Supreme moment today was when one of my six grade students came up to me and said "I have something for you!"
She unfolded a post-it note with a drawing of me with the caption--Ms Lindsay--Drama Queen. "'Cause you like drama so much. Look, it's you with your braids." (I have a trademark multi-braid hairstyle that I wore yesterday.)
Ahhhh...they like me, they really, really like me.
Just wrapped my second five-week, after school drama class for middle schoolers. Wow! What fun!
The secret, it seems, is to teach them to channel their hormonal insanity into dramatic and emotional characters, or as I like to say "Keep your drama on the page or the stage."
Middle schoolers are the biggest divas in the world (both the boys and the girls). They got so much "I" in them, their narcissism is so thick. But, that's what they gotta have right? The whole idea of their age is to begin to separate THEIR self from those other selves around them. A strong "I" is required to do such a thing.
Grown ups need to understand this better. One of the parents who came to our performance today, a Russian immigrant with a very strong accent, started talking to me about how his daughter wants to be an actress. (She's pretty good. She just might do it--if she can lose her beautiful accent.)
He thanked me for working with her and said "I tell Marianna last night that your job is so much more important. You're the producer. You make things happen." He held up his hand demonstrating a puppeteer.
I tried not to laugh, I guess this is one place where my puppet-master tendencies are well placed. But, I wanted to tell him that telling his daughter what she "should" do at this age is an exercise in futility. You gotta find some way to get their friends to tell them they should do it.
For example, today some kids were assigned to play drama with me in reading class. Two boys immediately went into resister mode. One of them, Joe, went ballistic and started saying "It's not fair. This is stupid."
When I calmly asked him what was stupid, he said "This! I hate doing this. I hate reader's theater. It's stupid." Of course that's his usual response to anything, the poor kid is a motherless, homeless couch surfer (couch-surfing sounds like it might be fun--big waves, no responsibilities, no parents--but for a little fifth grader--it sucks!)
I said, "Why don't you go and take a little time out and well talk later."
So, once i got my other kids settled, I went back to talk to him, "Hey, I'm not going to make you do this. If you don't want to do the plays, you can pick your own book and read that."
"I'm just gonna sit here."
I said, "Okay." And walked away to my other students.
Then, I gave the play to the other resister and said, "Hey, try reading this. You might like it. I picked this one because the characters would be great for Joe. 'Cause that character jumps and spins and makes cool noises just like Joe."
The resister started reading it. "Can we do this one?"
I said, "Yeah, but I'll have to pull one of the kids from the other groups, since Joe doesn't want to do it."
"Can I see if Joe wants to?"
"Sure. Hey Joe, Bob wants to talk to you."
Sure enough, Joe signed onto the script. And he's gonna rock at it. Just because his friend wanted him too."
And that, my friends, is today's report from middle school drama land.
