Lessons Learned Behind the Curtain

Lessons Learned Behind the Curtain

By Jill Jenkins

            From all of my years directing plays, I learned some lessons that could apply to school administration and leadership because in both stage productions and schools, a group of people with different talents all work together on one creation. If everyone does not work together, expect disasters.  It is from our mistakes, that we learn the art. Regardless, the show must go on. There are three major lessons that apply to both the stage and the school.  First, delegate authority to others, but be careful what you delegate and to whom you delegate it.  Second, work as a team, because one never knows when the worst will happen.  Third, pay attention to the smallest details.  In both venues the play must go on despite whatever complications arise. 

            In both schools and theater, the principal and the director cannot accomplish everything alone.  Both jobs are massive so some jobs must be delegated.  I recall a production of The Wizard of Oz where I delegated the wrong job to the wrong person.  The play required flash pots for the entrance of the Wicked Witch strategically placed in front of a paper mache tree.  Since the actors were my responsibility I had practiced with them for two months.  Everything was going perfectly.  The sound and light crew were the responsibility of a shop teacher who worked in a different building.  His idea of training his staff was to hand them the keys to the auditorium.  They practiced with us for one week.  During that time, I discovered that the young man who was to raise and lower the curtain was a student with special needs.  In those days, there was no electronic button to raise the curtain. The curtain had to be raised and lowered manually with  pulleys. Since this particular student had difficulty with A.D.H.D., he often lost his concentration and wandered away from his job.  He would frequently stop in the middle of raising and lowering the curtain and run off chasing others through the catwalks endangering himself and other students. Since he wasn't my student, I couldn’t just replace him because he was the responsibility of the shop teacher. I didn’t want to fire him because I was worried about his self-esteem, but he couldn’t make a single cue. To solve the problem, I decided that during the play, I would climb into the catwalks with this young man and supervise him so that he wouldn’t lose his concentration.  I delegated the job of filling the flash pot to another stage crew member. Maybe I should have given that responsibility to my stage manager and only give her the amount of powder needed instead of the entire container.  We rehearsed exactly how much power to put into the pot during the scene change and he handled it flawlessly.  The leader of the sound and light crew was going to be working the lights, and he and I were going to be wearing a headset and so was the student stage manager.  I felt everything would work perfectly because the three main players were connected; we had communication with both the light booth and stage. I was wrong. When the time for the flash happened, I checked with the stage manager and the student in the light booth asking them to verify with the young man  that he had put the proper amount of flash in the flash pot, but instead of just checking, they each went to the stage and dumped more explosive material into the flash pot.  When the scene began, the Wicked Witch made her entrance, not with the expected flash, but with something like the blast of an atomic bomb that shook the stage, filled the auditorium with smoke and started the paper tree ablaze.  The Cowardly Lion bravely ran over and put out the flames with his paws, and Dorothy’s eye lashes were singed.  I couldn’t see across the stage because of the smoke. The audience coughed for ten minutes. I climbed higher into the catwalks to verify that the other curtains were not ablaze. They weren't.   I should have chosen to handle the flash pot myself and assigned a student to monitor the incompetent curtain puller. As a principal, if you have a job that could create an explosion, monitor that one yourself and assign a department chair to care for the incompetent teachers.  A principal can’t be everywhere at once, so choose what you delegate carefully. 

            Working as a team is another important lesson from the stage.  On opening night of You Can’t Take It With You the backstage was all rumbling with activities: checking the lights and the sound system, making sure all the props were carefully set out on the stage or on the prop table, greeting the guests, making sure the programs were in place, monitoring the ticket takers and ticket sales and putting on the make-up and costumes of the cast members.  I was running in a hundred directions at once.  Five minutes before we opened, my stage manager approached me looking gloomy.  There was a problem.  The student playing Reba was dressed in her costume and her make-up was complete, but she had been in the bathroom throwing up for thirty minutes. The cast hadn’t told me hoping she would magically recover. She didn’t.  I had to think fast.  Our stage manager had sat through every  rehearsal.  She knew the play and was just about the right size.  I directed her to put on Reba’s costume.  I would feed her the lines and stuff her on stage for each of Reba’s entrances.  The show must go on.  Then, I got on a microphone and asked the parents of the original Reba to come to the back of the stage.  They were mortified when they heard that their daughter was ill, but quietly took her home while we went on with the show. 
      At a school where I used to teach, one of my colleagues had a heart attack during our opening meetings.  The other math teachers took over, setting up his room, writing lesson plans for his substitute and even arranged his substitute so he could concentrate on getting better.  When my husband had a heart attack, my department had collaborated so well, that I was able to call Karen, one of my colleagues, and she took over writing my lesson plans and arranging my substitute.  The truth is on the stage or in the school, the show must go on, so it is important that when something goes wrong (and it will) the school can pick up the pieces and move on.

