very similar. "The purpose of media literacy education is to help individual of all ages develop the habits of inquiry and skills of expression that they need to be critical thinkers, effective communicators and active citizens in today's world". In both theater and media we want to give our students tools to be able to express themselves freely and become crticial thinkers. The last two things the media literacy education purpose lists I find to be very important. They are effective communicators and active citizens in today's world as a theater educator it is not my desire to have all my students to become successful actors on Broadway and in film. I want them to become effective communicators and be active citizens in today's world. Building a student's self confidence and communication skills is one of the best gifts a teacher can give a student. As an education major we learn that students learn in different ways. There are auditory learners, visual learners, and hands on learners and because of this teachers need to use different teaching strategies to reach all of their students. Pairing traditional theater practices with media will crate an egaging lesson as well as be an effective tool to teach and reach more students. Going off the example you listed of doing a textual analysis of Much Ado About Nothing and then watching the film in addition is a smart choice. You are holding your students attention because of your insightful use of media and theater techniques. A student can notice right away when a teacher is trying to connect to the stuents and approach learning from a fun standpoint they can all enjoy. They respect this choice. I am a visual hands on learner myself and in school I struggled a lot with teachers that would stright lecture. When a teacher made an effort to incorporate media into the lesson plan I was extremely grateful. I was finally able to show the class and my teacher the skills and knowledge I had because I was put into an environemtn where I felt comfortable and excited to learn. Recording a student's performance is a great idea. I know in the Music Dance Theater major the professors record each students preview and performance of their pieces throughout their whole college experience so they had a reference to see their improvement. In my classroom I want my student to have frequent interactions with the media. A part of my high school education that I wish was better was having the knowledge of the well known directors, actors, what plays ro read, and different techniques. By showing media clips in my classroom of famous artists or examples of my learning objectives shown in contemporary media will make a connection of the theater objectives in practice with media. This will prepare them for further education as well as create a learning environment that is friendly to the majority of learners.
Both of you fine ladies have made good points that I agree with, but they all seem to fall under the idea that the CPMLE standards fit right in with our Theatre standards and they work well together. Makinsey, your mention of both of them striving to help students develop their expressive and critical thinking skills is something I was thinking myself, and I appreciate that you put those in there. I have found that many people do not think that students of theatre are capable of thinking critically, which has always nettled me because I know that theatre makes people think far more critically than many of the more valued core subjects such as arithmetic and science. I know that students who develop expression (and theatre sure helps with that!) are better able to critically think with those deep feelings and emotions. Besides, how can our critical thinking skills be shown without well-practiced expression?
Another thing that I found in common was CPMLE standard 2.4, which states that “MLE should be taught across the pre-K-12 curriculum. It can be integrated into nearly any subject area.” I don’t think the word “nearly” was even necessary as a safeguard; I believe that both theatre and MLE are capable of being integrated into quite literally every subject area. It is a strong belief of mine that subject areas in schools are far too separated. It is as if there is some unspoken law of segregation between every one of them, but especially between the artistic kind and the analytical kind. We, as theatre educators in the making, know that theatre and any kind of media can be used to teach any part of life better, and subject areas are simply categories of life skills and interests. By integrating these many things, we are far better able to understand the way the world works. Theatre and all other forms of media are forms of incredible expression of what it means to be human. If theatre is simply the study of being human and forms of media are manifestations of the way people feel about being human, would it not make sense to have our expressions and feeling of humanity instilled into everything we do in life? I think this is one of the main reasons students get that dead look in their eyes when they go to straight lectures or textbook-oriented classes; they are not feeling and expressing what they feel about life through what they are doing, but they easily can through theatre practices or through media.
CPMLE standard 3.4 also rang true to me as an example of how similar the CPMLE standards are to the theatre ones. It states: “MLE builds skills that encourage healthy lifestyles and decision making; it is not about inoculating people against presumed or actual harmful media effects.” I think that too many people believe that teachers who have their students critically think about and study different lifestyles and choices are trying to either save students from their drab, sheltered lives or saving them from things that are far too deep for them to understand. We teach what we do how we do so that the students can make decisions for themselves and know what consequences come with those decisions so that their decisions are informed and fully theirs to make.
Cali, you mentioned the learning styles it speaks of in CPMLE 3.3 and how we theatre ed students know each student has their own style of learning but that we can address each one, and I will leave this at “I agree with you.” :P
Media and theatre education are quite similar, and I believe that to be a wonderful thing. It means we will get more arts and expression into the classrooms!
Post a Comment