Observations from Teaching, 5/12/2017, Prof. IM

Session led by I.M.; MA & MFA Actor Training and Coaching.

Today's seminar was the culmination of a multi-session series on positioning oneself within their practice and desire to teach. Ten students in three groups prepared and presented the types of actor training institutions they would establish if ideal conditions were met (if, for instance, money was no object).  They sought to offer curricula that were well-rounded, grounded in theory and proactive towards producing capable, industry-ready performers.

Notes Verbatim:

Thorough introductions to the plan for today's session right off the bat. My own appearance is a helpful segue into learning objectives.

Despite the low lighting (broken, not intentional) IM makes good eye contact. Tone is warm and inviting. He knows everyone's names and knows at least something specific about them.

The interesting theme we see in this building: when you need reference materials for pedagogy-focused students, they are often taken from in-house. We learn how other classes are being taught, how we as an institution are guiding and even manipulating other groups of students in the same building. Does this serve to other-ise the "rest of them"? Do students in teacher-training classes feel privileged in some way to gain insight into how their teachers and other students' teachers think? That they have insider knowledge, or are "in on it"?

Semicircle to start, IM speaking. Briefing and provoking discussion shortly in the session. The students are planning, expecting to engage with discussion in their breakout groups shortly. There is momentum (potential energy?) building up here.

Ethical questions have underscored earlier discussion, and may even form a framework for today:
art vs paying the bills, which is not to say art vs craft, because it is art and craft.

Thoughts: Does anyone here expect to make money from acting? We expect to be paid to teach actors, but is it ethical to pay someone to prepare others to do unpaid activity, to enter into an unpaid profession?

Listening and nodding: what does this mean? I am listening, I am understanding, I want you to hurry up, I want you to go into more detail? Yes I get it, but please continue anyway?

Periodic interruption of group discussion to gently (or even abruptly) redirect conversation of small groups back to what we need to be discussing.

I can't actually hear the content of the discussion. It is all noise except the American who speaks loudly and clearly  even when just nattering about nothing. Americans are inherently disruptive?

Almost all students are from different countries and have different levels of confidence when they speak.

6 women, 4 men, 2 quite mature students (mid 50's?) at least mature for an MA. Age range potentially 22-60. 5 East Asian students, 1 Indian, 1 British (present), 1 American. American easily loudest and most overtly confident--damn stereotypes! How does having one in your class affect your learning if you are not American and your culture is more demure?

(mmm, warm radiator on my back.)

Preparation and lack thereof is inclusive here, students and tutor. Students went to the wrong room out of habit. Everyone was late. Equipment was not booked. Paper and markers had to be collected. It is the last week of term--no one was judging one another for these tiny infractions. The atmosphere is warm, relaxed and productive. Everyone appears to feel intellectually and emotionally safe.

Small group engagement: the loud, giggly group gathered (Telly Group) around the tutor. How does this impact discussion among other groups? Table Group doesn't appear to notice but Chair Group noticeably puts their heads closer together and speaks somewhat louder to compensate. Eyes are cut at the noisy...American. Yep. Damn, I could write an essay on this. Was I the same as a student?

Question of note-taking as a secretarial function and learning support. More women are writing than men: is this a gender-stereotyped behaviour? Or do these people write everything down to help them remember?

Student presentations: Chair group: pitching a class
Spiral learning approach: multi-disciplinary. Boarding and training--start with life skills for young learners. (Where did this idea come from?) Very full-on programme including highly physical and textbook-style classes; theory. How relevant are these concepts outside of a BA? In terms of pure actor training, does anthropology truly hold relevance? Or is this more relevant, beyond the ethics of multicultural and extracultural performance, to directors, casting directors and producers?  (Do BA-TP Technical and Production Management students have ethics and anthropology classes? They should.) This school sounds blisteringly expensive, logistically overwhelming and ultimately irrelevant to most students. In terms of asking actors to run lights--how is this relevant to their career development if they're just preparing themselves for the financially unsustainable world of am-dram?

Constructive feedback, critical engagement: the students are using polite innuendos for "I like, I don't like." A mobile classroom is in itself site-responsive. Interesting.

IM briefs other students about what to expect during the first presentation to make it clear to the first group that they are not being unfairly dug-into, while also structuring the rest of the session for the next student groups. Three layers to this comment: I'm asking for clarity, I will ask you for clarity too; relax, this is not indicative of my opinions of your ideas or method of presentation. IM is seated among the students, not snuggled up next to anyone but not particularly distant either. The students around him are attuned to him and want his attention, but not in a disruptive way.

