Week 7- Acting to Learn

1. Please do a free-write about your initial thoughts about Theater of the Oppressed and how it could be used in the classroom. 

• After watching the short clip and Ted Talk on the Theater of the oppressed I found myself thinking, wow that might be a lot of fun to do with a bunch of middle schoolers one day. My initial thoughts on the Theater of the Oppressed was that it seemed fun and very engaging for all the people involved. While watching the Ted Talk it was clear that the actors were very engaged and at the same time so was the audience. I do think this activity in the classroom would be very beneficial and engaging for students. My only concern with doing something of this nature is that some students would be very uncomfortable and not want to participate. I’m sure there is some sort of accommodation or role that could be made to get students like that involved without necessarily having to “act”. As a teacher you could definitely use your standards and content to set up scenes for the students to act in. Inside of those scenes there could be different social aspects and issues that students can learn and act about. My initial thoughts are that this could definitely be a great tool to use in the classroom and help students learn and thinking critically. Granted, I need to come much more educated on how to orchestrate and run a Theater of the Oppressed first. Overall, I think it could be a fun activity for both the teacher and the students to do in any content-area class.

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