Project 1, Lerini Giana

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Wayne State University *

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3010

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English

Date

Jun 5, 2024

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docx

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Uploaded by DrBuffalo4402

1 Giana Lerini K.M. Begian Lewis English 3010 Sec. 007 January 27, 2024 Researching the Discourse Community of High School Theater Teachers At this point in my life my major field of study is theater with a focus in acting. My long term goals are to get a teaching degree so that I am qualified to teach theater at least at the high school level. I am currently in my second year of studying theater and I have performed, designed, directed, etc. in shows since I was eleven years old. So since this will be my ninth year having been involved in this field in some way. I already know a lot about this field of work. I have worked with many directors and each time I find that there are techniques that I really love about them and others that are not so great. So I hope to combine all of my favorite techniques that I have learned and establish the best learning environment for a student as possible, whilst also producing good quality theater. I know that this position will most likely require me to teach some form of theater or acting class during the day, and then after school I will be required to direct at least two productions a year. I am interested in this field because I have done so many shows at many different theaters, majority of the time with directors who were mean and did not care about student’s well-being in the long run. I want to provide students with a safe environment that will encourage them to develop a love for the arts. I know that in order to be really successful in this field I will need to be able to not only produce good quality shows and be a good teacher in the classroom, but I will also have to deal with the parents of students as well as students themselves who will want to speak with me about class or about a production.

2 Seeing as this is a field with the arts, and a lot of times people’s emotions get involved, I will need to communicate clearly and with compassion. In order to find out what professionals in my field research and write about, I plan to interview my father, who is the president of the worker’s union of my younger sister’s school district, on what teachers research and write about. As well as who they speak to on a daily basis. I also plan on researching online and trying to find some type of article or website that will provide some insight to who I will be speaking to. My main question is how communicating with different groups of people in this job will differ. Between the other teachers in the school and the parents of the kids it will be a very wide range of the people and type of communication I will need to have with everyone. After having researched this question I have come to the discovery that my main concern should be to learn how to constantly change the way in which I communicate with people based on the circumstances and how the interaction is going. Such as emailing the principal will be a very different interaction from seeing another teacher that I know in the hallway. First I started looking for different websites or articles or websites that might provide me with some insight. When I went to search the question “theater teacher discourse community” the very first thing to pop up was exactly the kind of article I was looking for. The article “Community through Discourse: Reconceptualizing Introduction to Theatre” by Amy Hughes talks about the different ways that theater teachers communicate in a classroom setting and what the best ways to do that are. Granted this specific article is aimed to be used in a college setting, after looking at it the basic ideas can be useful for any theater educator. The first thing is that the teacher should not be the main focus but instead should be a facilitator and fellow learner (Hughes. 87) This is really interesting to me because it really showcases the differences between

3 learning about a set in stone topic, such as math, and teaching students about the arts. The arts are so special because it is so subjective and every student may have a different opinion. I thought that the general argument of this article was really interesting because it talked about how to teach theater in a more productive way than the traditional forms of teaching, specifically in American school systems. I then broadened my research when I looked for specifically “teacher discourse”. My thought process behind this was that a theater teacher would most likely have to adhere to the normal rules of discourse as any other teacher in a high school. I found another article entitled “Elementary School Science Teachers Discourse and on the Job Learning About Student Motivation” written by Wisam Sedawi, Livat Eschar-Netz, Hasida Yakovov, and Dana Vedder- Weiss. They bring up the idea that teaching requires a lot of on the job training (Sedawi et al. 2326) After thinking about this it actually made a lot of sense, as each school district has different rules and different expectations, as will the staff of the school itself. As a teacher you will send emails to the principal of the school as well as the other teachers in your school and district. Also each class of students is different so you have to be able to be able to read them and their personality as a whole so that you are able to provide them with the most information in the clearest way for them. Finally I was able to interview my father on who teachers normally interact with on a day to day basis. His answers to my questions basically confirmed what I had already assumed about the discourse community by saying that teachers normally communicate with “other teachers, students, parents, the principal, and a social worker”(Lerini). I was a bit surprised to see that high school teachers would communicate with a social worker, but after thinking about it I understand why. High school teachers have to deal with so many personalities of students. I can only

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