How to create a teaching residency…Necessary Ingredients:
• teaching artist (preferably 2 or more)
• great play (or theatrical text)
• supportive supervisor
• theatrical organization renowned for educational success
• two groups of excited and energized students
Steps:
• plan curriculum
• find guinea pigs (a.k.a., teachers willing to let you take over their class for two weeks)
• teach residency to brilliant youth
After I started working at Seattle Rep as the Education Intern, one of my first assignments was to work with another teaching artist (in this case, last year’s Education Intern, Ana Maria Campoy) to create a new in-school residency based around August Wilson’s play Fences. Ana Maria and I met countless times to plan our curriculum (oftentimes over drinks, which makes for the BEST creative process).
Once we had mapped out our basic plan of attack, we sat down with theatrical education genius Scott Koh, Director of School Programs at the Rep. Scott helped us fine-tune some things, and found us two willing teachers at local Roosevelt High School. Ana Maria, Scott and I met with the teachers, pitched the residency, and set up our first class time.
The next two weeks were a blur. I had such a blast being in the classroom with these amazing students, and teaching Fences, which is such a brilliant text. Not only that, but I feel such a sense of ownership over this curriculum. It was an awesome opportunity to create something like this from scratch, and then get to put it into practice. Only at Seattle Rep!
-- Matt Giles, Education Intern
