Today’s quote: “Best side-coaching advice for actors? Just do it and be obvious.” – Keith Johnstone

We watched a short clip on the WITS bullying program.  It stands for Walk away, Ignore, Talk about it and Seek help.  That’s called using your WITS!  What a great video created by a school in Sooke.  I was really impressed especially with the level of acting by the boys and their sincerity.  What a way to create a great student culture and atmosphere.  Narrator was absolutely amazing.  We’ve all seen many anti-bullying videos online and in our grade school education.  Boring.  Same old stuff.  This did not follow suite.

We discussed a little about our preliminary lesson plans.  Phil made mention that out of our class of 30, 5 people chose to do their lesson plans on bullying.  How ironic.

This talk about High and Low status is really interesting.  Since it was brought up in class I find myself paying more attention to it in everyday life.  I think by doing this I am broadening my teaching tool kit, especially in regards to Drama.  I will have more situational/real life examples  to use in classes involving status.  It’s really peculiar actually to see how high and low status is flipped.  I work at a hotel as a Duty Manager, so after these discussions of status I try to see how it applies to my situations.  Who holds the HIGHT STATUS.  The customer.  However I find I put the high status features on when dealing with customers.  I have the suit, I stand as if I was wearing my military uniform with confidence and I find that I lower and raise my voice based on the severity of the situation.  When I need to make a non-negotiable situation clear so as to make sure they fully understand my next course of action my voice lowers and becomes a little bit slower, but not so much so as to become condesending.

A very valuable handout that is labeled “Teaching and Status”.  Phil figures that since we are going to be teachers and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever see us again that he would give us a few things that he thinks will be of benefit for us throughout our careers.  This package details out how we as aspiring teachers can use Hight and Low status as an aid to behaviour managment.

I really liked the status game that was demonstrated in class today called Reverse status.  Using a real life situation of high and low status we would act out this situation, however flip statuses.   For instance: A police officer and a criminal.  The Police officer would by default be considered the one with high status and the criminal of low status.  For this activity the criminal would be of high status and the police officer would be of low status.

Incase you read this Phil please don’t take offence as I truely enjoy your style and your class.  I’m not really fond of all the paper we are given for this class.  I really love the content of each, however personally I really like digital versions of everything.  I find myself more apt to opening my saved files and documents from my computer than pulling out duotang.  With that being said though I have now started to convert each handout to a digital version so I can keep it on my cloud and have it accessable from my phone, by my “colleagues” by any computer I am at without having to carry my computer with me.

We also played Balloon Status Today:  4 volunteers are called upon.  The first volunteer is to stand up on a provided chair.  The second volunteer is to stand right next to this person on the chair.  The third volunteer will sit on a second chair and the fourth volunteer will sit on the floor beside the person on the chair.  Volunteers 1 2 and 3 are each given a balloon.  Volunteer 1 is only allowed to speak to vol.2, vol.2 can only talk to vol.1 and vol.3, vol.3 can only talk to vol.2 and 4.  Vol. 4 can only speak to vol.3.  Volunteer 1 (high status) is to ask of vol.2 to make a request of vol.2, who will say “thankyou”, be hit over the head with vol.1’s balloon and turn to vol. 3 and pass on the information. and so this continues.  Vol 4 having no balloon responds and the message is passed back up to vol.1, each vol. saying thankyou and hitting the next over the head.

I find it interesting in what Phil mentioned about the difference between the UK and Canada when playing this game.  In Canada the children quickly become disinterested with the game if they are vol.4 as they have no balloon to hit anyone with, but in the UK the children seem to like this position.

All in all great class yet again. I’m not surprised.

-Until next class.