Global Citizenship: is this a current buzzword? Is this to fight against Trumpistan, populist and nationalist identities? We are making a statement at this time about the identity with which we identify as an institution and as individuals, and no, we will not be playing along with any isolationist rhetoric.

Sound dampening of this space: creates odd deadening, distancing of speakers based on relationships with corners and windows. This is a purpose-built rehearsal space!! AARGH!

Responses to limitations of space: The lights are squiffy. So we present under the brightest light and sit as audience under the dimmer lights. The lights still need to be fixed--contact Tony, surely this has been noted before?

Window
Dim Out Out
Dim Med Med
Bright Dim Out
Door Wall Door

Cultural engagement whirlwind tour: Too little time; Superficiality and Appropriation vs Depth, Learning, Appreciation. Del'Arte California: similar idea school. ITI Singapore, Asad Singapore? Models to be studied. ISTA: International School of Theatre Anthropology. Travelling University of Theatre Exchange (now defunct).

IM is honest and clear even when it hurts: The Dangers of Appropriation. You run the risk of making a franken-performer who only apes other cultures, borrows, rather than developing herself taking inspiration from these, or developing within one or a few. Whatever speaks to them. Provides points in which to develop thinking: re-direct forward engagement, if they intend to engage further.
Fight against box-ticking: personal loathing subtly revealed. How perfunctory is our paperwork here at school?

Observational aside: several students in this class speak with distinct accents but they do appear to understand the language of tuition. Does this represent progress among the MA courses or does this merely reflect the scope of recruitment for this specific course?

Are actors the best people to theorise about and teach engagement with stage management, lighting and production? Why is lighting many actors' mental default for "the rest of the show" but props and costumes are secondary? What is the relational flow from performer to each other department?

"We Literally didn't site this geographically."
"That's okay, let's have a go now." -subtle dismissal of self-deprecating impulse that also serves to promote momentum forward. I'm not judging or marking you downward, let's take this as an opportunity to discuss this among the wider group. Everyone is now invited to come on board.

This class is picking ideas to celebrate and explore further from the textbook we have fought with all term. Are they engaging critically with selected training theories, or just listing them and demonstrating that they understand them? No. They are specifically referencing the idea that they are employing a training technique, not teaching the theory of said technique (paper-based understanding). Learning by doing, just doing and not worrying about the desired outcomes identified by the theorizer? Are actors recipe-hungry?
How do we site thinking and critical engagement within the experiential learning structure?

Three different presentation styles employed here: Chair Group: Write As We Talk. Desk Group: Refer to pre-written (paper, prepared in class). Telly Group: refer to multimedia PPT and video with sound (ehhh?) pre written yesterday by one tech-engaged student (who not only particularly enjoys this sort of thing, but feels that he thinks best when doing it), performance-shaped presentation. Guidance supplied by tutor for audience thinking as well as encouragement for presenters. Remember why they are presenting to you: this is for feedback, not assessment.

We are gathering under the lights like mole people.

Limits on time: students respond to this limit in different ways. Some are fearful, some relaxed--some fear they will go over, others fear they do not have enough to say to fill in the time.
Telly Group is struggling with a lot of internal clashes: one student really wants to sell the fact that they don't have a plan, and that's the plan: they are artists. Another has gone into detailed, over-considered administrative work and planning, but has no idea of the desired over-arching structure or rationale for the school. Why do they feel the need to engage in this way? Is this presentation relevant to another class? This group has put days of consideration into this, while the other groups have only had a few hours at best. What was the different motivation for this group?

Other thoughts: Why is actor training history limited to the past hundred years or less? But theatre history is considered ancient and richly studied, despite the fact that for most areas of the world all we have is ruined buildings and a few plays? How is fifty years of Stanislavsky relevant to ancient Greece? Why do we try to imply that the vast majority of theatre history is in any way connected to modern performance?

Why don't these Asian students have any awareness of Asian or Eastern actor training technique? Have these English-speaking students had a western-facing education? What did they study at undergrad? Does Singapore engage with Chinese performance at all? How do get to become bilingual in China? Japan? India? Why does this class not engage with the cultures of the students in the room? Stanislavsky. Lecoq. Meisner. Gretowski. Nobody relevant to Asia, nobody relevant to any layer of history deeper than the Golden Age of Cinema. Is there older, documented actor training technique? Named? Or theatre- or dramatist- specific? Why have I not heard of anything besides bunraku?

Do we want to be engaged with the community around the theatre school, or is this a monastery? Mmmm. Universities. The best way to pretend to give back while only serving to market yourself.

End of class. Summary. Response. Space to decompress, to breathe.

