Engaging Reluctant Students in Drama Class
This blog post, Engaging Reluctant Students in Drama Class, began with considering every drama teacher eventually faces: students sitting in class who never intended to be there in the first place. When I taught a large middle school drama class which was a pre-elective, more than 500 sixth graders spent twenty-five days in my classroom each year. Learning how to engage reluctant students in drama class became essential to my survival as a teacher.
Engaging Reluctant Students in Drama Class
However, many teachers have more challenging teaching responsibilities–maybe students were placed in drama because another elective was full. Maybe a counselor needed to balance schedules. Or they thought the class would be easy. Sometimes they believed their friends that informed them that we do is “play games all day”. Whatever the reason, they arrive with crossed arms, nervous smiles, and one clear message: “I am NOT getting on that stage.”
After teaching drama for decades, I’ve learned something important: reluctant students are not the problem. The problem is often the assumption that drama class must immediately begin with performing.
Many students need a different doorway into theater first.
The good news? Modern drama classrooms offer far more than memorizing lines and standing under hot lights. Today’s theater classes can include sound design, podcasting, movement, visual storytelling, technical theater, stage spectacle, improvisation, and creative collaboration. Once reluctant students realize that theater includes all these possibilities, something begins to change.
Engaging Reluctant Students in Drama Class
Let’s begin with low-risk participation,
One of the fastest ways to lose reluctant students is to put them on the spot too quickly. Students who fear embarrassment or to participate around their friends, often shut down before they ever discover what drama can actually offer.
Instead, begin with activities that feel safe and collaborative.
My suggestion? Technical theater! Since most students have had art class since kindergarten, its concepts are all ready a part of their learning. The first lesson I use at the end of the first week is costume design. Students enjoy drawing costumes, especially if the teacher leaves it wide open as to what they must design. I use fairy tale characters, because students are familiar with them.
Next, we study set design for an entire week. They work individually on their set design idea and then join forces with another classmate to design the set together. These teams are expected to use ideas from both designs in their model. Usually, we make the models out of poster board. I discovered early on that they enjoy partnering up with a classmate to create the model. It encourages them to converse with one another and divide the responsibilities of the model depending upon each person’s talents.
Creating Safe Entry Points Into Drama
After a few weeks of technical theater lessons, the reluctant students should have had enough positive experiences that they are more willing to be a little vulnerable. Next, I teach movement and tableaux. Middle school students need the exercise after sitting all day in their core classes. Lessons about movement are non-threatening because usually everyone is able to express their emotion through movement.
Tableaux gives them a chance to work with a group, demonstrating a story’s beginning, middle and end through frozen statues. If a teacher wants it to be more challenging, they ask each actor to come up with a line their character could say in the scene–just one. After the tableau is posed, the teacher goes around the group and taps their head. The student says their line as the character in the tableau.
Reader’s theater and radio theater work especially well because students use scripts rather than memorization. Students can focus on expression, sound effects, or character voices without the pressure of full performance. Some students who refuse to act onstage will enthusiastically perform behind if they are standing by their peers or using a microphone. Additionally, radio theater has technical needs such as a sound effects crew.
These foley technicians get a real thrill out using ordinary objects to make sounds such as horses galloping (coconut halves tapping on a table) or a train as it leaves a station (plastic container of pebbles shook in rhythm becoming faster with each shake).
If you’d like more information about radio theater, check it out here: Top Reasons Teachers Succeed With Teaching Radio Theater
Participation grows when students feel capable.
Use Unusual Units to Spark Curiosity
Not every drama unit has to begin with Shakespeare, Greek theater or scene work. Some of my most successful units with reluctant students have centered around unusual topics that immediately grabbed their attention.
For example, a stage spectacle lesson using The Hunger Games encourages reluctant students in drama class to think about how large-scale effects, costumes, lighting, and movement create excitement for an audience. Students who love movies and popular culture suddenly realize theater involves visual storytelling and design—not just acting.
Movement-based lessons inspired by groups like Mummenschanz allow students to communicate emotion and ideas without speaking at all. Quiet students often thrive in these activities because they remove the pressure of dialogue. Or a teacher can teach them about choreography through a lesson such as the rumble scene in the musical, The Outsiders.
Pantomime is another great way to give the shyest students a chance to shine. By studying a pantomime group such as The Tricicle Theater, students discover that they can be just as successful by not speaking to share a story with their peers as their chatty classmates.
Some of my most enjoy teaching experiences have been when co-teaching with an arts teacher. Although I have not taught this lesson, I know they’d love Breaking Bach— a hip hop dance and classical music convergence.
Give Reluctant Students in Drama Class Multiple Ways to Succeed
One reason reluctant students in drama class disengage is because they believe drama class measures only one skill: acting ability and memorization. I know it’s difficult to believe, but some students don’t know what it looks like to memorize a piece of dialogue or a poem. I have three ways I suggest to students that I’ve found are the most successful ways to memorize something. Check out: Three Ways to Memorize Lines for a Play or Musical
Theater has always depended on many different talents. That is one of the reasons I love it so much. There is a place for everyone in theater.
A successful classroom gives students multiple opportunities to shine: A successful classroom gives students multiple opportunities to shine through collaboration, creativity, problem solving, visual design, storytelling, leadership, movement, and communication
When students realize there is more than one way to succeed, confidence begins to grow. I’ve watched students who initially refused to participate eventually volunteer to be the first person to improvise a story, create sound effects, or write commercials for radio plays. Once they experience success in one area, they become more willing to take risks in another.
Meet Students Where They Are
Today’s students are surrounded by digital media– podcasts, YouTube videos, film franchises, streaming series, and digital storytelling. Drama teachers can use those interests as bridges into theater education. Podcast-style performances, radio drama, multimedia storytelling, and pop-culture-based units help students see theater as something current and relevant rather than distant or intimidating.
Theater classrooms no longer need to look exactly the way they did twenty years ago. In fact, the more flexible and creative we become as educators, the more students we invite into the experience.
The Real Goal
The goal is not to turn hook every reluctant student in drama class is not to turn them into a Broadway actor. It is is to help students discover that theater has a place for them. For some students, that place may be center stage. For others, it may be behind a sound board, designing costumes, creating sound effects, writing scripts, or collaborating with a team. But once students feel seen, safe, and successful, many begin to realize something surprising:
Drama class may have been exactly where they belonged all along.