Even though they didn’t have to teach last Monday, most Rowan-Salisbury teachers were busy trying to turn in grades. Nine of them, however, made the time to go to a workshop at South Rowan High School.
They were glad they did.
They were educated. They were entertained. They were enriched.
They were also inspired, reminded of why they chose to be teachers in the first place.
Workshop leader Adam Coleman, Practitioner in Residence at London’s famous Globe Theater, shared a story about why he has recently embraced his role as an educator, even though acting is his first love.
Coleman told the teachers about a workshop he had conducted for blind children. At the end of the day, he said, one of the children, Emily, hugged him and said, “I had a great day, and I don’t want to go home.”
It was at this point, said Coleman, that he realized what he did as an educator affected people deeply.
“Actors don’t have that deep impact. I want to have an impact,” he said.
The nine teachers could relate.
These Rowan-Salisbury educators were eager to learn how to make an impact with their own students and, more specifically, how to enhance the experience of Shakespeare in the classroom through the use of movement. The basic idea is to avoid reducing Shakespeare to text.
Coleman gave teachers the tools and the confidence to fire students’ imaginations and to encourage self-expression.
To begin, Coleman got everyone using their imaginations. Using his voice, he helped everyone relax. Then, he had everyone experience an apple: that is, deeply experience an apple. He then put everyone imaginatively on a warm, sunny beach.
The exercises got progressively more physical.
Coleman helped participants tap into their own experience and their own instincts.
“You don’t need to teach any child how to express. It’s instinctive. That’s what we try to do as actors — get back to what’s instinctive,” Coleman said.
He paired off the teachers and had them mirror one another’s actions.
He had the teachers say “yes” and “no” to one another, a seemingly simple exercise, but one fraught with meaning when participants reflected on the importance of tone of voice.
Coleman gave an interesting example of the importance of emphasis, using the sentence, “I never stole your money.”
As Coleman said the sentence in different ways, it became clear how emphasizing different words changes the meaning entirely.
He split the group up into the Montagues and the Capulets — the families from “Romeo and Juliet” — and staged interaction between the groups. Shouts of “Down with the Capulets” and “You ratcatcher!” filled the auditorium.
Participants got to ham it up with a death scene.
Saying, “O happy dagger; here rust and let me die,” teachers crumpled to the floor in mock agony.
The teachers walked away with ideas for how to engage a classroom of kids who might be reluctant to approach a Shakespeare text.
“When kids have fun like this, they forget they’re learning,” said Kella Randolph, a South Rowan English teacher.
Amy Brooks, also a South Rowan English teacher, said that the building of group spirit that the workshop inspired in the teachers would help students get more involved.
“I can see them connecting with this,” she said.
Bob Moyer, a teacher at North Carolina School of the Arts and curator of the “Shakespeare Lives!” program, was also on hand.
“Shakespeare is meant to be done, not read,” he said. “Programs like this give teachers freedom and empower them.”
“The idea of the ‘Shakespeare Lives!’ program is to change the teaching of Shakespeare in the classroom. We are changing the way people think about teaching and changing the way people teach.”
Coleman’s visit was hosted by South Rowan teacher Gerrie Blackwelder, who is on the Globe’s educational advisory board. Blackwelder and Coleman recently participated in a Globe Education workshop in New York City.
The workshop at South Rowan was part of the continuing curricular support offered by the “Shakespeare Lives!” program, which is a collaboration among the International Shakespeare Globe Center in London, the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Kenan Institute for the Arts.
Blackwelder expressed appreciation to the Robertson Foundation, which has subsidized the involvement of the Rowan County teachers in “Shakespeare Lives!” for the past three years.
This summer, six North Carolina teachers who have previously participated in the program will return to England for another two-week stint.
Blackwelder has been selected to be one of the six program participants.
“They’ll come back capable to do workshops . . . they will be teachers teaching teachers,” Moyer said.
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