Improvisation is an edgy, spontaneous art form – and
completely unscripted. This means that
you don’t know what will happen next, or what your co-players will do or come
up with. Unscripted is the key
word. When you engage with this, you’re
offering yourself up to be thrown off and disoriented, uncertain, and
inescapably awkward.
A while ago, I started an Improv Club with some energetic high school students
at their exurban high school. The school was surrounded by what were once cow pastures in
the furthest reaches of bucolic Westchester County, where kids have to make
their own fun.
The club’s numbers grew as kids found they could let off
steam in this after-school venue. Kids
who had sat numbly in class all day got to bring their most daring and
“outlier” selves into room L207. But,
with the exception of the two self-appointed “presidents”, none of the kids had
any experience with improv, and had no clue as to how to play without a script.
I enlisted the help of my son, Zack, who is a professional
improviser. This sounds like an
oxymoron, but he does earn a living improvising and making people laugh. He
introduced the club to the most important principle: Yes, and… This is the phrase you
keep in your head while your co-players verbally lob something at you.
The basic Yes, and…game might go like this: Two students stand up:
Student 1 might say: I just got back from Mars.
And Student 2 says Yes and…is that how come you have green
skin? …
Student 1 says Yes and…their spaceship is right over there…
Student 2: Yes, and…Can I go too?
At this point two more students may join in.
Student 3: Yes, and…This is my Mom and I would like to
send her to Mars.
Student 4: Yes, and I’m his Mom. I packed a lunch and
weapons in case they’re not friendly…
There’s an emphasis on speed: Too much “think” time, and the
game falls flat. And, the second you
think or say “No”, the improv dies on the spot.
Frequently kids would get tongue-tied and go blank, flail around, and
occasionally fall on the floor and groan – When it doesn’t fly, you blow your
cover and everybody sees that. But isn’t
that the true nature of learning something new?
It’s messy and unpredictable. The members soon changed the club's name from “The
Waxed Beans” to “Embrace the
Awkward.”
Awkwardness? In our school?
In spite of its omniscience, we don’t like to associate Awkward with School. We’re surrounded by
the shrill rhetoric: Succeed! Achieve!
Score High!... Stumbling and falling? Not in Our School.
In reality, school is infused with awkwardness at every
turn. Growing bodies are awkward, teachers are awkward, technology does weird
things; the day is packed with socially confusing situations. Everybody did the
math wrong today and it’s only first period.
As students reach to learn something new, they hear Wrong. Not it. You didn’t get it. Nope: The daylong incantations of bad news. “No”
stops the learning in its tracks and shuts the door, like a failed improv.
Yet, we are
improvising as we learn. Zack describes
how an improviser approaches the unknown:
He or she is somebody who is
willing to commit to a choice – If, say, I were to go onstage and do something
funny with my body. The audience might just stare for a bit. But I make a
commitment to keep doing that funny body thing.
They start to get it. They laugh. I then make it even more specific and
do it harder. Then I get past the fear
of not knowing what will happen next.
All tangled up essays,
sciatica, and finding the snakes
This changed the way I taught writing because I wanted to
help my students get over their fear of writing something wrong, and to open up
what had been shut down over the years. But here of course, students aren’t
doing something funny with their bodies.
They’re doing something “funny” with their writing.
Aside from a few exceptions, on the whole, my students’ essays
are filled with fragments, strange spelling, inconsistent paragraph spacing,
disconnected ideas, missing citations. They get all tangled up in words used
incorrectly and in the wrong context: It is a festival of awkward writing. Yet, the effort
that students put into a labored-over essay is evident – and the sheer energy
of their effort activates my sciatica
and fires up foot cramps. There is something committed about their awkwardness.
According to Zack’s earlier description, this kind of
commitment is needed in order to push further into the unknown. I began to see writing in a new light, and
realized that my students were actually going way out on a limb to show me the
insides of their minds, and their thinking processes.
