Friday, July 2

Primary School Teaching Observation with Jo Boulton

Workshop #1 - The Giant

The first workshop was a 90 minute lesson with year 6s (10 year olds).

1. First, Jo asked the students to sit in one large circle. She then had each student introduce him or herself to the group by saying, "Hello, my name is..."

2. Jo then asked the students to get into pairs and work with one of the NYU students, discussing stories: favorites, sad stories, and surprising stories.

3. In the same groups (pairs of Year 6s and an NYU student), Jo projected an image of a little girl looking up at something with a surprised look on her face. She asked the groups to discuss what they saw in the image and then asked volunteers to share what we had discussed. She zoomed the image out, so we could see more and asked us again to chat in our groups and then had volunteers share. This continued until the entire image was visible: a little girl standing on a beach looking up at an enormous female giant.

4. Jo began to narrate the story whereby a giant had fallen asleep in a valley and a town crept up around her. The people used the land created by the giant for sustenance and recreation. Jo showed an image of the townspeople engaged in various activities around their mountain (which was the sleeping giant). She then asked the Year 6s to look closely at the different activities that the people were engaged in and had them recreate those activities. Jo then led a group discussion where the students were asked to describe the town as they understood it from the picture and from the still images they had created. They used three words to describe their actions.

5. Jo continued the story. The townspeople have abused the mountain and polluted the land and river. She asked the year 6s to think about how their activities might be harming the mountain and then asked them to come up with three more words to describe what they were doing in light of their new knowledge that what they had been doing was harming the mountain. Jo asked if they were the trees, how would they feel to have their branches broken?

6. Jo continued the story. As the giant was fed up with the mistreatment, she woke up one morning and decided to leave. Jo asked the students to imagine that they were the giant on the morning she woke up and had them think about what she might be thinking before she decided to leave. The students shared these thoughts with a partner. Jo then asked the students to create a thought circle whereby the students were in a circle around Jo who went into role as the sleeping giant. The students went around the circle, each taking a turn to state their thought aloud. While the students shared their thoughts, Jo slowly got up and left the space.

7. Jo then continued the story by asking open ended questions which some students volunteered to answer. Now that the giant had left, what did the townspeople think? What did some of them do?

8. From the opening image, we know that Liat was on the beach looking up at the giant. Jo tells the students she will take on the role of the giant at the beach, and now they were all the children of the town standing along with Liat watching the giant as she is about to leave. What do the children say? What do they want the giant to do? The children responded enthusiastically that they were sorry for what they had done and begged her not to go. As the children swear they will not mistreat her again, the giant decided to return.

9. Jo asked the children to create a variety of still images of activities the children will engage in after their agreement. She then did thought tracking in order to hear the thoughts of the children while they held their frozen positions.

10. Jo then went into role as a child from another town. She confronted the children about their play, and asked them about some mischief that she could get into. The children overwhelming replied that such behavior was not allowed. They made a promise to the giant and they intended to keep it.

** This lesson is based on a children's novel called Giant, written by Juliet Snape and illustrated by Charles Snape.

Workshop #2 - The Clown at the Circus

The second workshop we observed was to be a 45 minute lesson with year 1s (5 year olds).

1. Jo first had the students go around the circle and introduce themselves, saying hello to each individual child and repeating their names. Jo then explained that she was going to tell a story about a circus clown and asked the students if they would help her tell it. In order to activate and assess their prior knowledge, Jo asked the students what they knew about the circus and invited them to share their knowledge with the group.

2. Jo began the narrative. This story was about a clown. She asked volunteers to describe what a clown was (she emphasized the word ‘describe’, defined it, and clarified what she wanted the students to tell her, thus teaching the vocabulary word “to describe”). She then indicated that she would play the role of a clown that was in need of some help. She said she would go out the door and when she returned, she would be the clown.

3. In role, Jo explained that the clown had been walking down the road and she saw a big top and she wanted to go in. As she approached, the ringmaster (you all know what a ring master is, right? – volunteers responded) came running out in hysterics. The clown had the chicken pox and couldn’t go on. How could there be a circus without a clown? The ringmaster needed a replacement. The would-be-clown thought, I could do that, so she told the ringmaster that she would take the place of the sick clown. She went into the big top and went down to the ring and began her gloomy and boring act. The ringmaster hated it and told her she had to leave, and the would-be-clown was very upset. She asked the children to help her improve the act so she could be a big success.

4. Volunteers began to offer suggestions for how she could improve the act. The students raised their hands and Jo called on them one by one. Each time, she asked the student to tell her one thing she could do to improve the act. She then asked the child to get up and show her how to do it. She repeated that suggestion and then invited all the students to get up and repeat the suggestion. The suggestions included a dance, shaking her bottom, pies in the face, falling from the tight rope, chucking a pie in the air and eating it, and a crab-walk. Jo used the suggestions in a sequence and kept reviewing the sequence as new suggestions were added. She would repeat the sequence, and then she would have the students repeat the sequence. She added that the ringmaster said she needed a good name, so the students offered suggestions and she took the best one. She demonstrated a gloomy introduction of herself and the students insisted she wiggle and giggle when she said her name instead. She then had them review the sequence again and then asked for a suggestion for one final act to serve as the closing to the sequence. One student suggested she juggle and another suggested she shake her bottom again as she said, “Bye, bye.”

