Acting Together, Learning With Classroom Crises: Drama-Based Research and Professional Development With Teaching Artists

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: Advances in Conflict Resolution and Violence Prevention

Abstract

This paper draws on the power of story (e.g., Frank, 2010; King, 2008) and the idea of crisis as emotional discomfort and disorientation that can provoke learning (Kumashiro, 2009). As a professional development facilitator and researcher, I worked with Teaching Artists to bring their whole selves (bodies, emotions, knowledges, creativity) to explore multiple perspectives and to imagine learning with and from crisis in the public school classroom. Drama-based research methods encouraged alternate ways of knowing and being to problem-solve daily challenges. The resulting multivoiced, embodied stories are re-presented partially as a written collage. I argue that embodied storytelling can build community that acts together as we face the inevitable crises inherent in the work of teaching and learning.

Author

• Shannon McManimon, SUNY - College at New Paltz