If you cannot increase reflective power in people, you might as well NOT teach, because reflection is the only thing in the long run that teaches anybody. Reflection is what makes the knowing something that can be touched on and assimilated for further use.
~Dorothy Heathcote~ My heart has held its breath and skipped a beat and fought with the red tape of the school’s broken system of institutionalisation. I have longed to turn my back on all of that, but something draws me back like a moth to a flame. I find myself on the fringe of teaching, the production marginalised, teetering between extracurricular and obsolescence and the real casualty of this debacle is the student, the young writer, composer, director, costume designer, choreographer, sound and light extraordinaire, the actor, the dancer, the vocalist, the backstage help and the best friend who was too scared to join us this year but next year, “I will,” the curtain opener and the curtain closer. I would like to play the music of a 13 year old boy for all to hear, so that you could understand why I do what I do, why I feel with every cell of my being that this moment will become a memory of forever in the lives of those children. I want this memory to find its place in curriculum. And the only way this will happen is if all the memories of those who have experienced a school production, and those who sat in the audience and those who spent countless hours of their time pulling it all together with a thin thread, tying it with the frayed edges, to make it happen in a school hall, a demountable, a town stage, the local theatre year after year, after year, after year, knowing in their heart that this would make the difference, this would bridge the ever growing gap.
Fore note
When embarking upon this research, I immediately decided to keep a journal. This was not
necessarily a conscious decision as much as it was an informed decision. It marked behaviour I have grown accustomed to. I have kept journals of my work since being in an undergraduate degree in Performance Studies. For each piece of creative work I have engaged in since, I have kept a journal. Journals have allowed me to be in the moment, creating at one with the content. When the journal is left in time, something happens to the journal creator within – a sense of deep reflection. The creator keeps moving and shifting, their work continues to be considered, and the manifestation of what has been recorded, and what is later considered, collude to make meaning within the creator. My journal is both an initial extension of my experience and a reflection; furthermore it is an analysis of my work and my understanding of the world in which I find myself.
My reflective journal is Autoethnographic in nature. It is informed by Saldana’s ‘Analytic Memo Writing’ (Saldana 2013, 43). The initial journal entries were set out with the respective dates allowing for reflections at a later date and later still an analysis of the whole process.
You could say my journal became an Analytic Memo when I analysed what it was I reflected upon. The initial journal positioned me as the vulnerable human that required explanation within the research. For me this was akin to hot cognition: I was at times emotionally involved or felt I was under attack. At these times what I expressed was the colour of emotion in what I was experiencing. The reflection upon this colour was a cooling down, and the analysis, cold cognition. Mark
Minchinton’s journal in Delirious (Minchinton 1994) influenced my final journal layout. The three columns I have used represent time and signify stages of cognition. I have included all three stages as ‘neuro-science evidence suggests that sound and rational decision making, in fact, depends on prior accurate emotional processing’ (Bechara and Damsio 2004, 336). Through processing my
experiences, including my initial reaction/responses an authentic (real lived experience) insight is provided into the position of the teacher within the management of a school production.
I chose specific examples from chronologically ordered entries in my journal that would reflect the over-all process of running an authentic-modelled school production. The journal is placed within the thesis quite early on, as it offers an insight into what I mean by the authentic model of production based on the discussion around the Broadway model production and my response to this model. The authentic model of production requires students to be engaged, independent and committed learners. It requires students to take responsibility and to work collaboratively and respectfully. The Broadway model on the other hand requires that students learn and perform a script under the tutelage of their teacher(s). My journal discusses the Broadway model, and my decisions around an authentic model.
The coding used in this journal, as mentioned in my Methodology, is:
Teachers have been labelled with a letter – for example, Teacher A. This allows anonymity and removes gender. I will not be discussing any relationships in regards to gender and all teachers were assured that any reference to them would be anonymous. Students on the other hand have been given pseudonyms to allow for a more narrative feel to the discussion. Gender is not hidden. Students asked me if their real names could be used and when told that this was not possible, requested that they choose their own names.