No drama

Despite promises of a manic workload, so far this induction period of our PGCE course has been relatively tranquil. Witness the fact that today I'm at home for a day of private study.

Given that I knew I would be having an extended weekend, I felt more enthusiastic about signing my Saturday away for a London Drama training day - a day of workshops from different drama teaching experts about becoming an effective drama teacher. We had to pay (£10) and everything. I signed myself up online before I had second thoughts.

My readers might be thinking "but hang on, you are not, in fact, training to be a drama teacher, but an english teacher." You're right...but we were invited to this event just the same - obviously there's a certain amount of overlap with English and drama - and it's something that makes lessons more fun. Plus I'd written in my self-evaluation at the beginning of the course that I wanted to learn more about using drama techniques in the classroom. So...it seemed like a good idea at the time.

On arrival, my first thought was..."oh, shit, I've made a big mistake." I didn't see anybody I knew from my course (the event was open to PGCE students from all the unis in the London and south east region) and everyone just seemed so...drama-ey. The crowd was noticeably different from how a crowd of English students would have been. Thespy, as we used to say at university. All the girls were dressed trendily and sitting in ballet-warm-up-type poses. All the boys were wearing funky hats. Speaking voices were LOUD: all the elocution coaching paying off. Hand gestures were expansive and theatrical.

The first workshop involved us pairing up and improvising dialogues, constantly changing partners as the scenario we were working with was made more complicated. "Help!" I inwardly panicked, "What if I'm not capable of being all creative like these well-trained drama types?" It didn't help that the first person I talked to was from the Central School of Speech and Drama. When I asked what she did and why she was doing the PGCE, she replied "well, I'm an actress." Since she was signed up for teacher training, I considered pointing out that the acting career clearly hadn't been working out so well for her, but managed to restrain myself. And, as the session got going, I also found that I was just about managing to keep up with the others, improvising a prison-fight dialogue with the best of them. Although I was temporarily flummoxed when, after changing pairs, my new partner cut me off when I went to introduce myself, snapping "Stay in character!"

After working with 2 others to script a mini-dialogue that had us rolling on the floor in hysterics (my literature knowledge helped me impress them with some flawless Shakespearean-style verse), I increased in confidence. The workshop introduced alot of really enjoyable and practical exercises to do with groups of children - things to encourage them with writing, good warm ups, ways of pairing people up, and techniques for exploring characters. By the end of the day I felt like even I, a theatre novice with only one stage-managing experience to my CV since primary school, could get involved in the activities. Which, of course, is the idea - the kids we're teaching are unlikely all to be budding Stanislavskis, unless of course I get placed at the Brit school.

I firmly stand by the reason I kept giving when the drama students asked why, as a future English teacher, I was attending the course: "English lessons where you do drama activities are generally the most fun."