                        Paying attention to the smallest detail can save you whether you’re directing a play or running a school.  The first play I directed at West High School was Fiddler on the Roof. I didn’t have a background in musical theater, but it was a collaborative effort with the orchestra teacher, the choir teacher, the art teacher, the sewing teacher, the dance teacher and the drama teacher (me).  Everyone worked well together except the dance teacher who refused to participate.  Still, it wasn’t a huge problem because all those years my mother had sent me to dance lessons hoping she would make me less clumsy finally paid off.  The small detail that we had overlooked had to do with wireless microphones.  The school had purchased four of them and no one had any experience with them.  We knew that with only four microphones the students with major roles had to share them.  The woods teacher who taught in a different building was still in charge of the sound and light crew did not give us access to them until opening night. We were not allowed to rehearse with them.  Opening night, the shop teacher arrived and set up the receivers and handed me the microphones.  They had a small clip on microphone wired to box containing batteries.  The cast was in their costumes, so we hooked the microphone to their necklines and ran the batteries down their costumes sticking the battery box into their loose-fitting pants or skirts.  It looked great and the stage manager and I helped them exchange them when they came off stage. The first problem occurred when a doctor in the audience received a page. He was on the same frequency as the microphones and his page was broadcast across the auditorium.   The next problem occurred during the student paying Perchik began to perform his solo.  When he reached a particularly high note, the battery box slipped down his leg.  He grabbed for it, but to the audience, it looked like he was grabbing his. . . (well, you know). The audience roared with laughter. There was no way to communicate to him and if we had he would have been mortified.  This is a detail we should have worked out earlier.  After that, we built little pockets inside of costumes to hold the battery packs.

                         If you are a principal and you are trying a new activity, talk about everything that could go wrong.  For example in my last school, we decided to try a program where students could spend 20 minutes twice a week either catching up on lessons, or going to an enrichment activity.  The first day, the administration told the students to pick any activity they wished.  I was teaching an improvisation theater class. I probably had 50 students in a class designed for 35.  Next door was a ukulele class with 10 students.  About 200 students decided to leave campus and visit the local mini-market for a coke.  It was pandemonium.   Make sure to think of all of the details and brainstorm methods to solve potential problems before trying the activity.

                        Over my years of teaching there have been many disasters that principals’ have had to deal with.  One year, a cluster student took all of his clothing off and held up in the boys’ rest room.  The principal and one of the counselors had to persuade him to put his clothing on and leave the rest room without alarming the other students.  Another time I recall a young man who wanted to destroy another student during a lunch break.  While the principal and the vice principal distracted the angry, young man, I slipped from the teacher’s workroom and removed the subject of his hostility.  With no one to fight, the angry young man attacked the vice principal, but with the principal and the vice principal working together they were able to move him into an office before the other students left the cafeteria.  In another incident, a young lady entered my classroom during a pep-rally so intoxicated that I was afraid to get her down the three flights of steps alone, so I called the vice principal and we got on both sides of her and navigated her down to safety.  Schools and theaters are a lot alike.  There is no telling what is going to happen, but if administrators and teachers work together, something magical happens.

Breaking New Ground

Breaking New Ground

By Jill Jenkins

                The new Common Core Curriculum is designed to make each student college or career ready, but why are so few students from lower social-economic groups whether they live in an inner city or a rural environments choosing to go to college and completing a four year program?  Is it because of  academic deficiencies or is the problem more complex?  To most of us choosing to pursue a college education is easy, but for the student whose family has never experienced a college education, it is much more complicated.  Students in lower social economic groups have a bigger fish to fry than just being academically prepared.  Why is pursuing a college education so difficult for them?  First, human beings are herding animals living in families first and communities.  Students who venture beyond their families’ experience are like explorers in a world.  It is both exciting and terrifying because they feel they are leaving the world of their parents and friends to explore an alien world.  Second, they do not share the same values and culture of most of the people in college so they become “a stranger in a strange land.”  Third, if they are not only social-economically deprived, but also of a different ethnic minority, they will look and speak differently from most of the natives of this new land and that can alienate them even further.  The journey into this strange world could lift them and their decedents to new heights.   This is journey worth taking.

                Most of us belong first to a family who in essence is our tribe.  From our family we learn our values, our expectations and goals. If the parents of children have had a negative experience in school or have no experience with school, they may be reluctant to instill a desire to continue down that road for their children.  In many lower-social economic groups, children are expected to graduate from high school get a job, get married and produce children.  That was the pathway my parents mapped out for me.  Four of their five children chose to take that path. I choose to go to college.  My father scoffed at the idea saying I’d be pregnant before I finished.  College is only for men, not women.  My mother seemed disappointed that she wanted more grandchildren and she felt that it would change me and I would not fit into the family. She also expressed to me that she didn’t think I was smart enough to succeed and she worried that failure would be devastating.  She was right about educations changing me. It did.  I remember visiting them some years later and realizing that I felt like Buddy in Eugenia Collier’s story, “Sweet Potato Pie.”  I could appreciate “the potato pie,” but I didn’t really feel like a member of that community.  A friend once told me that a person can’t live successfully in two worlds and he was right.  Eventually I lost my membership in my original tribe which is a difficult loss. My mother was wrong about being smart enough to succeed.  I really resented her lack of confidence in my ability, but later when I was a parent I understood her fear.  She wanted to protect me from failure, but no one can protect a child from everything.  To succeed means taking risks.  When my own daughter moved to New York to pursue her Master’s Degree in journalism and later her career in journalism, I felt that fear, but I realized it is  a fear any mother has in watching her child grow up and soar away.  I had to let her go to achieve her dreams.  My mother had to let me go too.

                It is a difficult transition when the student from a lower social economic group goes to college.  The first year is going to be lonely which is why so many choose to end their academic career there.  These students don’t share the same values and culture of many of the students from higher social economic groups and don’t have the resources to join many of the social activities.  One of the reasons that I sent my daughter to private and parochial schools was that by interacting with friends whose families expected their children to continue their education and have high goals, she had a better chance of developing their values and expectation during her post-high school education.  Thus, she would have an easier transition than I did.   As another one of my friends once said, “If you want to help these kids get out of the ghetto, you need to take them out of the ghetto, so they know that there is another world out there.”  As a single mother earning a teaching salary, I wanted my daughter to see how the other world lived.

                Ethnic minority students from lower social economic groups have even a larger hurdle to overcome.  I never really thought about how difficult their transition was until I was teaching in an inner-city school. The school was made up of about 70% ethnic minorities and 30% Caucasian, but the honors classes and the extra-curriculum activities were about 90% Caucasian and Asian and about 10% Hispanic and Blacks. As a school, we decided to make an effort to individually invite students from these non-represented groups to join activities.  I was the drama teacher and because of the personal invitation I improved the percentage of non-white students in the plays.  As a result, the NAACP invited me to a meeting to help with an activity they were presenting at the Arts Festival.  Even though I knew many members at the meeting, being the only Caucasian person there was a little uncomfortable.  I was angry with myself for feeling uncomfortable, but it made me realize that if a liberal minded adult felt uncomfortable, how does an adolescent with poor self-images feel being the only Black of Hispanic student auditioning for a part in a play?  To solve this problem I began inviting students in pairs to audition for the play.  Everyone feels better with a friend there.  What I learned from this experience is many of these students were working to help their families financially or caring for children while both their parents worked two jobs or in the case of single-parent families they were both working and helping care for younger siblings.   To help them participate in extra-curricular activities I changed the rehearsal schedule to meet more of their needs.  In another school where I taught, the school had a similar problem.  The school had a disproportional number of Caucasian and Asian students enrolled in honors classes, but few minority students enrolled in them even though the school was comprised of more than 90% ethnic minorities. To remedy this situation, the school identified students from these non-represented populations who were bright, but not pursuing honors and A.P. classes and gave them a study skills class which later became an A.V.I.D. class to support them.   As the teacher, I needed to supply all of the emotional support and study skills techniques to help them become successful.  All of these efforts were successful.