What a gift to reframe my role in this way: It was my job to identify the mistakes, in the
same way it’s a herpetologist’s job to go up to the mountain and find
snakes. Couldn’t we play with this? Instead of no, wrong, you have a run-on sentence
here, I learned to work with Yes, and - you have three thoughts going on here. Yes, and- let’s separate those with commas.
Yes, and- this idea is ready
for more development…Yes, and- this
essay is ready to be organized now…
This became an energizing way to teach. Students were writing more. Teaching and writing became more interactive,
and more filled with possibilities – like a game. The principle of improv had opened up the
playing field. Kids were allowed to
commit to the “wrong kind” of writing, yes, and – I could guide them toward
more clarity. It opened up our book
discussions too – Beginning with the obvious and uninspired student statement: Jay Gatsby was a rich guy… Yes, and – why was it important to him
to be a rich guy? Odysseus took a long
time to get back home. Yes, and –
what was Penelope doing that whole while?
If we’re willing to commit to putting it out there, even if
it’s wrong and awkward, we’re in a far better position to learn something new. The opposite would mean to stay cautious, shut
down, and “safe.” Being willing to
commit to the unknown and play it harder is the rigor part. Rigor can’t be thought of as an outcome. It is a process. Even though it’s a noun, we
should think of it as a highly active verb.
Instead of setting rigid and narrow specific outcomes, a rigorous curriculum should invite audacity, uncertainty and mistake making. The latter is a far more sustainable kind of learning
in terms of student and teacher energy.
Without the awkwardness that accompanies new learning there’s
no forward movement.
We’re probably engaged with rigor if part of our brain
wishes that we were doing something else that will provide some escape from the
present task.
What if teachers applied Yes, and…to solving math
equations, the narrative of history, and science labs? In what ways would
teaching shift?
To become a better coach, I had to become a more patient
teacher, even though patience is not included in the criteria on the evaluation
forms that administrators fill out during Formal Observations. Also, in conferences, I rarely hear parents or
teachers say – Yes, and – if we’re more
patient, we’re going to see Kevin understand this or that concept…Let’s give
him more room and time to play with this.
“Real life” messing
up
Not too long ago, I chatted with a friend who has been an
insurance attorney for years, but has decided to broaden her career in learning
about courtroom law. Similar to my Embrace
the Awkward club students, she is
deliberately throwing herself into an unscripted situation – or rather – it has
a script, but she doesn’t know what it is yet. And, similar to the improv
students, she has to field verbal lobs from other players, including the Judge,
on the courtroom floor. “I don’t know what I’m doing!” She told
me. “I think the concepts are similar to
insurance law – but the language and terms are so different! I’m shadowing another attorney, but he had to
leave the courtroom and when I
approached the bench, I was
scrambling for the right terms. I’m
standing there just sort of stammering… looking for my notes."
I commented that learning new things, no matter how old we
are, is so uncomfortable.
“I so get my fourth
grader now –“ She nodded. “I get what
my son goes through when he’s struggling in school, trying to get something
like the math. Based on what I went
through this week, I understand now how hard school may be for him.”
If we adults are willing enough to stay in-tune with our own
awkward learning, like my attorney friend, we become sensitized to the peak and
valley experiences that our kids are having throughout their school day.
Recently, I chatted with my lawyer friend again. "How’s it going?" She broke into a smile. "Much better!
I’m finding my way around…its making sense now."
When we watch toddlers who are powered by the commitment to
take those first awkward steps, we cheer the falling down as well. The falling down is part of the rigor in
learning how to walk. We praise, we snap pictures, and instantly zip them off
to everybody we know. We shove the
furniture out of the way to give him more room to step forward and to fall
down.
Can parents and teachers cheer on, with the same kind of
enthusiasm, our older kids as they sweat over essays and wrestle with math
equations and science labs? Are we courageous and open minded enough to push
aside our own “preferred learning outcomes” and instead, embrace the awkward in
learning?
Let’s clear the space so they can play with whatever is in front of them, and follow Zack’s
suggestions--
Make the commitment, forget about what scares you and throw yourself
into it.
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