Occasionally I will write a post about my experiences with teaching.
Last night my students from a night class had the assignment of going to a play.
While the students went to the performance, I read their research paper drafts. I hadone student to whom I had suggested the topic of how play develops certain characteristics in children, such as cooperation with others, self-regulation, organizational skills, etc.
I got her started in the research with a story that had run on NPR. Last night she had six
pages for me to read, and an Annotated Works Cited. So far she has done a wonderful job of turning up sources and is doing well on the paper.
The place where the play was being performed is is next to what is called The Atrium, a large commons with a sunken area almost like an amphitheater. There are tables around the edge, interspersed with tall palm trees. I set up shop across the amphitheater and began correcting papers.
Not long after I began my work, a group of dozen young guys arrived with their boom box. They went into the sunken area. They put on some music, rolled out a large mat, and began dancing. They were amazing to watch. What agility. What smoothness to such complicated moves. They could do things like spin around on one hand with their feet in the air, their body shaped like a crescent. They did handstands, somersaults, and moves I can't even find words to describe.
Some of them were better than the others. The ones I particularly liked had a sort of connectedness to their moves that made me think of a marionnette. They would step in and out at random, practicing a particular maneuver, then stepping back to give another dancer a chance on the mat. Sometimes they would twirl around outside the map.
Now, mind you, I was watching this unfold while I read my student's paper on the role of play in maturation, so in effect, the research paper was coming to life before my eyes. As I read the paper, I could see it happening, right in front of me. As these were young adults, I could see the mature "end result."
Of course, as a communications teacher, the "play on words" did not escape me. While my students were at the play, I was reading a paper about play and I was watching play in action.
