Play is Serious Business Creative Pedagogy to Foster Critical Thinking

boss just left with his rants and ravens

going on and on about the hierarchies

he’s creating

about his obvious superiority

about his big lavish life

he sneers at my hopelessness

toast to my defeat

a nobody a nothing but clanging and

dangling these chains

you’ll never escape your buns you don’t

even have a brain

maybe he’s right but i have a feeling

he’s wrong

he’s poisoned my mind and made me think

these words true

but i don’t see a chain a link a lock or

a key

so who’s to say i’m in prison who’s to

say i’m free

now i see my way out a chance to abandon

these chains

now it’s time to take boss man and show

him

how to take life by the reins

martin luther king took up the fight for

civil rights

he just raised our consciousness to

dizzying new heights

he died as a martyr at the way to feel

good night

we know we are equal

stand up stand up are you repressed

stand up stand up are you repressed

stand up stand up are you repressed

we know we are equal

my heart heading on the horrors of me

company kind

convictions handle out like some deals

on groupon

every day at the last the wasted

downtime marathon

one day we shall be free

help us help us are you remembering

help us help us are you free man

help us help us are you free

one day we shall be home

true justice have no race religion

college in the class

we must gather all together bringing

empathy to past

teach the kids he loved each other to

the

very last one day we shall

be home and

don’t stand up are you all oppressed

stand up stand

one day we shall have peace

speak i’ll speak out are you all right

do you believe me when i tell you i was

tired as

and i thought about suicide daily in

that cramped cell

i caught myself daydreaming how things

used to be

seeing people in movies studying wish it

was me

making money telling lies whatever they

did with them stars in their eyes

claiming they true another day another

dollar the statement got for me

they keep fussing about their money when

they could have just set me free

another day another time

another day another situation enough

about me

enough about me

this is really deep i’m sorry

for the emotion

another day another dollar state they

made for me they keep fussing about

their money when they could just set me

free

enough of my situation same stuff

different day

and yet my kids i got their mom and i’m

all alone

i ain’t saying mom i won’t last long in

this twilight zone

it was hard and depressed

but i made it the lanes took me down

with them for the stuff they did and if

i was possible in the day and time

how did i serve time for something i

didn’t even do

where was my family when my soul was

drowning in pain the statement took my

name

replaced my pride with shame

so if i’m tripping i’m not tripping

about

what i went through i’m tripping by the

phases i went through

i’m tripping on

how i will not lose

i’m going to master this thing i’m not

about to lose

it’s like hotel california but it’s not

paradise

but could you tell me how did i get life

i’m wendy ballou i’m the executive

director of reforming arts

this is royal grooms this is janelle

davis

and this is gloria parks and they have

demonstrated

our program of

creative critical thinking or the

results of critical

creative critical thinking that was an

excerpt of a play

that was created in prison

after two years of studying the concepts

of utopia

which our students quickly discovered

was a lot of the concepts of utopia is

exactly what their lives are like

so i’m here to talk to you today

about play and how it helps us

foster creative critical thinking

but before i go into that i want to tell

you a little bit about who i am

and how i came to this conclusion i

entered the a prison for the first time

as a teacher

in october 2009

terrified i wasn’t terrified of the

students

or even of the place i was terrified

because i had never taught and i

hadn’t directed since i was in college

15 years prior

so i really felt like i was a little bit

of an imposter

sure i had my undergraduate in theater

but i had focused on stage management

and then i went into construction and

then i’m sorry and then i went

to grad school in business and then

i went into wealth management and then i

went back to grad school

in american studies so here i was

walking into a prison to teach a class

on acting

and i felt like a total poser

that first day i walked in

and i was escorted into the prison

and i set up the room

like what i felt like was like a very

big open setting

i set the tables up into a u

and there was a desk for the instructor

and so i set my stuff up so i could like

sit on the front of the desk so there

would be no

separation between me and the students

so and i had done my homework

i had talked to my friends that were

theater

teachers in high school and college

they’d give me things to read

they had given me some strategies they

told me

don’t worry it’ll be fine

and i had developed a class plan

it was a two-hour class and so

i was using a text that

described object put out objectives

describe the exercise step by step each

exercise step by step

into three steps and the author

explained these steps because he was

like based on

every class every theater class he had

ever taught

