Community

An interesting and unexpected aspect of the observation was the power demonstrated by the students in the class through their support of one another and the marked unity among the class members. The class is composed of students from a range of “cliques”, including “football players, geeks, nerds, brains, Goths and gansta’s,” as one student put it. According to the students, they are not necessarily friends outside of the class, though they speak to each other in the halls. However, their group identity in the Drama 2 class was positive and powerful. During the hour and twenty minute class, the students were kind, even loving to each other, physically close in non-sexual ways, and made many shared jokes, but with no racial jokes of any kind and a complete absence of “capping,” (making denigrating jokes towards one another for status).

Their community was demonstrated throughout the class in small and large moments. For example, when Amy called the students to the stage to start the class, they instantly stood together in a tight circle, males and females intermixed, arms around one another. This is not typical of the physicality of students in other classes, according to the students. When Josh sneezed during scene development, a chorus of voices from throughout the auditorium called out, “Bless you!” Their community was also evident in their conduct towards one another during Blind Car. In the game, students in pairs are a car and driver. The “car,” with eyes closed, is steered around the space by touch by the driver. In the first round, students were wildly careening their “vehicle” around the stage; it was heart- stopping. Then they switched roles. When they switched back, the reckless

driving of the first round changed completely; the driving was more gentle, slow and cautious, without the traffic congestion and “near-misses” of the earlier melee. In reflecting on the experience, students identified the importance of their trust in their driver as key to allowing them to enjoy the game:

4.5 Josh: “The car was fun and scary at the same time…The first person who was driving, I trusted him.”

A noticeable degree of trust and community was consistently demonstrated by the students from the beginning of the class, when they cheered three of their classmates who had received awards for their standardized test scores,

4.6 Amy: “Everyone look at how nice Michael looks.” All: “Ooooooooooooo”

Amy then asked the students to tell me what the John and Abigail Adams Scholarship is (a full tuition scholarship awarded to students who have a high pass on the state standardized test). All cheered for the 3 students in class who got it- Yesenia, Katelyn, and Michael.

to the end, when they shared deeply personal stories of having been

disempowered in their own lives. The following excerpt describes a scene created from Angelica’s story of a custody battle in her family, as her sister decided whether to live with their mother or father.

Edia says she’s going with Dad. The family questions her choice. Lyanna: (a sister) “He doesn’t do anything for you.”

Latisha: (a sister) “He doesn’t even work. Why do you want to go with him?”

Margarito: (father, as they leave) “I’ll buy you something nice.”

This scene was a reflection of a deeply personal and upsetting moment from Angelica’s life, shared with her small group in planning and the entire class in performance. It seems possible that this demonstrates her trust in the group. Amy also commented on their pronounced and unusual degree of community.

During the planning of scene work, the students consistently demonstrated collaboration, seamlessly sharing leadership in the planning process, and taking joint responsibility for making sure everyone was included. Further, they demonstrated competence in the drama work through their use of space in tableaux, their choices of scene material, and their performance skills. This was surprising as only three of the students in the class are “drama kids” and

participate in plays after school. Most of the students have had no more than one drama class previous to this one, and for about a third of the group, this was their first experience ever. Given that half of the class members were academically challenged, and that many were seen as problems, behavioral or learning, in other classes, I was interested in understanding why they were successful in this class, and particularly how their sense of community contributed to the power they demonstrated as students in drama.

4.4 Preliminary Study Interviews

My original intent was to conduct an interview with one or two class members, but given the range of perspectives in the class, I ultimately selected four students, two girls and two boys. I made these selections based on their power-taking within scenes, their relative powerfulness as members of the classroom community, and insights offered by Amy. I chose students who

represented various points on the spectrum of powerless to powerful and the racial mix in the class. My initial interview, on November 19, 2007, was with a senior girl named Edia who spoke little in class but had taken overt power roles during the class session (choosing to portray an armed robber, for example).

Subsequently many of the participants asked to be interviewed, and Edia’s

interview had generated such a wealth of helpful data that I ultimately interviewed eleven students, 6 boys (Ricky, Michael, Carlos, Anthony, Jimmy, and John) and 5 girls (Edia, Angelica, Yesenia, Katelyn, and Jazzmin). (At their request, I am using their first names rather than pseudonyms in this paper.)

