Learning and Teaching

So last week I did a training with The Leadership Program, an awesome organization that I taught with for a little bit last spring and hopefully I’ll be doing more with them this year. The training was called SOAR: Non-traditional Counseling and Classroom Management. It was actually a really great way to jump back into life here in New York. It was based in some psychological theories that the foundation of our sense of self comes from the holding environment established by the biological mother within the first couple years of life. Some children are unfortunately “dropped” from their holding environment resulting in them being insecurely attached.

We talked about how we can create a holding environment within our interaction with kids, try to address the needs of our students, and recognize that behaviors don’t define people. Instead of thinking- that’s a shy child or an angry child, to say/think that child is exhibiting shy or angry behavior. All this information was alongside awesome bonding and team-building exercises, role plays, and of course lots of processing.

It’s funny, throughout the whole thing I just kept thinking how I could apply the training to working with Israeli and Palestinian kids. Conflict resolution tactics buzzed in my head. Palestine and Israel are definitely on my mind everywhere I go.

I’m teaching on Tuesdays for a middle school drama club in Manhattan (where I worked last spring) and today was the first day. It was so invigorating to use some of the recent things I learned, and also humbling. I have so much more learn in being an effective and inspiring teacher. I want my students to be challenged, to think for themselves, to open up, to surprise me (and themselves too). Sometimes I really don’t know why I’m so passionate about theatre, but god I love it.