 | | | | | Why I Love to Teach Theater!
 | | This is the theater room |
This is my classroom. I teach theater. Every Week, 350 students come into this
room to learn all about the Theater Arts. In this room, they are all important and precious and capable.
I firmly encourage and I happily celebrate and I tie shoes and I listen
and I praise and I scold and I feel the pain that they feel and I share
the joy that they feel and - most importantly - I remind each child
that they are important in this world and what they do matters and what
they say matters and how they feel matters!
And because of this, I know that what I do makes a difference in this
world. Some people may ask "why do you bother to teach theater to
little kids?" I say, "Because we have to."
The children develop higher order thinking skills because I teach them theater. They are kinder to each other and to themselves because they have learned the skills of cooperation and "sharing focus." They see the world differently because they have learned and practiced stories from around the globe - putting themselves in someone else's shoes. They take smarter risks because they believe they can, a skill they have learned through improvisation. They know that this whole small world is theirs. They know that their lives can be wonderful because they've seem the possibilities through theater.
These children see each other in theater. They see their families in theater. They see me in theater. They see themselves in theater.
The children see the possibilities of this world in theater and that is why I love to teach theater to kids.
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