THE REFLECTION OF THE FIRST WEEK

This week, we covered what we are going to do during this semester while taking
drama lessons. We discussed what drama is, what to act means, whether we are acting even in
our real lives, an acting teacher. We tried to make a connection between art and language; we
talked about a bold statement which is: Art is nothing but a language. We drew attention to
nonverbal communication and how we can benefit from art, acting and drama in our teaching
process.
First of all we’ve learned that acting is reacting. We go through some events all the
time in our lives, sometimes we act as expected from us and sometimes we act as a totally
different person. We are different people when we are with our family, our friends, our
teachers etc. We know the real person behind them we don’t show it to the others every time,
because our reactions changes according to the person with us and to the situations
experienced. Then, we gave importance to the idea that we can express so many things thanks
to the nonverbal communication whose rate is %82 in a classroom atmosphere, although we
are not saying even a single word. We decided on that we have to give and take right
messages through nonverbal communication, because it is really important and effective. We
referred to language acquisition lessons and we agreed on the idea that we, as teachers, have
to create an atmosphere in which we can show our immediacy to the students; if we don’t do
that, the students may have some fears and we may experience some discipline problems of
the students.
We talked about an acting teacher who uses her/his voice, body language effectively
and who is aware of the non-verbal communication. An acting teacher should use his/her
voice for his/her own health at first, and then for conveying the right messages through the
voice and realizing an effective communication in the classroom. An acting teacher should
use his/her gestures, mimics and the classroom space to give the right messages. An acting
teacher should be aware of the non-verbal communication which is high in the classroom. By
means of this awareness the teachers can encode and decode the right messages, s/he can use
immediacy and understand her/his students and her/himself properly. If a teacher is aware of
the non-verbal communication, s/he can give the right messages by controlling his/her voice
and body language. It makes him/her autonomous, this autonomy brings him/her self-
confidence, in the end all these steps create ‘’teacher identity’’.
 The other topic was to lose the face. We talked about whether there is some norm
according to the public and whether these norms are really normal and important and we
made encouraging speeches to lose the face if needed to teach. We argued that the idea which
to be able to be/act like a different person gives freedom to the person; it makes you use your
own source to find your identity and to develop yourself. We covered the schemata of ‘’being
model’’. B is to believe in you can do it. Firstly, we have to believe in we can learn how to
use our body language, our voice; we can act in the class in appropriate situations and we
have to make our students believe in themselves they can do it too. E is experiment, to
experience acting and respect to the others and give them constructive feedback which can
help them in finding and developing themselves. I is to invent our body language, our
gestures, our postures and take/give right messages through these items. G is to generate
which means after all these steps we could be ready to get our teacher identity.
Finally, we agreed on that we have to be ready to jump on the stage all the time, if we
want to benefit from these lessons, no matter what others think about it or no matter how
much they laugh at us.
Duygu ALDEMİR