                As teachers we need to recognize the problems students face who are the first person in their family to attend college.  My salvation was good teachers and counselors in my high school.  My debate teacher, Ellen Wixom, taught me how to organize an argument and the debate program gave me confidence that I could be successful.  Gary Walton’s drama classes and his ability to give me clear, positive feedback reinforced that confidence.  Maurine Haltiner’s A.P. English class forced me to read more difficult pieces of literature and analyze them.  Mr. Dee Anderson, my school counselor, helped me complete financial aid forms and college applications.  When I got to college, Mr. Jay W. Lees, my mentor and favorite college professor, told me his life story about how he grew up in my old neighborhood and became friends with my uncle.  He took me under his wing and even let me share dinner with his wonderful family.  Educators were my salvation.

                Leading a student from the safety of their childhood home to pursue the higher expectations of academia is not only the job of dedicated educator, but that educator may be the only person in that student’s life who can lead him.  His parents may come from a foreign country and are still learning the language; his parents may have had a negative experience in education and do not support it; his parents may be high school drop outs who work two minimum wage jobs to put food on the table; or his parents may not feel a good education is a valuable commodity.   These are not the parents who will attend a meeting about how to prepare their child for college.  The educators must provide information about the application process, the financial aid process, a quality education, and serve as the child’s personal cheerleader as he travels this new roadway.  Dedicated educators are the ones who can help a child make that transition into a successful academic career.  Breaking new ground is never easy, but the benefits outweigh the sacrifices.

  

Curiosity Killed the Cat but Not the Student

Curiosity Killed the Cat but Not the Student

By Jill Jenkins

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

            If Merlin is right, why are so many high school students draped across their desks sleeping?  Why are so many elementary school students staring blankly at their teacher when they should be listening? Why are so many middle school students flipping spit wads and sailing paper airplanes across the class?  They are not curious.  How does a teacher spark that curiosity in minds that are so bombarded with action-packed movies, electronic games, and text messages?   

            According to the article, “How Curiosity Changes Our Brains” by Emma Saville that appeared in The Washington Post on October 3, 2014, when we are curious about a subject our retention increases because there is “increased activity in the hippocampus, the region of the brain associated with memory.”   In another scholarly paper, “ Stimulating Curiosity To Enhance Learning” by Graham Pluck and Helen Johnson, “Curiosity is an aspect of intrinsic motivation that has great potential to enhance student learning. “   Their study discusses the findings of Thomas Friedman, Jean Piaget, and Lev Vygotsky.  In Thomas Friedman’s book The World Is Flat, he postulates the theory that “curiosity combined with motivation is more important than intelligence.” Jean Piaget’s theory involves the importance curiosity plays in the development of cognitive skills in children.  Lev Vygotsky stressed the importance of adults of encouraging exploration to increase children’s cognitive development.  As an educator what does this mean?

            Children have to be actively engaged in their own learning.  The teacher becomes the facilitator the sets up the projects and encourages the child to explore either alone or in groups to solve problems. In the article “ Stimulating Curiosity To Enhance Learning” by Graham Pluck and Helen Johnson, project based learning is highly recommended even in courses like learning a foreign language where rote memorization used to be the norm. This brought back memories of my  experiences learning Spanish in two different Spanish classes taught by the same teacher.  In sixth grade, our school decided to participate in a televised Spanish class.  In the 1960’s this was state of the art educational technology.  Each day we watched a Spanish teacher sitting in a chair saying “Eschucha” and she repeated a word in Spanish and “repite”.  We listened to the word and repeated it like parrots.  Bored out of our minds, one day three of my dear friends and I unplugged the wires in the back of the television and plugged them into the wrong places knowing our sixth grade teacher would never decipher our ploy.  It saved us from one day of the doldrums.  In high school, I had the same Spanish teacher from my television nightmares, but in person she was a vibrant, interesting teacher who used an interesting technique.  We were put in groups of four and had to create a play in Spanish involving a marketplace.  We were given one class period to write and produce our masterpiece and presented it the next class period.  We were engaged and motivated to learn vocabulary that would make our presentation fascinating and brought both costumes and props.

