Using Performance to Understand Teachers' First Year

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Seventeen
  In Roundtable Session: Preparing for and Living Through That First Year! (Table 5)

Abstract

This paper uses photographs and artist interviews from an ethnodramatic performance project to create a meditation on the ambiguity of first year teaching. Performance is used to communicate the feelings of pride and satisfaction produced by positive student relationships and the pain and anger produced by negative connections. Readers are asked to imagine beginning teaching as beneficial and harmful, courageous and negligent. Content from the artists' interviews is used to help readers question their assumptions about beginning teaching and to imagine what the experience might be for the kids. Implications for education policy are discussed in the conclusion.

Author

• Charles F. Vanover, University of South Florida
  Presenting Author