Partnering Actors with Teachers

Actors teach teachers

Nov 23

Written By Elaine Perlman

The most engaging teachers have a little Hollywood in them. They are playful players, making learning engaging through storytelling, dramatic language, suspense and humor.

Teachers stand amidst a tough audience. Just picture yourself in front of 30 young people who strongly believe that life is elsewhere. A few of your students may choose to be in the classroom. But most would rather be anywhere but within the confines of the classroom walls. All of your students are accustomed to being entertained by media, and so the seven hours in your presence may feel tiresome and dull.

How can we help teachers broaden their approach to communicating information? How can we elevate interest in learning?

Strike up the band and bring in the thespians! Who knows how to entertain better than actors who perform for a living? New York City schools have cut the budget for their arts programs. None of my 520 students have an art teacher.

What has replaced the art program? Test Prep! As you can imagine, this has evaporated students’ interest in the curriculum by basing teaching around test preparation. This has dampened student engagement and withered their enthusiasm for learning. One way to combat this is to work with teachers and help them develop the skills to enliven their teaching style.

My idea is to employ actors part-time to partner with teachers and help them become more dynamic and animated. Actors would observe the teachers and give pointers, demonstrate in front of the students, provide professional development workshops and create partnerships with a few teachers in the building.

I work in twelve different public schools and all of the teachers I observe could use a few sessions with an actor to coach them. As a side benefit, once you invite the actors into the schools, some may discover a love for teaching and possibly do a career shift.

Let’s employ actors to activate teachers' inner ham!

teachersactorstest prep

Elaine Perlman

Elaine is aiming to pass two federal laws in the United States, the End Kidney Deaths Act and the Honor Our Living Donors Act. Elaine is the Executive Director of Waitlist Zero, an advocacy group that seeks to end the kidney shortage and provide kidneys to the 90,000 people who are waiting for their lives to be saved in the United States. Both Elaine and her son Abie gave their kidneys to strangers. Elaine founded the groups NYC One Kidney Club, Kidneys 4 Strangers, and Vegan Kidney Donors. She leads the Global One Kidney Club meetings and the Ask Me Anything meetings for the National Kidney Donation Organization. She is also on their Mentoring Team. Elaine cohosted an National Kidney Foundation workshop about the benefits of plant based eating to promote kidney health in addition to a cooking demonstration. Elaine has been a mentor for Plant Powered Metro New York during nine Jumpstarts that help people make the transition to plant based eating.

From 2016-2022, Elaine was a Professor and Program Director for the Peace Corps Fellows Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. For 30 years, she has been a teacher of nearly every subject for all grades from 2-11, in addition to 7 years of teaching children under the age of five. Elaine was a public school specialist teaching children in grades 2-5 about eating healthy foods in the South Bronx, Crown Heights, and Harlem through the Coalition for Healthy School Food. Elaine has painted eleven school murals. She completed the Columbia University course "Food and Nutrition For All," the Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate course from the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies and eCornell and the Main Street Vegan Coaching Certificate course.

http://elaineperlman.com/