            Before beginning a project, the teacher needs to “chum the hole,” by offering bizarre and even grotesque facts that might entice the students to want to know more.  For example, when I teach Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, I offer students a list of project ideas that they can use to create their term project.  One of the term projects is to research clothing worn during Medieval or Elizabethan periods of Europe and explain how the clothing reflected the beliefs or culture of the time.  “To chum the hole”, I enlighten them with a few tidbits of knowledge that I learned from Utah Shakespearean Theater’s Late Director, Fred Ash. For example, every article of clothing ever worn by a woman with the exception of the bra was first worn by men: mini-skirts, high heeled shoes, pantyhose and girdles.  In fact Henry VIII had a rosebud built in his codpiece to give his manly parts the sweet smell of roses. In those days, men were judged not by how buff they were, but by the curve of their calves.  As a result, younger men with better legs wore short skirts, tights and high heels.  Women during that time period wanted to look like the Virgin Mary, but they had no knowledge of what she looked like except that she was pregnant.  As a result, they wore dresses that were longer in the front than in the back and gathered under the bosom and for a final touch, they would eat a small amount of lye before leaving the house which made them regurgitate giving them the appearance of morning sickness.  Because high foreheads were all the rage, they plucked their hairlines back.  Another tidbit of information is the sewage of London ran directly into the Thames River which was also their drinking water.  To make the water taste better, they would put a great deal of sugar in their water or drink alcohol: beer or wine.  As a result, their teeth often turned black and since they had no toothpaste to whiten their smile, they often rinsed their mouths with urine. Imported Portuguese urine was considered the best.  That was usually enough to get them going. The same concept can be applied to other disciplines.  Science teachers can chum the hole by demonstrating how explosive hydrogen is with an in-class experiment.  History teachers can relate a bizarre story from the past.  Geography teachers might have students use colored chalk to experience Holi, the festival of colors, to introduce events in India.
       Other options for projects include: first, to research and write a speech using a visual aide either a poster or a Power Point Presentation on weapons used during the time; second,  research and create a speech, a paper and Power Point Presentation on the medical advancements during the time period explaining why their infant mortality rates were so high; third, research and complete a paper, a Power Point Presentation or a poster comparing of the physical, social and psychological effects of the Black Plague to a modern day pandemic: H1N1, Bird Flu, Sars, or Ebola;  and fifth, research and write a paper, and present a speech using a visual aide either a Power Point Presentation or a poster exploring William Shakespeare’s life and work and determine if he actually is the author of Romeo and Juliet.  Students also have the option of creating their own project, but they need to check with me so I make certain they have to do some research and draw some conclusions based on their research.  The more choices you give students the more likely you will pique their curiosity. 

            Another project I use came from another teacher, Mr. Wade Houtchens at San Bernardino High School. Students create a news broadcast that includes at least ten events that happened in the play and have at least five commercials advertising items that were used in that time period. (This is where they use the information about urine mouth wash, trenchers, and Friar Lawrence’s potions.)  His students loved it.  I use his project, but with new technology my students could create a movie upload it to You Tube and show it to the class.  It forces them to discover what items were used during that time period, decide what parts of the play are the most important and it gives them a creative outlet.  More importantly the students are engaged.

            When I teach the Epic Poetry, I present the characteristics of an epic hero and put students in groups to identify an epic hero from films, books or comic books (graphic novels) and justify their choice with details.  After the class finishes reading The Odyssey by Homer, they can choose to work in groups or by themselves to create their own epic hero story.  I always give them choices so it can presented as a movie, a comic book (graphic novel) or it can be a story they read to the class.  One memorable project was presented Jack, a student confined to a wheelchair because of his muscular dystrophy who wrote about Jack of the Night Ninja who by days is disguised as a handicapped boy confined to a wheelchair but at night becomes a Ninja who is an expert at karate and  prowls the streets fighting crime.  The joy in his face when he read his story freeing himself from his wheelchair brought the entire class to their feet in a standing ovation. 

            Before you give up on your struggling learners, try to engage their curiosity.  Don’t forget to entice their interest by presenting them with thought provoking ideas, give them choices, and allow them to work with other students on project based learning. These are the students who stare spellbound over an action movie or build a car engine that can go zero to 100 in less than four seconds.  They have the ability if you can tap that curiosity. Preparing them for the Common Core Test does not have to be grueling drills, make it fun and interesting by instilling a sense of curiosity in your learners. 

  Remember:

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”
― William Arthur Ward  

Don’t waste your time telling your students, inspire them.