BYU Arts Bridge Drama!!

My name is Daniel Barton and for my first post, I thought that I'd start out by describing the program, a little bit about myself and my focus, and how I prep for my lessons. 

Arts Bridge is a program designed by collaboration between the Arts departments and the School of Education here at BYU aimed at providing elementary classroom teachers with a specialist who teaches the students both in the art subject and using the subject in integration of other subjects.  The classroom teacher gets training on how to use the respective art medium as a classroom tool and the specialist gets experience teaching in the classroom.

I first was introduced to theatre in high school.  I was a technician, designer, and stage manager for many productions at my high school and in my community arts program.  After a semester at BYU and serving a mission, I fell in love with teaching and knew that I wanted to combine my two passions.  I currently am a senior in the Theatre Education program and love to perform, direct, and write theatre.

I love good teaching.  Nothing gets me more excited than the acquisition of skills, learning new principles, or students taking ownership of their learning.  So, that's what I aim for.  I want students to be excited about what they do and I believe theatre is a great tool to accomplish that.  Here are some principles that I try to follow when I go about teaching in an elementary classroom.

1) Start with the classroom teacher

  • The teacher is always going to have subjects and standards that they would like help covering along with the art content.
  • They are always going to have a system of management in place that is easiest to get behind.
  • They know their students and know what I need to know.
2) Have a strong plan
  • I love to outline where I want to go with my lessons.  
  • If I can know what standards I want to cover, what big ideas and essential questions I want to focus on, then I can start to discover what stories, what process dramas and what creative activities I want to use to help them learn the standards.

3) Make sure my management strategies are in place.
  • Most teachers use 1,2,3 Eyes on me and I love to use it.
  • Making sure directions are clear, are explained before students get up to act, and aren't too difficult (only giving a max of 3 directions at a time) then students should know what is expected of them.
  • After that there's not much I can do until I get in the classroom and observe or teach.
I have some ideas that I'm excited to start using.  Look forward to those in a future post!  That's it for now!

Comments

  1. Heather DrewOctober 2, 2018 at 11:46 AM

    I love the thorough thinking that you have put into your preparation for this program. Anticipating the needs of all involved and the management strategies you would like to use before getting to the classroom is a great practice. Can't wait to see what else you're thinking about over the semester.

    ReplyDelete

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