Memo #4- "Writing is a marathon"

Contrary to what I thought prior to this week, my finding have been quite extraordinary. Since last week I have been thinking about how I was going to get in contact with my various people to interview them. Somehow life just has a way of working itself out.

I met with Dr. Ann O' Grady, executive director of Rhode Island Youth Theatre. Her and I have worked together for the past 6 years and she is my ultimate source when it comes to anything theatrical. With both of our busy schedules it seemed impossible to meet, but because I needed to rent some costumes from her I was able to meet at her house and interview her for my I-Search.

A little background about her. She taught in the Warwick School Department for 29 years (1971-2000) at Aldrich Junior High School. I asked her if in her many years of teaching if she ever did any playwriting with her students? She told me that she did. Her students had created a musical one time about hunger. They all collaborated in writing it, designing the sets, picking the costumes, and eventually performing the show. She said that there are many benefits to playwriting in the classroom, like research skills, teamwork, and learning a different form of art, but she says that these are moments that stick with children; these are moments that make an impact on their lives. She also taught them prepositions, but when they see her now some of her students still remember their lines, not prepositions. This project, she told me, was done over the course of 6-8 months. "Writing is a marathon," she emphasizes.  I would have to agree. We talk about the writing process and here it is being used in a different format than the five paragraph essay.

My next find was quite amazing actually. After posting the video last week on the Brooklyn Theatre Arts High School in New York I decided to take Professor Collins advice and try to contact Shannon Reed the English teacher at the school who headed this playwriting project. I first went to the high school's website, but found nothing on faculty there. I went back to her blog she had posted, but again no contact information. I searched high and low for some way to contact this teacher. I even tried to connect to her on Linkedln. Finally I just did a general google search for her name and she had her own website. I saw a link on her page that said CONTACT ME, and so i emailed her asking if she would take part in my I-Search project. She responded in less than 24 hours saying she would be delighted to help. I sent her a list of about 15 questions and she responded back with full detailed answers. Although I would love to copy and paste her answers, a brief summary will do for now.

She told me that she has been teaching for 8 years. She has taught 6th grade through 12th grade. She loves theatre and got her undergraduate in acting and directing. She was told by someone that she should start writing plays, so she did, they got produced and she had been hooked ever since. Since BTAHS had an arts integrated curriculum she wanted to find another way to teach writing since her students did not seem to want to do your traditional five paragraph essay: "in general the students there were interested in expressing themselves but were bored by (or flatly refused to do) typical English assignments like writing essays or papers. I thought they may like playwriting, though, and I was right!" She says that she thinks many teachers don't teach playwriting because it is not something themselves they feel comfortable with. She also says that playwriting can be difficult if students have not read and seen plays. Ann agrees saying that students will usually copy things they see when creating and are usually inspired by a show they have seen. A benefit Shannon sees in playwrting is the ability to express yourself creatively. Her students were so much more engaged so therefore they wrote more and in turn learned more. She is no longer at BTAHS and is now a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She does not do any playwriting in her college level class because the curriculum is pretty much set. 

These two professionals have really opened my eyes to the impact that playwriting can have on children. I see now that not may teachers are doing playwriting in schools nowadays. I want to look now at resources that teachers can find outside the classroom. Since most teachers probably don't feel comfortable that could be why they are inviting in the experts. I hope to find out what these young playwriting companies are doing for students.