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Teaching Teachers With Theater!: Performance Training & Tactics for Classroom Teachers explores day-to-day classroom performance challenges K-12 teachers face and how the practice of certain theater techniques used to train actors can improve a teacher's student engagement and connection. Jim Senti's work exposes K-12 classroom teachers to the activities and training that will help them become a more comfortable, connective, exciting, and engaging teacher in the classroom. Teaching Teachers With Theater! defines typical challenges teachers face in the classroom. The activities in each chapter vary from how the reader can improve their body language, voice, and physicality to illustrating how developing acute observation can help train a teacher's empathy and compassion. This book also explains how improvisation games help train a teacher's ability to deal with surprises in the classroom and even offers some tips on how to tell a great story. Teaching Teachers With Theater! translates the vocabulary used in theater to a vocabulary a teacher often uses and gives teachers simple step-by-step activities, which could be extremely useful in faculty development. In the end, these practices will help teachers become stronger communicators by learning to be far more comfortable with performing in order to genuinely connect with their students. If a teacher is comfortable in their ability to communicate, they will have a stronger connection with their students. They will without question become far more entertaining to their students. This engagement will solve the majority of classroom management issues.
List of contents
List of Illustrations - Acknowledgments - Introduction: How Theater Can Make More Compassionate Teachers - Part I: Performance Training - Practicing Observation & Empathy - Practicing Positive Reinforcement and Dealing With Surprises - Practicing How to Tell a Story - Practicing Strong Physicality and Voice - Part II: Classroom Practices, Creating - Creating Comfortable Groups - Creating Surprises! - Creating Discussion - Conclusion: Putting It All Together - Appendix - Index.
About the author
Jim Senti earned his MFA from the Moscow Art Theatre School in affiliation with Harvard University and the American Repertory Theater. He is currently a lecturer of performance in the Department of Communication Studies at California State University, Northridge. He is a professional actor and theater maker.
Summary
Teaching Teachers With Theater! Performance Training & Tactics For Classroom Teachers explores classroom performance challenges K-12 teachers face in their day to day and how the practice of certain theater techniques used to train actors can improve the teacher's student engagement and connection.
Report
"In Teaching Teachers With Theater!: Performance Training & Tactics for Classroom Teachers, actor and educator Jim Senti encourages teachers to embrace a performative approach to teaching by focusing on key elements such as acute observation, the creation of an environment of trust, compassion and courage, and what the playwright Anton Chekov called 'tons and tons of love.'" -Louis Fantasia, MFA, writer and director