I interviewed Ricky, Angelica, and Michael in individual interviews and the others in two single-gender small groups on January 7, 8, and 9, 2008. The students represented a cross-section of the class, racially, academically, and socially. The interview questions reflected both my interest in their constructions, understanding and experience of power (How would you define power? Where in your world do you see it and what does it look like? Where do you feel powerful? If you could have more power in one area of your life, what would you choose?) and addressed the question of whether, and to what extent, they were able to articulate the same level of knowledge verbally as they did in performance. The later interviews also had questions reflecting my emerging interest in the power

I’d observed in their community during the class session (Do you feel

powerful/powerless in this class? When and why?). (for full text of interview guide, see Appendix C, p. 347). I audio recorded their interviews and transcribed them, or had them transcribed, in their entirety.

4.4.1 Coding Categories

Coding categories were developed initially by exploring concepts and ideas that occurred both in the class work and in interview. (The results of the interviews mapped closely onto the observation data, with multiple levels of understanding and awareness reflected in their responses.) A second level of categories was developed by exploring areas of power that were embedded in what was performed and discussed, even though they hadn’t necessarily been explicitly identified. (For example, there were several scenes in which money was an identified power element, and students talked about money as power in

relationship to jobs, family, and friends, though I never asked a question about money and power.) A third level of codes represent areas which were observable, though not discussed or identified in either context. The power of community, which informed the students’ behavior in the observation and was an embedded concept in students’ reflections on family and school life, is an example.

In this analysis, I will focus on the following: • Student constructions of power

• Manifestations/demonstrations of power • Uses of power by students

• Student constructions of community • Communal uses of power

Data collected, coded, and analyzed include my field notes from the observation of the class session and post-class reflection, notes on my

conversation/discussion with the classroom teacher, and the students’ post-project interviews. The analysis that follows is considered in relation to literature on constructions of power, Sense of Community (SOC), and Communal Power Orientation (CPO) detailed in Chapter 2.

4.5 Constructions of Power

Power is everywhere, and affects every aspect of our lives, but its definition is elusive (Keltner, Anderson, and Gruenfeld, 2003). Early in the interview, students were asked three questions designed to elicit an understanding of their definitions and perceptions of power:

1) For you, what is power? How would you define power dynamics? 2) How can you tell when someone has power? What does that look like? Example?

3) How can you tell when someone doesn’t have power? What does that look like? Example?

In interview, as in their scene work, students identified money, strength, ability, and control over others as forms of power.

4.8 Michael: “Money gives a lot of power to people…. It shouldn’t be like that.”

4.10 Jazzmin: “I see it more as control. Whereas you have the control over a situation, or over somebody else, or even yourself. Like how you think something should be done….”

4.11 Carlos: “The ability to perform something or do something… the measure of your ability to do something…”

4.12 Jimmy: “Power has lots of influence and…authority.”

These constructions of power align with the description in Burnham’s Managerial Revolution, which states that “modern power was first and foremost about the entitlement to manage people, to command, to set the rules of conduct, and extort obedience to the rules” (Bauman, 2001, p.40).

The descriptions of what makes one powerless again included money and strength,

4.13 Michael: “Money makes them powerless.”

4.14 Ricky: “A small little person who couldn’t hurt anyone else.”

with the addition of the importance of voice, of being heard and noticed by others, as a factor in power and powerlessness. In discussing what it looks like when someone has no power, students responded:

4.16 John: “They’re usually in the back. No one’s paying attention to them… They’re not saying much, no one can hear them.”

The importance of voice was a consistent thread in every interview. The students identified speaking your mind as a manifestation of power and a way of both taking and demonstrating power.

4.17 Yesenia: “If you don’t speak up, then you’re never really gonna’ have power. I think in order for you to have power you have to speak up for yourself and follow what you believe in.”

4.18 Michael: “Every time, you know, every time anywhere that you, you stay quiet and you don’t speak your mind, to me, that’s like, you just lost all the power you had.”

The use of first names in this paper is a case in point. In discussing the results of the observation and interviews, I’d planned to create pseudonyms, but when I told the class, the students protested. ‘No, Miss! I’m proud of what I said! I want people to know it was me!’

A second component present in every interview was community and the importance of connectedness. Students discussed at length their families, jobs, school, and friends, and were able to identify aspects of power that inform all of their relationships. Students report feeling powerful in the contexts in which they

are most closely connected to others, particularly in their families. In discussing how it feels to have power in her family, Edia said,

4.19 “It feels like you’re in your clouds. You’re, you’re queen, you’re… Nobody can stop you…Like on the highway. You’re going full speed. Imagine yourself on a mustang. Nobody there. No cops.… Feeling the breeze. That’s how I feel like.”

Conversely, in response to the question, ‘What does it feel like when you don’t have any power?’ Edia answered,

4.20 “It feels you’re dropping in a black hole that…you don’t see when to stop.”