Essay Ideas

UKPSF Areas of Activity for focus:

A2: Teach and/or support learning
Multiple ability levels in one class: how to ensure everyone's time is being used productively when you have to focus more directly on a student or students at an earlier level of learning

Just Giving Them the Answers: challenges surrounding engaging with pedagogy in a busy workshop, when you know their tutor asked them to do some research and all they managed to do was just ask me. Students such as EM, who have no patience for question-based engagement, RM who questions your motives at all times, SM students who would rather ask you than look it up or even think about it.

Identifying levels of starting ability among learners (or Please Hammer This Nail into the Table): advanced skill level (what do I do with you?), developing skills, ready to learn skills, unready to learn skills (resentful) (unaware) (unwell)

A4: Develop effective learning environments and approaches to student support and guidance
Equality and neurodiversity in a hazardous environment: two specific examples of challenging students due to attention deficit, find not necessarily answers, but identify approaches that have been successful, and the extent to which they have been successful.

Recently-obtained access to relevant documentation to allow for tailored teaching and pastoral support where necessary for diverse students (and finding out why they honoured the request this time! how it has already impacted our relationships with students).

Supporting student groups when readiness to learn is unknown: starting things gently, seeking cues from students.

Students who have no patience for pedagogy: Quite a lot of the time by the time a student gets to asking me for or about something they're done with being asked to think about it and just demand answers. EM

Noise control (equipment upgrades, ear defence, implementing clear lines of communication among students and staff with regard to sudden, loud, and harmful noise, my prohibition on workshop radio advertising and encouragement of MP3 players and music subscription services so the students hear what they find most motivating)

The Kataba: a Japanese hand saw that works on the pull stroke, allowing students to cut cleanly and effectively at waist-height, using your core (abdominal) muscles instead of your shoulder and neck, with reasonable-to-moderate effort. In Layman's Terms: a women-friendly saw that looks like a katana. Physical diversity can be not just accommodated for, but enjoyed.

Title Graveyard:
Mechanical Pedagogies: A Holistic Approach to Hands-On Learning in a Hazardous Environment with Specific Reference to Safety, Pastoral Care, and Dyspraxic Students

Beyond Safety: Teaching and Maintaining an effective Learning Environment Full of Spinning Blades and Toxic Chemicals

Learnshop: Practical and Analytic Skills Development in the Scenic Workshop

Please Be Careful Around the Tools: The Immobilising Fear of Marginalising a Dyspraxic Student Who is Nevertheless About to Hurt Herself

29 November: Digital Pedagogies

I work in a very hands-on area of study so naturally I have a hard time finding too many forms of digital teaching relevant. While the interwebs can be useful for helping students remember techniques that they've learnt in the workshop, the practical learning usually needs to happen in-house, in person, with steel toed boots on.

The timing of the Balkanized Internet article couldn't be more relevant. Just as the American FCC moves to make Internet access more expensive, more limited, and more specifically-oriented toward websites and services that are profitable for the ISP (regardless of their utility to or desirability for consumers) we are reminded that access to Internet and computing hardware is already polarised and becoming more so as ISPs limit access to the cables themselves to the poor, the rural, and the already-underserved. Of course!

Okay, Marc Prensky's Natives-Immigrants article is downright obscene. This Web 1.0 guy from 2001 pretending that his students are digital natives because they watched MTV? He was a passive consumer of TV from childhood just like everyone else.  That making people play games to learn key skills, try to piece together learning out of hundreds of thirty-second sound bytes, and tolerate advice from an anthropomorphous paper clip was going to benefit more than four per cent of the population? Oh man. I've got a skill you might try to teach over the 'net, but probably shouldn't. We've learned that you really shouldn't have your only skills training for power tools come from videos. At the very least, if you're going to learn how to use your circular saw from YouTube make sure your flatmate is a First Aider. Or at least has an ambulance on speed dial. Oh the digital millennium. How clever we all thought we were.

I'm on board with the Critical Digital Pedagogy article's crux--the interwebs, the computers, the VoIP and video conferencing--these things are tools that can either facilitate or support learning. Ultimately we still learn the way we always did, but now we can do it from further away, or at least in the comfort of our own homes. For some things. If we want to.

November 15: Pedagogical Persona critical reflection

PC: Counterweight Flying Exercise. Challenged and maintained the interest of specific students for whom classroom exercise was relevant.
Tone was relaxed, playful, with a touch of snark that the students appeared to appreciate when they screwed up.
Did not appear to take safety as seriously as exercise indicated.
Did not attempt to engage the attention of the greater majority of the class, who spent most of the day standing or sitting around being annoyed with each other, not paying attention, and getting in the way.



