Teaching Philosophy

“Once in New York, I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons. The prison industry needs to plan its future growth. How many cells are they going to need? How many prisoners are there going to be? 15 years from now? And they found they could predict the answer very easily using a pretty simple algorithm based on asking what percentage of 10 and 11 year olds couldn’t read. And certainly couldn’t read for pleasure. Fiction and plays can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you’ve never been. Once you’ve visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world you grew up in. Political movements, personal movements- all begin with people imaging another way of existing.” - Neil Gaiman

My teaching philosophy would be best summed up in one word: perspective. I would like to leave every student in my classes with a new-founded open-minded perspective with which to view the world, the arts, and the rest of humanity. I find that too often the minds of my students are wilted with dogmatic principles and generalities that rarely apply to the work we do in the subjective realm of theatre. Our children are being ‘left behind’ in a system that is failing to broaden their horizons and give them the tools to succeed in an ever increasing specialized and complicated world. I am an artist first, an educator second- let’s call me a collaborator. I am not separate from the students. I am a collaborator on their journey to find themselves through education in theatre. I want to find a way to approach material that is an alternative to the quantitative modes of learning that many find themselves in.

I believe that the study of art is a journey, a pathway the heart takes and comes out anew, different, and altogether more empathetically human. This art, theatre, saved my life at a time when I was vulnerable in my education of self. In college at Florida State University, I worked with tireless educators and professionals that taught me the value of perspective. They showed me how to approach text in plays from all angles, how to dig deep in order to access the hidden parts of myself that would eventually fully develop, and gave me a way to articulate this passion which I am now able, with more experience, to pass on. I believe that the greatest gift a teacher can give a student is an evident love and passion for the subject they teach. My passion for this art form has brought me back to the theatre time and time again to create a new sense of wonder for myself in this work, something I strive to give as a gift to my students. I can only hope to encourage the same wonder I felt at 14 years old when I first saw A Streetcar Named Desire live at my local community theatre. I still consider that moment in time as what set my aimless life on a course with direction and meaning.

I happened upon an opportunity to teach at an economically disenfranchised school in one of the worst counties for education in our country. Lucky for me, the school had a Drama Program, and the students were ready and willing to be transported through education and let the diversity of their backgrounds be an asset to our work, not a hindrance. Though the students had much more on their minds than I ever did at that age- absentee parents, neighborhoods where they feared to walk alone, limited ability to feed themselves, etc.- they garnered an incredible maturity that allowed them to do complex work. This work helped them to steer in a positive direction and my collaboration with them for that year will always be remembered by me as the toughest, but most immensely rewarding year of my life.

Within the bounds of our National Standards for teaching theatre, I was given great leeway and surveyed the students on all aspects of theatre to discover what would best service them. I gave them opportunities to develop and create their own work and they ran with it. They found new ways to approach old ideas that became their creative, and in most cases their only, outlet to express themselves in the fractured world in which they lived. I found my voice in this process as many of them went on to become award winning performers and garner college scholarships for their hard work. The students inspired me with their insight to take “old” pieces, if subjective art forms could ever be described as such, and make them new and relevant, something I still try to bring to everything I work on today.

My work at this high school inspired me to want to pursue my Masters in Directing, so that I could follow my passion for teaching in a more controlled and voluntary environment. I feel this background was helpful in approaching the complexity of working with undergraduate students of wide diversity in education and financial statuses. While working to obtain my MFA, I found that many of the students I shared classes with were taken aback, bothered by, or disinterested in many different works of art they were being introduced to on a daily basis. My goal as an educator is to help students to stop seeing the differences between themselves and the piece of art, and instead help them find the humanist element that makes the piece ultimately relatable to them. I value the contributions of students from all backgrounds and diversities and want to work with them to find common ground on the belief that we are all humans first, everything else second. Art and the love of art are both undeniably subjective. No one student, professor, actor, director, designer, playwright will be the same as any other. Therefore, my teaching must be flexible to find a way to connect the dots on a stage and in their work; connect the dots within the space between two people, connect the dots between the actor and their character, the actor and his/her method, the student and myself. Theatre attempts to define the world around us. I attempt instill within a student the ability to negotiate their relationship with the world and in turn, find a new perspective on which to claim their stake in it.