Improvising Toward Vitality With Newcomer Immigrant Students Through Dramatic Improvisation

• In Event: Engaging Teaching and Learning in and Through Drama

Abstract

This psychosocial autoethnographic study explores how the author sought to affirm and amplify students’ experiences of energetic vitality over the course of the school year by applying games and activities from the art of dramatic improvisation for English Language Arts instruction. Findings expand upon the growing line of education research exploring forms of art-infused teaching by suggesting links between students’ in-the-moment creative adaptions to improv activities and heightened vital experiences among the group. The study also highlights shifts in the ways the author conceptualized vitality-seeking pedagogy to de-center and problematize the role of the teacher, with implications for culturally sustaining (Paris, 2012) instruction.

Author

• Laura Carter-Stone, University of Kentucky