Observation of teaching: 1/11/2017. Prof: PC

Counterweight Flying Part 2: Loading weight and drapery. Year 1 BA-TP Technical and Production Management, Stage Management, Production Lighting joint session,

Considerations for planning, with specific considerations for health and safety:
This class is one of the most hazardous of the first year experience for BATP students, involving many people learning how to load weight at height, move large heavy battens overhead and engage with open traps in the stage deck. Communication must be clear and people must be alert.

Classroom observations: Five students are on the pinrail and another two are loading weight above. The tutor is up with them and the session appears to be predominantly for their benefit. Twenty students are on stage level to shift drapes onto and off of battens, wearing hard hats and steel-toed boots.  Five lighting students are hanging fixtures off the electrics and tidying cables down cables and into deck-side traps. A VL appears to be trying to guide some activity on floor-level, but she doesn't appear to be sure what she's expected to do. Confusion and disorder abound. Communication is absent or poor.

Feedback session at the end of the day is very self-congratulatory. Small chides here and there and plenty of snarky asides from students and VL both, but the overall feel is one of pride and accomplishment.

Questions:There are too many students in this room doing absolutely nothing. These mostly stage management students are bored, disruptive, irritable and in the way, and appeared to be completely detached from the proceedings. They were not required (or invited?) to participate in the actual operation of the counterweight system. Why are they here? Why have they just been dumped on you? Were they told to take notes and pay attention to what the TPM students were doing? I'd imagine they tried for a while but there's only so much they can soak up from the sidelines while other students are intensely learning at height. Why did they not practice communicating with the fly tower? And why were the students left effectively to their own devices to develop a flyloft communication lingo when one not only already exists but it standardised across the global theatre industry?

This whole thing feels unnecessarily risky. I don't understand why the SMs are here, at least not all day. It could have been useful, if they are not really expected to learn how to operate flys but do need to know what's going on up there, for them to be invited in at the end of the day so the TPM students could show them what they've learned. That helps solidify their learning and gives the SMs an idea of what goes on when they're not around.

I can't bring myself to tell PC that this session needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. I like him and respect him as a colleague. But this was scary and resoundingly ineffective as a teaching opportunity. I don't know what to do.