The Teacher Inquiry Workshop as Theater (First Draft)
Of all the components of the Summer Institute experience I’ve come to know over these past three summers, it is the Teacher Inquiry Workshop, or the TIW, that continues to fascinate me. Perhaps this is because I’ve presented workshops for years without stress or difficulty, yet struggled personally with this particular model. Perhaps my fascination lies in my role as a Returning Fellow who is charged to coach new fellows in the creation of their own TIW’s. In my case, I am involved daily in the old adage, “Teach what you need most to learn.” And despite creating three TIW’s myself, coaching fellows over the past two years, and being a participant in countless TIW’s through our three summer institutes and the HVWP’s Saturday Seminar series, I find there is still more to learn about this engaging practice of professional development.
Throughout the first days of our Summer Institute, we have spent a great deal of time reflecting on the particular nature of the Teacher Inquiry Workshop. Each of the Summer Institute’s Co-Directors gave a TIW in the first days of the summer institute, as did each of the three returning fellows who would serve as coaches for the summer institute fellows. Many of these experienced TIW presenters would step outside of the moment of the TIW, to offer an aside about what component they were involved in at the present moment. A handout, entitled Elements of a HVWP Teacher Inquiry Workshop, was distributed at our first orientation meeting, to use as a shared reference point, and many ensuing full group and small group discussions were moderated to build on these elements.
These discussions, presentations and readings have distilled within me a shorter list of criteria, which guide my coaching sessions, and help me to view the many TIW’s I’ll experience over the course of this summer. My short list is as follows:
*Many invitations are given to think about, write, comment or ask questions about the workshop experience.
*The presenter’s “problem and context for my work” is described, and the origins of this teaching problem are discussed.
*One or several engaging literacy experiences are crafted so that seminar participants can experience an aspect of what the presenter’s students experience.
*Data for the presenter’s hypothesis about the teaching problem is drawn from actual student work. This work is carefully selected to sustain rich conversation about the practice being presented.
*Timing is essential, for each of these various components are essential in the TIW model, and the weight we give them reflects our own values as a presenter.
All of these components are balanced and reciprocal in nature. If we neglect to discuss our problem and hypothesis, we risk the danger of losing the relevancy of our work in the eyes of the participants. We therefore lose a sense of empathy, or the TIW’s special sense that this is “real work coming from a real teacher who struggles as I do with his/her own special problems.” If we neglect to select and discuss student work, we lose the authenticity of the work. We must emphasis that this is not theoretical practice, but actual practice being examined, with all its achievements, failures and serendipitous surprises preserved. If we neglect to craft a meaningful literacy experience for our participants, we lose a chance to draw in our participants to have them consider our practice within their own classrooms. We understand that it is only the rich experiences that have changed us in some way that we will bring to our students and our classrooms. We have to have faith that the hard work of changing standard, traditional practices will be worth it, for our students and for ourselves as learners.
DRAMATIC STRUCTURE AND THE TIW
But how to balance these components? This was the task that was clearly most problematic for me, and for the fellows I had been called upon to coach. As I considered the delicate interplay of these components within the fixed structure of the 80 minute TIW, and how I might best convey this interplay to those fellows I was working with, I thought about the structures of other rich literacy experiences I’ve had. I recently attended a performance of King Lear on the college campus which houses our Writing Project site, and perhaps this was filling me. I had also seen a popular movie, starring many gifted actresses, which fell flat for me, not on the basis of the acting or cinematography, but because I felt that the basic elements of dramatic structure were ignored in either the direction or the writing of the film. I began my undergraduate career as a theater major, and having taken four solid years of Dramatic Literature courses, the dramatic structure of a play lives within me as a powerful scaffold. Might I ask the fellows I coach to think about the TIW as theater, as a piece in three acts? As a carefully crafted literacy experience, could it be built on this dramatic scaffold that exists within me? Do my colleagues have this internal framework as well, drawn from a lifetime of involvement in great literature?
THE FIRST ACT.
What occurs in the first act of a play? From the moment the curtain rises, we are instantly on alert. We are immersed in another world. It is in the first act that we learn about the characters, the setting and are introduced to the problem in a way that involves us. We feel a connection to the problem, a stake somehow. In a play, we are drawn in, we learn to care about the characters, we are interested in what is going to happen. We are sympathetic in some way.
As the curtain goes up in King Lear, I meet Cordelia and her sisters, Lear himself in all his pomposity, and get a sense of the political and familial struggles. I am moved by Cordelia’s inability to voice her deepest love for her father in a public way. As I sat in my seat in the theater, enjoying the spare set design that offered such an uncluttered stage for brewing emotions of the characters, I was filled with anticipation. There was much to focus on, but for me, who grew up without a father, I was intrigued by the problematic relationship of Cordelia and Lear. I am captured, hooked. I wanted, maybe even needed, to see her relationship with her father nurtured and protected, and the misunderstandings and feelings of hurt and loss resolved.
