Vygotsky

The cool thing about theatre is that we kind of always are incorporating Vygotsky and his theory.  In the sense that in order for one to become a better performer, they need to practice of course, but they need to push themselves just outside their comfort zone, or in this case, the Zone of Proximal Development.  The zone of proximal development, AKA the ZPD, is a range of tasks or objectives that one is ready to accomplish with help to get them to the next level of understanding.  Actors work with each other and with a director to get to that next level, as do teachers.

Fellow actors, students, directors, teachers.  All of these things could be known as people who are More Knowledgeable Others, or someone who has experience in a certain area of learning.  They can help guide one to becoming a better performer.  In high school, that typically will fall to the teacher, AKA me.  We help students to get to that next level of understanding in performance.

In theatre, one subject is easily connected to another part of theatre.  So internalization of material and knowledge is easily transferable between all of the theatre world.   No matter where you go, you can understand theatre, even if you don't know the language.  You can understand what they are wanting or what an actors objective is by understanding how facial expressions and body gestures work.  How the tone in one's voice portrays emotions.  We teach all of that in the classroom!

In this link, you will find a PDF that talks about the framework of theatre in school.  On page 9, you can find on the side that theatre's work from one class to the next is scaffolded, giving the students the education they need succeed as they progress in theatre and learn more in depth techniques, continuing outside of high school and to the college level and beyond.  We have scaffolding techniques for a specific unit but that unit in and of itself is its own scaffolding to understand the next unit.  That's what I love about theatre, and why I can't wait to teach it in the classroom!

Teachers behavior in the classroom should be driven to help students understand that what they bring to the classroom (their background, their experiences, their life) can help them understand the relevance of the topic for the day.  We as teachers need to be aware of our students backgrounds to an extent so that we can relate the material to them.  Helping them to internalize that something that they learned at home can apply to the work at hand in class.