through all ages and demographics

this is how people react so

i felt pretty comfortable with that and

he so he set out the objectives

and then the step-by-step directions for

the instructor

and the reason for those directions was

because he was saying that

that all people respond

with nervousness and discomfort

and so he’s teaching the instructor how

to coach people through

that discomfort to get to pass through

their filters

so here i am first day

teaching inside a prison

that i had volunteered to do teaching an

acting class which i had never done

before

and i had a plan

nothing went as planned

as soon as i came in i start my

introduction

and a student says are you afraid of us

and i said no and i was thinking

well i wasn’t before

[Laughter]

and she said well you’re so far away

from us if you’re not afraid of us why

are you so far away

so what i had thought was me being very

open

and accessible was read by her as me

being

having distance between us

okay so then we finish our introductions

and i launched

into the exercises

and the students went straight to step

three

every time and i was smiling

and i was applauding them and i said oh

you’re so great and you’re so advanced

and i was thinking what is going on here

and why and i’ve spent the last 11 years

of my life

trying to answer that question what’s

going on here

and why over the years

the students oh well i’ll say

back to that first quarter that first

quarter

um we started with a script

that’s how i learned to do theater is

you start with a play and you learn

along the way

and the students came to me they elected

somebody to come to me and say

we don’t like the script we don’t want

to do this play

and it wasn’t the play itself that they

didn’t like they liked the theme

but they were uncomfortable with the

memorization

that first quarter that really that

first year we had a huge range

of literacy levels and educational

attainment

so i said okay we can throw out the

script and

we can do improvisation and apply

theater

the problem was i had never done

improvisation

or applied theater so once again i’m

hitting the books

trying to figure out what’s going on and

how to do this

and i did and throughout the years

we have worked on we’ve tried things

we’ve tried new things we’ve tried

things again and we have developed many

plays

some of them completely improvised some

of them scripted

and then acted out by the students

eventually we added other disciplines

first with humanities and eventually we

started a transdisciplinary college

program

so after many years

i added another question and that was

what are we trying to achieve here not

just in prison

not just in an acting class

but in education in general

and in society and i really think

that it comes down to trying to foster

creative

critical thinking and i’ve come to that

conclusion because i really believe

as fast as the world is moving as we’ve

heard

from our last two speakers and as much

as automation is increasing

every day in order to thrive

in the next decades people are going to

have to

have critical and creative thinking

skills they’re going to have to be able

to adapt

and they’re not going to want to be chat

right

so our program

focuses on six things

self-actualization consciousness raising

community building self-narrative

um empathy or compassion

and creative becoming

but at the core of all of this before we

can

even get there we have to build trust

and foster a sense of play

or play as a way of being

and when i’m talking about play i’m not

think talking about something you do

i’m talking about a way of being

so i’m not saying uh we’re going to play

a game

or we’re playing baseball i’m talking

about something

that we become we are

that is a part of us and opens us up

to understanding

the way that happens in a theater class

is that after many trust exercises

and many games that people kind of find

silly they

become they enter in to a sense of play

and it happens

when people no longer worry about

some what they’re going to say or do is

going to be

judged and when over the years i’ve

watched my own students

and other people

enter in that collectively into that

sense of play

or play as a way of being and when it

happens

you can you can feel the shift

in the room and when it happens

it becomes a part of who that person is

and when it happens then we can begin

and what i mean is that after that

moment

people are open to understanding they’re

open to learning in the prison setting

they’ve moved from survival mode

to actually trying to understand

the world beyond themselves we can

start building consciousness we can

start attacking

and having very hard discussions with

each other

and it crosses disciplines

so i’m not here to say that everybody

has to be a theater or art major

but i am saying that everyone needs to

be

exposed to those disciplines as well

as humanities and philosophy and

engineering and math and science

and that once we a person enters

into a sense of play as

being as the what part of their being it

goes across the disciplines

i don’t train our instructors to

start out with theater exercises in the

algebra class

i don’t need to because once the

students

have opened up to learning and

understanding it goes

with them i’m wendy blue thank you for

listening