NM: Semiotics Lecture.
The lecturer covered the topic's key points quickly but with warmth and humour. He sought repeatedly to relate the content to the assembled students' areas of study.
The lecture was fast and very light-touch. This was by necessity and design: the class was only an hour long, and it was an introductory overview for first years who may or may not have a genuine interest in the field of study.
Students were not afforded more than cursory opportunities to participate or contribute to the content of the lecture; questions posed to the group were either rhetorical or the lecturer answered them for himself before the students had a chance to digest the question. This may have been due to time constraints, but it felt as though the windows to invite the students to respond were largely perfunctory. He had no real desire to hear their thoughts or even check that they comprehended, which was all the more ironic in a class about communication and understanding.
The space was small, warm and airless. Students started nodding off at about the 40 minute mark. It was difficult to measure attention. Some people actually pay attention quite well when staring off into the middle distance, which I find disconcerting.
The lecturer's tone was warm and engaging but some content was objectionable and led to a palpable disconnect between him and the students. The lecturer referred to theatre as 'pretend' and indicated that the dual usage of the word 'play' to mean 'piece of theatre' and 'children's imaginative activity' was relevant and deliberate. I find the shared usage of this word frustrating and avoid it, as do many theatre and performance makers who find the term infantilising and trivialising. As a way to introduce semiotics it may have felt apt, but it was distracting and may have engendered distrust. Particularly among crafts makers, for whom much of their work and skill is decidedly not pretend.
The overall impression I received was that the tutor was ultimately disgruntled with the subject and found teaching this particular lesson trying. This may have developed out of a former enthusiasm for semiotics that was not shared by a class, or several classes' worth of students, but while he understood the material to a significant depth he didn't seem to have it in him to give much of a hoot about it. It was difficult to tell where this struggle originated, if his attitude today toward the subject caused or was caused by the miasma of apathy that hovered in the room.

November 8: Ways of Learning

Biggs And Collis Structure of Learned Outcomes: This looks and feels just like Bloom's taxonomy. How is it different? Very familiar, I'm comfortable with this one.

Costa and Callick: Critical Friend. This is fraught with peril. This does not describe a friendship, it describes maybe mentorship or just being a wiser and not-very-nice older sister. Anyone who has the ability to criticise you but who you can't give back a taste of their own medicine isn't a friend. Friendship must go both ways or it is disingenuous. I don't like this one, or trust the intentions of the authors. At best it is what I do at work--I am friendly and not in a position to grade the students, but I have helpful feedback and can be playful and silly with the students. I hope that they can grow to trust me. But I am not their friend.

Whitmore's Grow Model: we engaged with this to an extent at the beginning of class, and it is something I have to encounter periodically in professional appraisals and development. The idea of motivating a staff member to set clear, specific, measurable and time-bound goals is at the core of annual appraisal. The idea of finding or creating the willpower to achieve the objectives she has set is where it all falls down.

Caine and Caine: Brain-Based Learning. I'm not sure how I engage with this one. The author appears to indicate that he doesn't either. I guess at its core is a reminder that learners have brains too, and they're probably a lot like yours and need to be stimulated in the right way in order to not only learn, but retain, and have a drive to learn. Ask questions. Pose a challenging but not overwhelming learning environment. Allow the learner to have some autonomy in how and what they learn, if possible.

Gardner: Multiple Intelligences. This seems silly. It lacks substance, either because Gardner's thinking lacked substance or because Bob Bates didn't take it particularly seriously. It doesn't help people learn what they signed up to learn, certainly, and doesn't appear to have a whole lot of use in the classroom if ultimately you have specific concepts and skills you wish to teach to everyone. Yes we can appreciate that everyone has their aptitudes and range of interests, but how can we tune each intelligence toward learning the thing that needs to be learnt?  ("The answers to questions of this nature are not easy." HA!)

Montessori: The Absorbent Mind. I can take a lot of the advice to heart: people thrive where there is order and everything has its place. Facilitate learning rather than dictate teaching. I think the workshop is a much saner place now that we have a tool room. Everything has its place--it may not be the most specific place, but it is much more specific than it used to be, and the space makes more sense. Things don't get lost as easily. I also appreciate my permission to encourage students to make mistakes and learn from them. It's difficult for the students to appreciate just how beautiful a feeling that can be.

Bruner: Discovery learning. Ask students what they want to learn. Help them learn it. Figure out if they understand it. Ask them what they want to learn tomorrow. Great for drop-ins. Not great if the students don't actually want to learn what you are tasked with teaching them, but never mind.

