CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, April 08, 2015

Becoming an Artist Who Teaches

Caleb Winebrenner: Nobody admitted it, but we all thought teaching artists were better than teachers. We could do “more creative” things in our classes, and we could teach in places other than schools. Teachers were the grey flannel suits to our beat revolution. That was life in graduate school.

But life has a funny way of turning things around. In the winter of 2013, I was jobless, and I felt hopeless. Gigs kept falling through. Things had to change. Then I got an email from school that had my resume. “We have a last-minute opening for an ELA teacher,” it said. “You should apply.”

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I think that this article provides something more than just discussing how we artists can become teachers; I also think that this hints on advice on how to a more proactive and effective coordinator. The first example the article discusses is reminiscent of when how one enters a meeting with an idea that they think is brilliant and everybody will love and then as the meeting goes on nobody knows what the actual idea was and it just is not clicking. People then begin to think that you do not actually know what you are talking about nor that you are experienced in the field. Although the article’s example is not exactly the same it, it reveals a lot about who we are as artists and additionally communicators, what exactly is our job. The kids in the example were eager to hear what the teacher had to say, just as we so often are with pitches, but if the idea is not clearly delivered or received, there may be problems.