Teaching Is An Art Form

INTRODUCTION

There is a lot of overlap betwen the world of Entertainment and the world of Education. One difference though is that we think of actors and directors as being artists, while teachers are not thought of in this way. In this article I will look at some similarities and differences between acting and teaching and I will explain why I believe that teaching deserves to be called an art form as much as anything which happens in a theatre.

The article is in five parts ……….

HOW TEACHING IS SIMILAR TO ACTING.

I suggest that the most significant similarities between teaching and acting are these …..

The physical relationship of the actor/ the teacher and the audience/ the class – An actor is typically on a stage facing the audience. At the start of a lesson the teacher is typically in the same situation facing the class.

Responsibility for the program and for the atmosphere in the room – The performers of a show are the ones who control what will happen in that show. They are also the ones who have to take responsibility for the atmosphere in the room. If the show is not going well then they have to make adjustments and do something about it if they can. In the same way a teacher in a class directs the lesson and decides what will happen. They are also responsible for making sure that there is a positive learning atmosphere in the class.

Speaking as someone who is very used to acting and to classroom teaching I can say that the feeling of walking on stage to play a show and the feeling of walking into a classroom to start a lesson are extremely similar. In fact they are so similar that I consider them to be basically the same thing.

HOW TEACHING IS DIFFERENT TO ACTING.

The main critical difference is this …… The ultimate aim of an actor is to entertain their audience by helping to tell them a story. There may be some education involved, especially in the case of classic plays, but the primary aim is to entertain. The primary aim of a teacher is to teach their class and help them to learn and understand new things. Entertainment may be a part of the teaching process, but it is not the aim.

Basically entertainers entertain and teachers teach and speaking as somebody who regularly does both I can say that teaching is a lot more complex and challenging than acting. As an actor I have to interpret a text and do my best to communicate the idea of the author (as I understand it) to an audience. As a teacher I have to somehow get information into other people’s heads, using whatever magic is necessary to make that happen.

WHAT DOES THE CONDUCTOR OF AN ORCHESTRA DO?

This question interests me because I really do not know the answer. A bad conductor and a good one can work with the same orchestra and the same piece of music and get very different results. What is the good conductor doing that the bad one is not? I don’t know. Perhaps the conductor does not know either, but they are clearly doing something.

I think teaching is a lot like this. The actual skill of teaching is largely instinctive and difficult to define. How do you you actually maximise learning in your classroom? What is the difference between two teachers who work through the same textbook but get different results? It is difficult to say, but there is clearly some kind of skill involved.

PREPARING A LESSON COMPARED TO PREPARING A SHOW FOR THE STAGE.

When a theatre make a show for the stage, there is quite a lot of work involved, but there are also quite a few different people around to do that work. There is a script, a director makes a plan for how to portray that script on stage. Actors then spend weeks rehearsing the show, while stage managers and costume designers create the materials needed. Then on the day of the show a make-up artist prepares the actors for the performance.

Preparing a lesson for a school class is less complex than creating a show, but the teacher has to do it all by themselves. There may be a kind of a script in the form of a text-book, but the teacher has to make a plan for what the structure of the lesson will look like, they have to create extra materials themselves, they are responsible for their own clothes and make-up and they perform themselves without any rehearsal at all. And their performance has to be an improvisation, because working with a class is a lot more unpredictable than working with an audience in a theatre.

TEACHING REALLY IS AN ART FORM.

If a theatre director is considered an artist, and an actor, and a costume-designer and a make-up person are also considered to be artists, then a teacher must surely be considered an artist too. Indeed I think that a teacher is a greater artist because the practice of getting people to learn is ultimately a lot more subtle and complex that the practice of entertaining people.

Society as a whole does not value teachers and their art as much as they should. Teachers themselves generally do not value it either. That is a shame though, because if teachers can think of themselves as the artists they are and take pride in their art, if they can enjoy practicing and developing their skills in the way that other artists do, that will give them a lot of strength and motivation for their work.