Could this be what we hope for in the opening moments of a Teacher Inquiry Workshop? As we get a sense of who the players are in this teacher’s personal drama, we also need to see how this might connect in some way to our own lives and the dramas taking place within our classrooms. A carefully designed literacy experience, even a brief one, that connects us to our prior knowledge or experiences in a fairly deep way, that stirs a voice within us that has been stilled, or touches a deep place of memory, goes a long way to “hooking” us as participants. We have to have an opening for caring about this practice, to keep us involved. As I cared for Cordelia, and would grow to care about Lear and Gloucester and Edgar, I was kept emotionally on edge, poised somehow, in an active way. That’s how I hope my participants feel as I end the first five or ten minutes of my TIW.
THE SECOND ACT.
It is here that we grow to live within the problem, alongside the characters. We care about the problem, because we’ve lost touch with our own issues, and are now involved in how this work engages us, the learner, in a meaningful way. In a play, we suspend our own disbelief through the involving actions of the characters. In King Lear, as I watch with horror the evil machinations of Regen and Goneril, pity the blindness (both figurative and literal) of Gloucester, and laugh at the antics of the fool and the dissembling of Mad Tom, I am engaged deeply, in a multitude of ways.
In the TIW, the presenter has crafted an important activity or series of activities, to enable this response. We are not thrown into the actual action of the play, we remain in our seats, but with our emotional involvement, we are living the play alongside the characters. We have given ourselves over to the problem in some essential way, perhaps through a meaningful writing experience, a powerful reading of a new text, a deep conversation with a partner. We are engaged deeply in the new land the presenter has created for us. There is a suspension of judgment and evidence of involvement in our active participation. This may be a time for an extended writing experience, or a deep reading of a text, followed by a discussion with another participant. There may be a call to share writing or realizations in small or large group discussions, to answer, “How did it feel to be immersed in this work? What happened for you?” and to demonstrate through the sharing of written work that a deep participation occurred.
At the intermission between acts during King Lear, I was asked to comment on how I liked the play so far. I could barely answer this question, because I was deeply involved in the stirring of many emotions within me, as I watched the suffering that occurred between parent and child, the misunderstandings, the pain inflicted. Some kind of connection was occurring internally to my relationships with my own three boys, the pain of our recent divorce, the messages misunderstood, the words unsaid, all this internal processing occurring, while still participating actively in the actions of the characters. It was almost too early to be asked this question, and I wonder, in Shakespeare’s time, whether the plays were given without an intermission, to keep the flow of the words and action as written. A much better question would be, “What are you thinking about right now?”
I think of one of the TIW’s I created last summer, Thank You, Patricia Polacco: Authors as Co-Teachers. It is a TIW I’ve been asked to present many times over the course of this year, and one that I am constantly revising. In this TIW, in my own ‘second act’ I demonstrated the practice of reading a picture book through from start to finish, without stopping for comments and questions, letting the carefully written, painstakingly chosen words, ring out uncluttered by commentary. This practice, which I had read about in Katey Wood Ray’s Wondrous Words was my TIW’s deepest moment, I realize, and each time I give this TIW, I am rewarded to hear that the participants were moved to hear a book, in this case, Thank You, Mr. Falker, in its entirety. I gave value to the literacy practice of the read aloud by the amount of time I allocated to it, a full twenty minutes. People wrote afterwards, drawing from a page in the text that resonated for them in some way. This was the practice my first and second grade students had also done. Participants wrote freely, and eagerly, and had a lot to say about the text and illustrations, as did my own students. We were all caught by the story, several participants in this TIW have cried or gotten choked up, and many of us were able to relate to the main character’s feelings of loss, her academic struggles, and her experience of bullying. I may revise many parts of this TIW, but the data that my participants have given me, in their active involvement, in their heartfelt writing, and in their later letters of reflection, enable me to keep this as worthwhile practice to share.
As I consider this in relation to my coaching, I hope that the fellows will not feel the need to rush these authentic moments, or rush to provide commentary. As a creator of the TIW, we need to believe in our own ability to chose those moments that have resonated for our students, and to present them in a way that will enable the participants to fall deeply into the practice. Imagine Shakespeare appearing onstage to explain Lear’s actions and motivations! Instead he trusts the life he has breathed into the characters he creates, and we not only believe in them, for the life of the play, but in some real way live alongside them on the stage.
A THIRD ACT.
This is where we see how the problem was resolved by the characters in the play. In the TIW, we examine the student work. We think about how the stated problem of the first act was brought to bear in the presenter’s classroom. We begin to think about our own classrooms, our own cast of characters. We wonder how our students might be challenged or supported by the problem and practice the presenter has created. We take time to reflect on our classroom’s and students, with the presenter, to see how this relates to us, to our practice. We think about how we were affected by both living in the moment of the TIW, and how we might incorporate some aspect of this practice within our own work.