Vygotsky: Zone of Proximal Development. Break the concept down into smaller chunks, and allow the learners to feed them to themselves, or get students who other students pick things up from easily to help feed it to them. Makes concepts sound a lot like soup.

November 1: Constructive Alignment

Gist: If you want people to learn a thing, ensure that the process of teaching them that thing involves doing the thing, or engaging with it. Best example: if you seek to teach someone to drive a car, do so in the car, with them driving it. People don't learn to drive by listening to a lecture, and they don't demonstrate automotive competence or ability through a written test. The mode of teaching, the environment for learning and the method of assessing should all relate back to the intended learning outcome. ILO: student becomes better driver. Mode of teaching should be hands-on and practical. Environment for learning should allow the student to practice under realistic conditions. Method of assessment should be a demonstration of practical competence.

I'm not sure how well this can really apply to the more theoretical philosophies which may not have obvious applications. Maybe I'm missing something? It's all well and good to teach chemistry though opportunities to do your own practical demonstrations of chemical interactions and behaviours, but how do you do the same without a practical objective? How do you, for instance, teach Introductory Philosophy, the stated goal of which is to just provide the student information, and the only real point of assessment is to ensure that the content was absorbed? Can this be taught with Constructive Alignment? Or is the suggestion of CA that in order for learning to be meaningful the student must engage more thoroughly, and the desired learning outcome is not "to be full of facts" but to have some meaningful engagement with the facts, for the student to apply one or some of the concepts to something else in her life? (Ahh, the authors reject the idea of a class existing to 'cover' a topic.)

Of course it is a valid way to teach teaching. The whole point of raising issues, sending part-time learners back into their classrooms to explore them, try them out, and feed back on them is to help them engage critically with their practice, and hopefully improve upon it. It is absolutely applicable to This class. I can also see it being useful to much of what we do in drama school, where we train students rather than teach in the traditional sense.

----

In class we discussed some of the concerns I raised above. The idea of meaningful engagement with the facts is more advanced than the original text-writers indicated. At the BA level students should be able to identify, describe and explain concepts that have been imparted to them in class, but while they may as individuals be able and willing to engage in higher-level criticism and synthesis within the subject, it is not within the parameters of a BA to expect or assess this level of engagement. Sometimes you stop at Identify. When you get to the MA you may critique and analyse. When you reach PhD level you may theorise and create.

25 October, Intersectionality

Fascinating, isn't it, that when a transgendered student presents with emotional challenges that inhibit learning we describe that student as distressed and offer that student counselling. When a black student presents with emotional challenges that inhibit learning we describe that student as difficult and threaten them with failure or expulsion. The self-declared mental health of each student does not really seem to be taken into account.

Responses (knee jerk) to Hartley's case study "intersection, race and the white teacher"

--ideas of self-fulfilling prophecy. If you suggest that all (loose category) students tend to (behaviour), students will site themselves within or attempt to fight against it, often causing it to happen. E.g. being known for thinking "all black students are difficult to teach" will reasonably prompt black students to find learning from you to be problematic. Is this the same as noting that "puppeteers tend to be emotionally vulnerable artists who live on narrow boats or in warehouses"?

I checked my privilege on Buzzfeed's privilege-checker. Interesting. If I ignored the aspects of my sexuality and religion that are non-binary but not particularly troubling, it declared me 'quite' privileged. If I acknowledged those aspects of myself even though they are irrelevant in my community (bisexual but happily married to a man who knows and isn't bothered by it. Atheist in a broadly atheist society. Overweight but strong in a workplace that values that. Had roommates because I chose to move to an expensive, crowded city.) it said I was not privileged. I am privileged, but the questions are built for persons of a specific age and location that defines these struggles differently. Particularly when it comes to sexuality. Had I been more assertive at a younger age maybe I would have had the conflicts and responses listed. Had I mentioned that I was attracted to girls maybe someone in my community would have intervened, or threatened or assaulted me. I didn't, specifically because I didn't want the attention, and I didn't want to put myself at unnecessary risk. The fun part about being bisexual is that you can behave like a garden-variety hetero without feeling like you're pretending. You can participate in the prescribed milestones without raising eyebrows. And deep down, you assume everyone is actually exactly like yourself. (Because they totally are.)

