Song of Myself:
Janet Girardeau
When I entered
Graduate School in Educational Theatre at City College, it was for several
reasons. I had worked as a teaching artist in many settings (schools, camps,
prisons, senior centers, after school settings) and felt a graduate degree
would help strengthen my skills and weight in the job market. I was in need
of training in more current practices,
deep and thoughtful stimulation from leaders in the current field and exposure
to in-school practises by dedicated in-school Theatre Teachers. I was ready to
commit to teaching in a deeper way while still keeping the acting career I have
always loved a part of my life as well.
City College
Educational Theatre Program has been everything I have wanted it to be and
more. I have gone through the program slowly, juggling a family and work
responsibilities. I have tried to savor each and every experience, watched many
colleagues go before and start after me and exultantly watched them graduate
taking notes and wringing our collective time together dry for meaning,
experience and learning. When it came time for student teaching, I have given
it a considerable amount of thought. I wanted to spend my time with two people
whom I admire, respect and who I could also pump for wisdom, inspiration and advice,
I’m ecstatic to
report that my first semester has been nothing short of amazingly fulfilling
and everything I hoped it would be. My friend Jenny Lombard had invited me to
see her Shakespeare work with her fourth graders and I had ended up staying and
seeing her storytelling classes with third and second grades also. This led me
to conclude that she has a firm grasp on how to get the most potential out of
each child, how to really and truly enrich the creative environment of the
school with her creative endeavors and how to stimulate the intellectual
curiosity of the students. I asked her if I could student teach with her when
the time came, and she said “Sure!”.
Planning my
schedule when this Fall approached involved turning it upside down. I’m an
older student. I consider myself pretty loose and flexible, but the time
commitment involved in student teaching(even part time) is HUGE. It’s also
delightful- the very best part of my week hands down. Jenny felt I would get
the most out of the experience if I came there on Thursdays and Fridays, two
heavy workdays for me, so I changed my work schedule and lost some income, but
she was right. I got a chance to see and help her do the same lesson more or
less FIVE times on Thursdays. This meant I could lead a different part of the
lesson each time, as I learned it, and then a full lesson as well. Then she
could give me notes and I could practise again on Friday with her last third
grade storytellers class of the week. This repetition proved to be incredibly
helpful to me.
What I have
enjoyed most is her calm, steady, no nonsense approach. Yes, she gets sleep
deprived, tired and cranky, just as I seem to do way too often. But what I am
most impressed with is that year after year, day after day, I have witnessed
her being present 110% and bringing her all to the kids. She is constantly
revising her lessons, going over them to make sure she is presenting the lesson
in the best, most effective way possible. She is constantly challenging the
kids to do the same, to bring their best selves to the work. What I admire MOST
is that she challenges the kids to step UP in terms of performance. She breaks
down her subject, be it fairy tale theatre, shadow puppetry, improvisational
games, storytelling skills or Shakespeare, Then, she doesn’t talk down to them.
She talks UP. Everyone in the room sits a little higher and feels a little
richer after the first five minutes. They listen attentively and are challenged
and stimulated. She enhances their intelligence. The boys and girls laugh at
the romantic language but then they leap up to become a soldier, woodsman or
King and cannot wait to try out the exercise, story or language. In a matter of
minutes she has 30 kids in the palm of her hand.
Jenny Lombard has
given me step by step instructions for how to become a successful classroom
teacher. I tend to have way too many ideas and a hard time harnessing them into
a workable approach. She has consistently and patiently shown me how to break
those ideas down and organize them into a workable, manageable series of
meal-sized lessons that again, improve literacy, socio-emotional skills,
writing and reading comprehension, following directions, creative writing and
speaking, and links her lessons effortlessly into the Common Core. I see her
students walk out refreshed and excited by learning. I see Jenny tired but
energized at the end of the day.
She has likened
teaching in this way to acting in that visualizing and focusing on an objective
is the key. Getting yourself and your students to another place by the end of
the lesson, and focusing from the get-go on where you want them to be by the
end of the lesson, at a new and different destination, is the aim and goal.
Everyone is changed by this artistic endeavor. As Maxine Green(Philosopher in
Residence at Columbia and Lincoln Center Institute) has stated, “Imagination is
the capacity to open spaces, to see the world differently, to be transformed.”
Jenny is one of Theatre Education’s foot soldiers.
What we’re trying
to do in this noble profession on most days is just survive but occasionally
enrich. To give the children back to themselves. To play.To quote Maxine Green,
to “live in ambiguity”. To expose the children’s artist souls to themselves for
them to rediscover, explore, enjoy and then do with as they can and as they
wish. I have been so lucky to study by the side of some of these gifted
comrades. To quote Jenny, “While student teaching can be inspiring, your first
few years of teaching will be hard, hard and harder,” so the enrichment is a
gift that comes back to reward both student and
teacher.
Have you reckoned a thousand acres much?
Have you reckoned the earth much?
Have you practised so long to learn
to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the
meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and
you shall possess the meaning of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the
earth and sun -- there are millions of suns left,
You
shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes
of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes
either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and
filter them from yourself.
Walt
Whitman
From
“Song of Myself”
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