5. Jo resumed the narrative. The clown returned to the big top and told the ringmaster she had a new act. When she was about to show the act, she asked the NYU students to join the year 1s to perform the whole sequence. There was one final rehearsal and then the final performance. Jo concluded that the ringmaster was thrilled with the new act and the crowd loved it too.

Workshop #3 - The Baker

The third and final workshop we observed was 45 minutes and I think they were year 5’s (9 year olds).

1. Again, Jo began the workshop by having the students sit in a circle and each introduced her or himself. Given then time, she moved directly into the drama asking the students to imagine that they worked in a bake shop. She asked them what they would make and heard responses from some volunteers. She then asked the students to pair up with the NYU students and discuss a variety of options.

3. Jo then began the narrative. Mr. Baker had worked in the town for a long time. All the children knew him. They would see him at work on their way to school in the morning and they would look into the windows of his bake shop, lick their lips, and be tempted by what they saw. (She asked the students what they would be tempted by and some volunteers responded). Every afternoon, Mr. Baker would come out to meet them on their way home and give them treats. One day, the students approached the bake shop, and just as they started to lick their lips, the noticed that something was wrong. Mr. Baker was gone. There were no treats in the windows and no Mr. Baker to great them. Jo asked what might have happened and took responses from volunteers. She then said that the children were worried and asked what they might be worried about?

4. Jo explained that she would go into role as Mr. Baker and the children would be the children, and they were going to find out what had happened. It seems Mr. Baker hurt himself and cannot bake. He asked the children what he should do and they offered to help him in the shop. Mr. Baker was worried and asked the children what they needed to be careful of in the shop and took some answers from volunteers. He then led the children into the kitchen and asked volunteers to tell him what they saw.

5. Jo had the students work in groups to improvise that they were making something special that would be sold in the bake shop. She identified different areas of the space (the refrigerators, the sink, etc) and then allowed about ten minutes for the students to work with the NYU students in the kitchen.

6. Jo stopped the action to continue the narrative. A letter had arrived. The queen wanted a special cake to be made for the king’s birthday. She asked that every student bring a special ingredient to include in the cake. The students briefly discussed with the NYU students what they could add to the cake and then we all circled around a big imaginary pot and the students each took a turn to tell us what their ingredient was and put it into the pot.

7. When the cake was done, Jo asked volunteers for advice on how to decorate the cake. She then asked the students to show her how they should greet the king. She continued the narrative, whereby the students were to get dressed up to attend the party and deliver the cake. The students delivered the cake and discovered that the king was in terrible pain due to a toothache. Students volunteered information about what the king should do to resolve the ache (brush his teeth, floss, go to the dentist for a cleaning, etc).

THE LATE MIDDLE CLASSES (The Donmar Warehouse)

I always look forward to work at the Donmar, as it has a history of being cutting edge and provocative, and while The Late Middle Classes was no different, it did not agree with my sensibilities. One of the other tutors described it as the most British play on our list, due in part to the inability of the men to articulate their feelings or have important conversations without being pushed to the limit. While I could appreciate that this is likely true, the underlying subject matter was troubling and there are a great dealt of ways that this aspect of British life could be depicted without treading the muddy depths that are visited in this piece.

From a theatre history standpoint, there were clear allusions to Edward Albee's Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf and Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The mother character, Celia would pretend to faint or die just to rouse concern from her young son, Holly, whom she would then implore to tell her how much he loved her--make-pretend behavior reminiscent of the relationship between Martha and George in the former. From the latter, we find subject matter that absolutely will not be discussed within a family. Though Celia insists on pushing her husband, Charles, to speak to their son about masturbation and an affair he had with a mutual friend (Charles, not Holly), Charles flat out refuses to have these conversations until he has been pushed to the edge; their marriage apparently a sham, in the vein of Maggie and Brick.

What troubled me most was the insistence upon alluding to the molestation of a child, refusing to name it so or have any clarity as to the nature of the relationship between the boy and his piano teacher (although police have forced him to flee another city at some point previous to the action of the play). Much of the action is a flashback, and in the modern day scenes which open and close the play, the boy (now a middle aged man) comes to visit this potential-pedophile as though he were a long-lost lover--as if Simon Gray wants the audience to see molestation from the perspective of the child, and if he or she survives it and doesn't seem any worse-the-ware, than it must not be so bad. Provocative? Sure. Shockingly offensive to any victim of molestation or advocate for the rights of children? You better believe it.