Awareness

Continuing on with our focus on Social and Emotional Learning (check out our other posts about SEL here), this post is filled to the brim with self-reflection journal prompts. Teachers can use these prompts for start-of-class brainstorming, end-of-class exit slips, journaling exercises, or classroom discussion prompts. You can also have students answer the questions as if they were a character in the play you are currently studying, or as an acting exercise in character if you are currently producing a play. Self-reflection is a useful tool for students to help them learn more about themselves. You’ll find various prompts below, plus some bonus prompts in the giveaway. Encourage students to go into as much detail as possible when responding to the prompts. If students are responding to these prompts in character or about a character, have them include evidence from the text. Self-Awareness1. List five things you are good at. 2. List five things that make you happy. 3. Name a goal you’d like to achieve in the next six months. 4. What is important to you? Why is it important? Self-Management1. How do you keep track of your responsibilities? 2. What motivates you? 3. How do you cope when things go wrong? 4. How do you manage stress? Social Awareness1. What is your definition of social awareness? 2. Have you ever imagined being in someone else’s shoes? Describe it. 3. How do you show respect? 4. When was the last time you paid someone a compliment? Who could you compliment today? Relationship Skills1. Are you an effective communicator? Why or why not? 2. What does a healthy relationship look like? 3. What do you do when others disagree with you? 4. Why do relationships fail? Responsible Decision Making1. How many decisions have you made today? 2. Is it easy or difficult for you to make decisions? 3. What was the last mistake you made? What did you learn from it? 4. Have you ever purposefully made the wrong decision?

The concept of SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) was defined by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) more than two decades ago to promote equity and excellence in education through social and emotional learning. SEL is defined as: “The process through which students gain and effectively apply the knowledge , attitudes , and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and express empathy for others, develop and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.” CASEL identifies the five categories of Social and Emotional Learning as follows: • Self-Awareness (self-knowledge, identity, self-observation, growth mindset) • Self-Management (emotional intelligence, self-regulation, personal responsibility, personal empowerment, coping strategies) • Social Awareness (empathy and diversity, interpersonal skills, awareness of others, compassion, respect) • Relationship Skills (communication, collaboration, connection, negotiation and resolution, community mindset) • Responsible Decision Making (making ethical choices, critical thinking, leadership, analyzing and deciding, analysis mindset) In our upcoming blog posts, we’ll dive into the details of each of the five categories of SEL to help you incorporate these concepts into the drama classroom, as well as apply them to your daily life as a teacher to help you with classroom management, relationship building, and reducing stress. As a drama teacher, you likely already incorporate SEL into your daily lessons without realizing it, through things like critical thinking exercises, character analysis projects, collaboration games, problem-solving challenges, and self-reflections. Actively incorporating SEL concepts into your lessons can help students develop these skills and apply them to their lessons in drama class and their everyday lives. To get you started with SEL in the drama classroom, try this mini exercise with your class, which focuses on self-awareness. Visualizing Emotion1. Divide students into small groups of three to four. 2. Give students a problem that evokes an emotion, such as failing a test, getting caught sneaking out of the house, or overhearing a friend gossiping about you. 3. Have each group identify the emotion being evoked (it might be different from group to group). 4. Each group will create a tableau (frozen picture) scene to visualize the emotion. Have each group present their tableau scene to the rest of the class. 5. Try the exercise again using mimed movement to create a scene that visualizes the emotion (10 seconds or less). 6. Have students complete an individual exit slip: Think about the problem your group received during the Visualizing Emotion exercise. Did you initially feel the same emotion that your group decided to portray? If so, how might you portray that emotion as an individual? If not, what emotion would you choose to portray and how would you do it?

Being aware of your surroundings is a vital part of being an actor. Students must know what’s going on around them at all times. This is important from a theatrical standpoint – unless otherwise directed, the flow of movement must be smooth and specific. The characters go where they need to go and move where they need to move in order to tell the story. As well, students must be mindful of what their fellow performers are doing at all times. They need to keep their focus not only on their own lines and blocking, but ensure that they are blending in seamlessly with the rest of the performers and helping to elevate the story of the scene in a positive way. Spatial awareness is also vitally important from the perspective of pure safety. Students can’t be tripping over others, banging into sets, and stumbling over props and furniture. This is especially important if they are doing a lot of movement, such as dancing, tumbling, or stage combat. Students need to be aware of their surroundings at all times so they don’t hurt themselves or their peers. Clear communication is important, even if it’s not verbally announced – students must be observant and aware at all times. This is doubly important if something goes wrong, such as if a fellow actor trips and falls, or a prop is accidentally dropped or broken onstage – which will inevitably happen at some point. Spatial awareness, non-verbal communication, and observation skills can all be practiced with the popular improv game called “Sit, Stand, Kneel.” It is often used to help students explore levels in a scene to make it more dynamic and visually interesting, which is another benefit to the game. “Sit, Stand, Kneel” seems simple (and slightly silly) when you first explain it, but it can be challenging when students get up to try it. The game is played as follows: • Three students perform an improvised scene. • Assign a setting, such as in a doctor’s office, at school, on a movie set, at a picnic, in the jungle, etc. • This keeps the scene focused but fairly open-ended. • At all times throughout the scene, one student must be standing, one must be sitting, and one must be kneeling. • When one student changes position, the other two must adjust accordingly. For example, if the sitting student stands up, the standing student must either kneel or sit. If they choose to kneel, then the kneeling student must also change to whatever the other two students aren’t doing. • Here’s the tricky part: Students can only stay in one position for a maximum of five seconds. If you want to play the game with two students, reduce the game to “Sit, Stand.” If you have up to five students per group, include “lying down” and/or “standing on a chair/rehearsal block.” The challenge is for students to not only be aware of what their group members are doing and adjust their movements accordingly (without obviously saying “I’m going to stand up now”), but also to try and have their movements make some sort of sense with the scene that they are performing. For example, if the scene is set in a doctor’s office, perhaps the student sitting is the patient, while the kneeling student is the doctor taking their temperature, while the standing student is a nurse examining an x-ray. However, how does that change when the “patient” decides to stand up? What action or line provokes the change? Do the “doctor” and “nurse” notice, and how do they react? How does this affect the flow of the scene? Have your students try the game, and then reflect back on their experience.