Clearly Creative

Last Friday, I finished my high school field experience. During my last week, my coordinating teacher allowed me to work more with the students than I had been able to in my earlier weeks at the school.

My coordinating teacher taught an acting class that I had not done any work with during my first three weeks of field, but in my last week, my coordinating teacher had me help students write scripts for a production they were making.

Photo my coordinating teacher
took of me while I was talking
to students about their projects.

As part of their final, students had to write parodies of popular holiday movies/songs/activities, and when they’re done, students will put them all together to create a show that they will put on for other classes.

While they were working, I would walk around from group to group and help students further their own ideas, as well as offer suggestions if they were stuck. I was consistently impressed with how creative the students were, and how they were drawing on a variety of sources to come up with their ideas.

One group decided to turn popular holiday characters into pop artists, while another group decided that they wouldn’t use spoken words and would instead rely on movements and music. This group even used a computer program to create a mesh of songs to create their music, and there were specific movements that went with specific beats/melodies.

Other groups were taking popular holiday songs and changed the lyrics to fit their plot line. A group that was parodying The Grinch took the song “You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch,” used it as a starting point, and then changed the lyrics and turned it into a rap. Another group took the song “All I Want For Christmas Is You” and changed the lyrics so it became a duet for a couple that was arguing.

I was blown away by the creative ideas that students were coming up with. Some groups would call me over and ask for help because they couldn’t think of a funny way to accomplish the parody they were after. In instances where this happened, I would read what they had, offer a suggestion, and from there, students would take that suggestion and come up with new ideas based on it. In other cases, students would come up with new ideas based on what my suggestion made them think about.

Over the course of my last week, I really was able to watch students go from having nothing written, to having 4 minute scripts written, and ready to act out. So while the old adage “My students taught me more than I could have taught them” is rather cliché, I can’t express how true I found this statement to be during my field experience.