An academic post for you

This is what I posted for my last week of my first semester of grad school. I had to revisit a question I had made for myself at the beginning of the class.... 2) Will research and implementation of more effective drama teaching methods create a stronger drama program within my school? And if so, will the attitude and support within the school community improve if the program is strengthened by the drama teacher? Ahh.. revisiting this question right now at this point in the school year is frustrating because of certain recent events at work. As much as I want to take my Critical Links question and embrace it and make it my everyday teaching philosophy, I am very frustrated right now by what kind of feedback I have been getting from my school community. To briefly fill you in, I have been working the last few months on a small production with a large group of kids to perform one night next week in the school “Winterfest” program. Last week, a group of students “supervised” by a teacher in the building got onto the stage and took things for the play without asking, painted over things, broke things, took things, not belonging to them. My reaction was to reach out to the community asking for an explanation and explaining my boundaries and allowances for using drama club materials, and I was responded with basically a “we don’t care about your problems as the drama teacher” attitude. Completely discouraged by this response, I am pushing through the weeks until the performance next week trying to keep a positive attitude and remembering that this is for my students, not for me. It seems like my critical links question has sort of been answered. For the first time, I am doing major set construction, sound system/microphones, songs, hired a pianist, making costumes myself, have many people involved in the production. I am upping my drama teaching methods in order to meet the needs of my students- they are talented and deserve to put on a full scale play! However, the community seems to be responding with disregard for the work, not improving the community but rather further dividing it. I guess I have to take it upon myself to set this incident aside and say that it may take longer or it may take until AFTER the play goes up for the community to have more awareness and appreciation for me to notice. But for the time being, maybe I need to scale down my efforts to see a bigger impact. I have decided that for the future, I am not going to communicate with the staff about negative events, but rather just focus on the positive ones. I will also be more focused and specific with my projects to make sure that I don’t over-commit myself or over-stress myself on one project so that it discourages me from continuing my work. It has helped to delegate tasks to others, but it has also made it more of a high stakes performance to please all the people who have helped out. Hopefully, once I take these reflections and incorporate them into my attitude, methods and practices as the school drama teacher, I will see a positive impact in the community.