I think where Hartley struggles in her feedback is a place where we all struggle in art and acadaemia: the relationship between artist and art. Jamie the student is angry, and is trying to communicate her anger and pain through her dissertation. Can an expression of anger in the form of poetry constitute a dissertation? If so, can this dissertation stand scrutiny of its own accord, or does the reader need to understand Jamie's background in order for it to make sense?  What if you Do include a comprehensive biography of the artist in the back? Or at least, footnote the relevant aspects of her life and thinking? Is the dissertation research that contributes to the corpus of knowledge in the field?  Or was Hartley effectively being bullied into allowing acceptance of a non-researched expression of opinion as a degree-level dissertation? Is there is an argument for lived experience to be permitted to supplant published scholarship as a basis for research?

Ronit and her hand. Was it scholarship? Was it a dissertation? Was it even art? Or was it an attempt to use a project as therapy? Could she have benefited more from therapy? What is our role as teachers and facilitators of learning when a student is clearly not even attempting to study, but is just working a wound in front of us and calling it scholarship? Is it discrimination to refuse a student from a course who is not only distinctly mentally unwell, but who intends fully to explore the extents of their mental health as their research, in ways that put herself and potentially others at risk of physical harm?

Consider this blog. I as writer occasionally include personal information to back up or situate my thinking. I'm careful to justify my thinking either through the background information given or to justify it through a visible logical progression. If x then y. While (as is the case with all deductive logic) it is possible for my starting set of information (x) to be deeply flawed, as long as y responds to x properly, it is an argument. (I am a frog, and frogs are green. Therefore, I'm green. I am not a frog, and not all frogs are green, but aside from that the argument is water-tight.) In my writing I seek to consider the point of consideration itself, and only it. While of course my own lived experience is going to influence how I engage with that point or concept (or if I even choose to engage with it at all) and will undoubtedly influence my choice of supporting data as I try to justify my opinion of the concept, the whole discussion--question, answer and supporting data--should be present in the document. You shouldn't need to know me for it to make some form of sense. I can't just Be Angry. I need to communicate at whom or what I am angry, why this angers me, and what would be better in this situation. For instance: I am angry at Border Control for imposing new, expensive, discriminatory and deliberately harmful family immigration laws with the stated goal of reducing net migration. I am angry because they negatively impact me in an unfair way, and I am helpless to fight it because if I do I will be deported. A better solution would be to have laws that conformed to standard EU regulations about immigration.

Responses to The Labelling of African-American Boys in Special Education

Dude, lady. You just silenced a young man, who has just declared that it is his one goal to be heard, by summarising his statement and skipping to the end. I sincerely doubt that all those ellipses are pauses in Jessie's narrative--they're spots where you left out what he said. He's finally got a chance to be heard and all you're doing is listening for the thematic elements to support the gist of your article. You're not helping him, you have no intention of helping him, you're just using him to illustrate your frankly axiomatic points!  You're like one of those National Geographic photographers who stands by to document it while a village is set on fire or a lion eats a starving four year old. You've come in, prodded the poor kid until he talked to you, gotten him good and pissed off, taken your notes and left when you were confident you had enough AAVE-spiced text to make it sound genuine. You've just met a 16-year old who has been trapped in a spite-driven reduced education programme since the second grade, who appears to be at least as articulate as any other teenager in spite of this, and all you can think to do is construct a narrative to suggest that his internal and external senses of identity are influenced by these facts? Why not start a fucking march? Lobby the school board to have the special education programme audited? Do something? ALSO, you tried to use Jessie's testimony to illustrate the concerning points from the outset, that black boys are passive and apathetic, but in antagonising the lad you've demonstrated that he is neither of these things. He's upset, he knows he's smarter than his academic level, and because his lessons lack challenge for him he occupies his mind with other things, like picking fights with his teachers. There is nothing passive, apathetic or broken about him.

Inclusion (18/10/2017, my 33rd birthday)

I've listened to an inclusion testimony from a blind PhD candidate. She has had mixed reviews of how the school has allowed her to feel not only included but safe and able to work. She has always had to work extra to make room for herself in the able-centric world, and it would be nice sometimes to not have to expend so much energy fighting for simple accommodations to be made for her--not least because we do have laws in this country that require reasonable adjustments to be made to ensure disabled people have access to similar opportunities and facilities as everyone else. She was saddened and disappointed to note that her Collisions piece was the only one that made it explicit that disabled people were welcome and that accommodations would be made for them to enjoy the performance in a way that suited them. The fact that disabled people were only accommodated for in a piece that was developed by a disabled person was very telling.

