TETA K-12 Committee
Middle School At Large
I want to welcome everyone back to school, and I hope that everyone got the rest and relaxation and battery charge that they need to get through the next school year (at least through Christmas break!). I hope that you got to read scripts, go to workshops, see plays, participate in community theatre, teach a camp, create art in some manner (do Pinterest boards count for that? hmmmm)…most importantly, to be INSPIRED! I know that we hear the refrain all of the time, “I wish that I was a teacher and got the whole summer off!” To which I reply, “But I don’t!” and once I give them a full run-down of my summer theatre activities, they usually shut up. I am thinking my whole summer pretty much boiled down to a week and a half, but that is OK…the month of June was filled by a local theatre camp that I am the director of, I read scripts in that week and a half at the beach, saw some great plays, had a BLAST at Summerfest and was inspired and learned a lot and had fun catching up with good friends…I have been working on getting a new community theatre off the ground with a group of like-minded individuals and East Texas theatre teachers, had a few gigs with my band, had a garden that pretty well died out….and in the middle of all of that, changed schools! But you know what? I did things that I WANTED to do and that recharged ME. (so don’t feel bad for me….as my friends tell me, I do it to myself!)
Ragland tip 101: I encourage you to find time for SOMETHING that is other than school. It can even be something that is NOT theatre (gasp!)! If you are a new teacher (or even a veteran, embattled, embittered and weary teacher), the best advice that I have for you is to do something for YOU that is NOT school related. FIND time. MAKE time. But do something that is only for YOU! Something that feeds your creative spirit. I promise you…you will be grateful that you did!
Now that we are all mourning the passing of summer, I encourage you to think ahead to the upcoming first few weeks. What are you going to do to build your program into an even bigger, better and stronger ensemble? What strategies do you have in place to help your students be successful in their classes? What strategies are you going to utilize to make sure that all of your students learn what you have set down as necessary (not to mention what the state of Texas says…and BTW there are new TEKS!) for them to know about theatre? What strategies do you have in place for that first audition and the angry emails from parents whose child didn’t get cast (and yes, it will happen)? What are you going to do to ensure a great teacher/student RELATIONSHIP with your students, because that relationship will either insure your success, or your defeat! I encourage you to be PROACTIVE and not reactive. Do not wait until it is too late to think about these things…even if school has begun for you, YOU CAN START THESE THINGS NOW! You are the only parent that many of your students will experience this year. What kind of parent will you be?
Finally, quite a few of us have seen the still open jobs on the different Theatre Teacher/Theatrefest Friends/UIL OAP Directors FB pages…it seems like there are more jobs than teachers?!? WHO WOULDA THUNK IT?!?! I encourage you to be an advocate for our profession; there is a teacher out there that made you want to become a theatre teacher, that inspired you to be where you are at today. TELL your students about local university theatre programs that include theatre education as a component (check out the Teacher Training Network on the TETA website for information about colleges and universities in Texas who offer a theatre education degree)…it should be one of the choices that you give them as a profession in theatre! BE that type of teacher that inspired you, and encourage those students that you think would be a FABULOUS future teacher to go for it. Go the extra mile; help them find the programs that are out there! I didn’t say that you were passing the torch now, but one day you will need to…will there be someone there to accept the challenge and continue the calling that we feel? GO FORTH, LIVE LONG AND PROSPER…and have an AWESOME YEAR!