Again, as I think about the reflections of my participants in my TIW, it is the reader response moments that resonated. One teacher speaks of how this book would work very well with her seniors during a unit on personal narrative, an ESL teacher may use this book with her students, and have them write about moments when they’ve felt like outsiders within their learning communities. One teacher states, “I’ve read this book before to my class, but it meant something to me to hear it. Somehow, I never noticed the illustrations in such depth before.” I make a note, for I had made a conscious decision to present every page on the overhead, so that when we discussed the text, we would do so with the illustrations in front of us. In fact, much of our discussion of the book involves the illustrations that pair with the text. Again, this responds to a decision I made in ‘casting’ this book in the main role. It is written and illustrated by Patricia Polacco, and is, in fact, explores the relationship between her art and her literacy in fascinating, multilayered ways. I take in these conversations, jot down notes, make my own observations, knowing I will process this information at another time.
As theater-goers, we are left considering the broader themes of the work we have just experienced. As I left the theater after seeing King Lear, I was considering the themes of pity and pride, the dissolution of aging, and the power and peril in the sibling bond, and of course, what it means to be a parent. I was ready to leave the action of the play behind, having experienced the catharsis of the tragedy, and consider what this means in my own life. Finally, I was able to take up the earlier issues of my own parenting, my own fraught sibling relationships, the reality of my aging parent. I imagined going from the play to a pub with Will Shakespeare, and sitting with him over a mug of ale, and sharing with him all that his play had churned up within me. I imagine him, sitting there next to me, sipping his bitter draught, and nodding sagely as I tell him of my three kids, my old mother, my lost father, and my efforts to make sense of it all. And what would Shakespeare be doing? Maybe Will would be fiddling in his pocket for a slip of paper and a stub of a pencil, to write down a bit of what had occurred for me in seeing his play, as further fodder for his next play. What would his thoughts be? Would he argue with me or agree with me over the themes or import of his play? I think not. He put his best work out there into the world, and said, “I tried this….What do you think?” I believe Will would be content that I was sitting there pondering the greater questions of his piece, evidence that his work had merit in its power to make me think and consider, and maybe even reconsider my life and work and relationships? This is the learner stance I would hope our teaching fellows demonstrate throughout the TIW, and especially as they come to the end of their TIW, and ask participants to process the experience they have created.
AND FINALLY…
Were I writing a theater review, I might consider how well the various elements of the experience (the direction, the acting, the text, the set) worked together to bring me to this exact moment, sitting in a pub with William Shakespeare, moved by what I had just experienced. Why do I care about this particular theater experience? How has this play touched me? How did it change my thinking or reinforce my commitment to a particular idea? What part was particularly effective? My experience of King Lear was affected by the choice of the director to cast two Equity actors in the roles of Lear and Gloucester. Their work, alongside the summer stock student actors, was remarkable and rich, and worked to move me deeper into my own reflections of aging and parenting. Yet, I yearned, at the end of the play, for similar strong character actors in the roles of Goneril and Regen, so that I might move from a place of thinking them to be cartoon-like in their villainy. In a way, their inexperience was a distraction, especially compared to the brilliance of the venerable old men. I would ask the director a question about this, had you considered more experienced actors in those roles?
As I look again at my TIW, which was supposed to be about mentor texts and the role of craft in writing instruction, I can see that the strength of my TIW lies not in its discussion of craft, but rather, in the powerful experience of the read aloud and reader response writing. Those literacy experiences are my Lear and Gloucester actors. I need to rethink the other components of my TIW, and make sure that they are equally strong, so that there is not a distracting dissonance between the issues of craft and reader response writing. My participants’ letters of reflection, and my own coaches, have always pointed to this discrepancy, but were enthusiastic about many aspects of the TIW, showing particular interest in the reader response notebooks I used for this work, and how to manage this kind of writing with young writers who labor over the mechanics of writing.
Before I give this TIW again, I will revise it carefully, rethinking what I know or believe about reader response writing for early childhood classrooms. I will need to do new research, and look to the professional literature to consider again this new direction. All this information has come to me through letters of reflection and conversations in which I simply opened the floor for discussion and listened to the participants process what had just occurred. As a learner, I can use this invaluable information to think again about my TIW, not in judgment, but as new paths to explore. Our letters of reflection at the end of the TIW experience offer an opportunity to look with another lens at the various critical components of the TIW. These letters are not to be scathing reviews, but rather, a document that can let the presenter know which elements were particularly effective for the participant.
The TIW as a theatrical piece places the teacher fellow in the role of director/writer, juggling constantly the needs of the audience/participants, the dictates of the play/literacy practice, the efficacy of the actors/elements and all this within the time restraints of an eighty minute workshop in three acts, without an intermission! A complex act, indeed, but one not governed by harsh critics, ready to pan the production, and send the troupe packing. Instead, within the confines of the HVWP’s Summer Institute, this work is being performed in a safe environment, where we all are playwrights, learning our stagecraft together.