Knee-jerk reaction (Reflexive reflection): We could be doing more, but what is reasonably practicable? This student deserves and is entitled to a learning environment that is ready for her, particularly when it comes to adaptive software, safe access and movement, planned egress routes and course design that allows her to participate fully. But I'm sympathetic to the staff members who were unprepared to assist her:  to the best of my knowledge blind students are vanishingly rare at Central. It is not surprising or really disappointing to me that well-established teaching systems, licenses to software and advice for visiting lecturers were not in place before the student asked for them. While we should be ready and willing to leap into action to provide the support each disabled student needs, it is frankly wasteful to (for instance) pay to maintain a license to software to assist the blind when we don't have a blind student in the building, and won't know until we have one if the software we have is actually any good.

While yes it is best to have ramps, lifts and trained staff to ensure people of all mobility levels can get where they need to go and get out safely in an emergency, we must acknowledge that the oldest sections of the school were built long before the Disabilities Act, and it would require knocking down significant portions of a historic, listed building to make some of these areas accessible. Indeed, the changes that were made to the Embassy seating rake to make it handicapped-accessible have impeded the function of the seating rake. It is arguable that the rebuild caused new problems while it solved others. Once the building itself is approved as safe by the fire department, making unique plans for unique disabilities must be handled on a case-by-case basis in order to be useful.

Yes, it was unacceptable that IT forgot to reinstall the useful software on the designated blind-accessible library computer after the update--but if you know our IT department, you know that that is par for the course with them. It was not a deliberate attempt to harm or get away with neglecting a disabled student, as they are just as likely to forget her software as the principal's. Yes, it was pretty shitty that a VL came in and made no adjustments to allow her participate in his or her class--but if it was the first (and probably last) time we saw that VL, how can we expect to improve them? VLs are transient by their very nature. We continue to try again. Sometimes we strike gold. Most of the time we don't.

Yes we have room to improve. But when do we have opportunities to practice? We can take classes and watch slide shows for months and have no more readiness than if we were merely reminded of the law once a year and only hired decent, well-meaning people.

Response to my initial response: Physically disabled students may be vanishingly rare at Central because we suck at accommodating them. We might be more popular among disabled people if we were more ready to begin with, if we made it clear that every show is disabled-friendly, or ready to be disabled-friendly with a little bit of notice. I don't know how practicable it is to, for instance, have a described service, or super-titles or BSL interpretation for at least some performances. I don't know what would be desirable for or most useful to students and members of the public, but I'm sure there are ways of finding out. I know that we can do more, but it would be helpful to understand if there is a compelling reason to do more.

Like in the workshop. Is it reasonable to accept a student into the class who is physically or intellectually incapable of using industry-standard workshop equipment safely? While it might be possible for a big institution to purchase or make adaptive tools and train everyone to work with and around a disabled person, are we really doing the student any favours in the long run? How likely is this person going to be to find a job out in the industry with the funding, time and people to help them work? Would training a student in this manner be disingenuous? Would we be giving them false hope that there is a place for them in the industry? Do we have a real chance of changing the industry from beneath or within to make room for disabled people? If it can be argued that industry-readiness isn't the point of education, how does that impact our relationship with ability-typical BATP students?


I've read an inclusion testimony from an MA student who struggles with mental health issues. I agree that we have no excuse for allowing teachers to judge students' appearances against one another. That's not just mean-spirited, it is academically useless. I'm a bit baffled as to what the teacher was trying to do in this instance. Odd.

I've read inclusion testimonies from two MA students who struggle with learning disabilities. Students C and D. Both of these women have difficulty with cognition and found classes frustrating, as they went too fast and seemed to plough through ideas with reckless abandon. Student C had a hard time paying attention to a lecture for more than an hour and believes all students benefit from repetition and simplicity in lessons. Student D found question-based teaching frustrating, and would prefer for the right answer to be provided clearly and succinctly if there is a right answer to be had.

An important takeaway from Student C:
"Most students in a room will appreciate clear signposting and structure. Start there first.

Two important takeaways from Student D:
"Intellectual frustration at not being able to grasp an academic concept, knowing that I don't know how to do it, but not being told how to do it, as if in being told it would somehow remove part of the attainment I would feel by finally achieving. . . . It's as if the feeling of being unable to understand academic expectation is compounded by course information/learning support/staff being unclear and hard to understand, a paranoid conspiracy of not telling! . . . The frustration of lack of explanation [outweighs] the perceived tarnished attainment of the journey."
(Many students tune out and do not intellectually engage in the content if they believe the 'right answer' will eventually be given to them. Many tutors have found that asking students to volunteer some of the course content keeps them awake and attentive, and indeed old style teaching which did just hand out answers and expect students to regurgitate them later for the test has been repeatedly found to have a dulling effect on enthusiasm and enquiry. I disagree fully with Student D's suggestion.)

