Acting Lessons for Teachers: Using Performance Skills in the Classroom

By using specific acting or performance strategies, teachers can lead classes more enthusiastically, this enhancing their students' learning.|Acting Lessons for Teachers presents a solid theoretical foundation for the pedagogical benefits of enthusiastic teaching. The authors maintain that students learn better and misbehave less when taught by teachers who teach enthusiastically. They posit that the dynamic of the classroom is similar to that of the stage in terms of speaker-listener relationships and they demonstrate how the acting craft offers teachers a model for the skills and strategies that help convey more enthusiasm for the material, thus successfully engaging the students.||This book presents concrete descriptions of the specific acting strategies that would benefit the teacher: physical and vocal animation, teacher role-playing, strategic entrances and exits, humor, props, suspense and surprise, and creative use of space. Special attention is given to the potential advantage of instructional technology as a modern-day prop. Strategies are explained in terms of their importance and ease of incorporation into the classroom. Each is proposed as a skill that can be learned by any teachers who have the desire to enliven their teaching. Student descriptions of their own experience with teachers' use of acting strategies add real examples for each lesson. Finally, testimony of award-winning classroom teachers from a variety of disciplines and age levels provides evidence of the wide and easy applicability of these strategies.