Thursday January 4th 2012

Before today I wasn’t quite sure what we’d be doing in Drama this semester.  Part of me wanted to dislike it from the get go, but what I find funny is that part of me actually DID want to find out.  I remember Drama class in Middle School.  This environment was what I immediately think of when the word “Drama” is used; hardwood floors, large mirrors and a teacher with dance shoes and tights on (Judging by an email from our new PE Prof.  it looks like our PE class this semester is taking care of this).   I was curious; exactly which room would this class be taking place in?  Would I have to change before class?  I was relived to find out that it was in McLaren D116 classroom.  This classroom was the home to 75 half-desks.  I say half-desks as that is exactly what they are.  No matter what you need to put on the desk you can be sure only half of it will fit, thus the term half-desks.  They are actually quite annoying, but that’s for another time and blog post (possibly).

10am Thursday January 6th 2012.  Rainy day.

As usual I arrived in class with my coffee unsure whether or not I’d be able to drink it during class being Drama and all.   As I walked through the classroom door an older man said “well you must be Deryck”.  We got into a discussion about the lack of Males in the education system.  He noted that he has observed a fifty fifty split in the Secondary and Middles Bachelor of Education programs however in the Elementary years he finds the gender divide to be 95% Women to 5% Men and is not quite sure as to why.

I really like his style.  Straight to the point and ready to give us value for our dollar.  Can you believe it, he made mention of the fact that he knows firsthand how much we have to pay for this class and that he takes that to heart when delivering his class.   He has a daughter currently in the Nursing program (I’m not sure if at Uvic, but I’ll ask him later) as has heard much about value for dollar.

Today we did the general “housekeeping stuff” as he put it.  Luckily for us our cohort had already bonded the previous semester so there was an air of awkwardness that could be avoided.  Phil did tell us that we would do some of the same things that he would do had we not known each other previously.  He figured this would be more applicable to the situations we’d be in as a teacher.  We played a few starters/games used not only for fun, but to develop a sense of control with our bodies.  We played this one game; I think it was the “brain game” in which the index and thumb of our right hand were to grab our left ear, meanwhile our right hand index finger to touch our nose.   On his command we were to immediately switch our hands around.  This was awkward at first but was quickly obtainable, getting me excited for more.

So that was our first Drama class.  We continued to play out the activities he had chosen for us.  He believes that we should be doing everything as a way of making the content more relevant; increasing the chances we’ll not only just remember it but also use it in practice.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *