I am fortunate enough to wake up every day (weather permitting) and go to work in a place with a collaborative, supportive, and innovative culture. As a student teacher, I never believed that I would be lucky enough to come back and find a permanent spot in this faculty of people. I admire and respect those that I get to work with every day so much! It is a dream and a pleasure to get to walk around in a building full of so many others that care and place student’s first!
It’s very telling that the past two weeks of snowpacalypse have not been an easy retreat for me from my classroom. I found myself looking forward with excitement, specifically, to the boot camp that tends to be the everyday hustle and bustle of Carson High School’s musical rehearsal. All I’ve wanted for two weeks is to be in a space where so many different types of humans come together and believe in what they are doing. Being a part of the musical magic is truly a blessing!
In case you didn’t know, we are producing Shrek: The Musical this spring!!! Shrek’s swamp, and the adjacent town of Duloc ruled by Lord Farquard combine to create a world where anyone can find love (even an ogre). With each turn of the page comes a new stream of laughter and a new wave of discovery for the characters and our students ! I am fortunate enough in my own world to teach English I, and with that comes a entirely separate stream of laughter and discovery, but my first and last love will always be watching children in rehearsal grow into new characters, ultimately bringing them to life in front of an audience.
The creative process is so necessary to learning because activating our student’s imaginations sets the sky as the limit! Students cast in the musical come in everyday in the beginning without a set or costumes and can become an ogre, a princess, a wolf, a height challenged lord, a donkey, etc. We spent an entire early rehearsal on guiding students to find their “character’s voice” and one student was struggling to project without creating a raspy sound that long term would damage his vocal chords. He began to get extremely frustrated. Another student approached him and began helping him execute the voice in a different way. They went back and forth exploring pitch, tambour, and resonance. They were using the framework of rehearsal to search for a solution. I watched as he become more at ease and you could see his confidence become almost tangible.
Being able to step back as the facilitator for students as they grow is an experience that carries a unique joy that can only be found, for me at least, in a school building! Since that early rehearsal, that student’s voice has changed and grown in silly and fun ways to build his character. He, through discovery with another cast member in rehearsal, realized that there really weren’t any rules and he could explore! Those kinds of moments with student’s are priceless! We could all learn a lesson from his ability to learn through play.
I believe that moments like I witnessed in rehearsal happen frequently here at Carson. Students on our campus want to be here. They want to be a part and they want to learn and grow within their club, sport, or art. A piece of that is allowing ourselves as their teachers to be vulnerable and show them how much we care! That is the norm here at Carson, and it just doesn’t happen everywhere! That being said, I wanted to take my week on the blog to say in writing how thankful I am to be a part of a place that is so full of people who love what they do and do it for the right reasons.
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