"[I perceive a] lack of understanding about what it actually feels like to take on academia/study when you have an SpLD. Sometimes, help is given from outside the understanding of what an SpLD is. E.g. it's as if the help being offered has been designed by someone who does not have an SpLD, so the information is not quite on the money, not quite helpful enough, just missing the mark."
(To what extent do people with learning disabilities help other people with learning disabilities? Do dyslexic people need non-dyslexics to help them, or could a network of dyslexics be self-supporting? Is there research on this subject?)

I've read an inclusion testimony from an MA student who is transgendered and struggles with her emotional health. She had a fairly positive experience at our school, which surprised her. She had one significant issue where external support was erroneously withdrawn, but her tutors were helpful during this period and she was able to continue to study. She did well in classes that focussed on the individual.

Issues that all of the testimonies seem to share:
-each disabled student feels it is appropriate to change the way classes are taught to more specifically cater to their disability.
-each student who by their declaration struggles with emotional and mental health expresses that they need and deserve dedicated, regular care from the school.

I must wonder. Is it appropriate to change the way classes are taught to more specifically cater towards intellectually disabled students? Should teachers adjust classes only when disabled students are known to be present, or change their teaching styles full-stop regardless of the student cohort? How will this impact neuro-typical students? How many students at our school could be described as neurologically typical? Emotionally typical? 

A neuro-typical, emotionally "well-balanced" student would likely also benefit from the support that students with learning difficulties or mental health issues receive to bring them up to speed. What is the cut-off point for, for example, a dyslexic student, before one might question if the student is being unfairly advantaged? To what extent does our system of assessing new students unfairly advantage those who have managed to secure a diagnosis of a learning disability (usually at significant cost) over those who either have an undiagnosed or un-diagnosable learning disability, or are just not clever?

Is it appropriate to start with the assumption that all students, with suitable support, are equally capable of learning? Of high academic achievement? Is it ever fair for a student to fail because they didn't grasp the concept? Is it fair to slow down or belabour the point for an entire class for the sake of one student? Is it fair to leave a student behind on the classroom floor (metaphorically speaking) if they are able to record the session and have a private tutor? Who's responsibility is the private tutor? Why?

Where is the line when it comes to challenging a class to engage actively with the subject versus "spoon-feeding" them the right answers? We work in the arts--there rarely are right answers. Much of arts academia is exploration of questions and finding ways to site them within your own thinking. When your task is navel-gazing, who's belly button is the default?

Student C advises would-be lecturers to keep it simple and repeat themselves to reinforce concepts. This behaviour among lecturers would bore me to tears and probably push me out of the class. The whole point of higher education is to engage deeply, think critically, ask questions and expand not only your comprehension but the parameters of what you appreciate that you do not know. To what extent is accommodating for disabled people actively harmful to the able-bodied and able-minded?

Did somebody say Academic Reflection?

And welcome back to round two. It has been just over five years since I last dusted off this page to smear academic writing on it, and I'm not entirely sure if I still remember how, but let's make a go of it anyway.

This year we are engaging with the Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, or PGC-TLHE. Duplo Scenery is out! Augusto Boal is still probably in! But gone are those Abramovician days of the empowered, dangerously intoxicated audience injuring the actor for the sake of art! From now on unnecessary risk is Strongly Discouraged. I think. Unless it can contribute to an enhancement of pedagogy, or it is demonstrable that vulnerability on the part of the teacher or project leader can contribute to a more inclusive learning environment. I rather selfishly hope that physical vulnerability does not significantly benefit student engagement.

What do I hope to get out of this? I'm not entirely sure, in all honesty. It seems to change as a matter of routine. Sometimes I want to identify where I can improve my teaching, and discover new avenues to reach challenging students. Sometimes I want to be congratulated on my current abilities and sent away with a pay rise and a trophy, my skills completely uncontested, my presumptions and habits still firmly in place. While I am the poster child for the rule that everyone has room for improvement, and even exceptional professionals need at least a periodic chance to brush up on best practice, it sure would be nice to turn up to class only to discover that you're freaking perfect and don't need any guidance or training. Alas, after two weeks of sessions I can readily confirm that I need this class, embarrassing learning opportunities and all. hash-tag notmessiah.

So this is an intro page, or I suppose an end-point for any reader who started at the top and may be scrolling slowly backwards through my PG-Cert reflections. Hello reader. This is the end of the document but the beginning of the narrative. Everything beyond this point, while it of course in some way has impacted my thinking and will by virtue of the fact that it's a product of the same small university with the same unique ethos be in some way relevant to the text above it, is not specifically or intentionally related to my current course. Read on only if you are curious about how I thought and created while a somewhat-different student during a somewhat-different time.