Theatre education: The Transformative Power of Theater
Humanities
1. Read the following articles:
https://stagewise.ie/performing-arts-helps-young-p…
https://www.aate.com/benefits-of-theatre-ed
2. View the videos below (they aren’t very long, but you should watch them in their entirety).
Magic Moments: The Transformative Power of Theater |Mary Lechter | TEDxGeorgeMasonU
Mrs. Anderson’s Middle School Theatre Students on Why Theatre is Important to them. (ATTACHED) Not only is the reasoning provided by the students in this video critical, but their participation in this project and how they are in the video is also very telling about the benefits of children’s theatre in education.
(https://learn-us-east-1-prod-fleet01-xythos.s3.us-…)
3. Keeping in mind the above informatin, and AFTER doing the readings and viewings, imagine that you work as a K-8 theatre education teacher at our local public school. You just found out from our Superintendent that to cut costs they are planning to eliminate the position as theatre teacher, and therefore they are removing theatre from the curriculum. They seem to think that theatre is just a “fun” class with superficial value, and believe that if students really want to participate in theatre they can easily do so outside of school through a local theatre or private lessons. Using what you learn about the value of theatre from the two videos and the articles must compose an appeal notice to your Superintendent. You are to make a case for keeping theatre in our schools.
- It should be in the format of a formal letter and should be 2 pages in length (longer is fine), and include the values and benefits of theatre in our schools, and call out the negative impact pulling it from the curriculum could have on children in the school system.
- You must discuss a minimum of 10 values/benefits to allowing kids to learn theatre in our schools and you must pull information from all videos and sources assigned for this week( please cite them throughout the letter where you use them). The values/benefits you include will help me gage whether or not you did all the reading and watched all the videos.
