I had a major period of doubt about whether or not Google Plus was working as a platform for the communication portion of my online class. Some of the students struggled with the platform. Some students hated logging on to two different platforms. (Three if you count their college email account which believe me, they do.) To be fair, a larger portion really liked the benefits that they were getting, or at least didn’t hate it. But I think that we need to be vigilant against using technology for technology’s sake. Innovation doesn’t always lead to improvement.

A few days ago I was walking down the hall to grade the first round of speeches for my online speech class. It’s a long hallway but I noticed as I turned down it that it was noisy. The closer I got to my classroom the more I realized that it was my class waiting outside the classroom door. They were all talking and laughing. As more students joined us they all quickly scanned the room and figured out who was who. They did it quickly, by faces.

It dawned on me in that moment that this was different. I had noticed it before but it never registered. In my online speech class before I moved to Google Plus the students were quiet. They would come in and sit down. It wasn’t until they wrote their names on the board that they would begin to talk. Because they had never seen one another before.

I went back to the class and the previous speech classes discussion content on Google+. What I found was surprising. For a class size of 20 I was getting a discussion with 70-100 responses. In a typical online class I would see 50-70. Add to this that students are at times replying to more than one person at a time in their comments and the difference is staggering.

Add to THAT the fact that the students can effortlessly talk to one another one-on-one and the real differences add up between the two.

I’m not satisfied that Google+ is the perfect method. I do think that it is currently the best that I can do with the resources I have available to me. I think that the benefits do outweigh the problems. I hope my students come to understand that too.

One of the things I use to teach in Theatre Appreciation was that the job of a good critic was to determine What the Director was trying to do. Did they accomplish it? And was the attempt worthwhile. We talked about the various functions of theatre. That some was meant for pure entertainment. Some showcased an artist. Some was for education. Some was for expression. Some was for social change.

I taught a class at the University of Illinois called Social Issues Theatre. It was a laboratory class where we explored a different set of topics each semester. The students would learn about the topic and create performance pieces about them. These performance pieces came from the world around them and from their own experiences.

The Laramie Project is a larger version of that process done by the Tectonic Theatre Company.

The choice of the production is already making a few small waves here and there but the overall reaction to the play is positive. I wonder though if that is the climate of the community or a testament to the fact that I have surrounded myself with people who think like me.

I’ve spent the last few days really thinking about the show. I realized at some point in the last few weeks that this show is much more intensely personal that I thought it would be when I selected it last year at this time. There was a time when I would have been proud to do this show just because it’s a good show. Now I feel driven to do this show because I might be able to make a little bit of difference.

When you are in a position of power and privilege you must use your platform to give a voice to those that have none. And to be an amplifier to those who are not being heard. In that light, doing a work like Laramie feels weighty. Solid. Powerful.

Laramie is not the story of the death of Matthew Shepard. It is the story of a town who, through a thousand inactions, through a thousand silences, created a world where two young men could believe that it was ok to brutally murder a stranger because they were gay. That guilt falls on no single person. A snowflake seems to be made of air until you are shoveling your driveway.

In that, all of our communities are similar. And to take a story to your town about another town that let things go too far. That is a cautionary tale. A wake-up call. A herald.

So just as we cannot point to one source of hatred we must point to all and each other. Vigilantly watching, guiding the people around us so that we do not turn a blind eye when a gay teenage kills themselves and we do not let hatred destroy families.

A friend talks frequently about conserving so that our children have more. A better place to live. I talk about Laramie so my children grow and become their beautiful selves with no fear that an unaccepting community will attempt to damage and diminish them. The wonderful thing about that, that passion is that my friend’s work will benefit all of our children and my work will too. So that a generation of people working through passionate acts to make things better will, in a thousand actions, begin to change the evolution of a culture.

It’s been one of those weeks where you wander around sort of thinking about the large and absurdly complex world in which we live. I mean, think about our origins and the hunter gatherer mind evolving into a hive of such tangled attentions that I cannot fathom the amount of steps and people it would be to take a cotton shirt from its origins in the cotton field to my walmart store. Of course add in the label and the price tags and the designers who make them, the people that print them, the paper maker, the ink makers, the loggers the janitors. Thousands of people involved to create the item that you hold in your hand right now.

And I think a lot about art during all of this too. How our common spiritual culture has revealed to us and to the generations the painted landscape that makes up the living breathing essence of our people. And we look back at the art before us and it unfolds like a photograph to painting to a sculpture to a sunset. Starting as a simple copy of the things we see. Until one day. One artist somewhere thought, what if I didn’t have to copy what I see, what if there could be more. Or different. With that the shared mental canvas shifted and people began to experiment with form. With feeling. And our shared consciousness began to grow. But then they went further.

Brave artists on the edges started to wonder if you even needed the image at all? What if you just took the feeling that the image created in you, took it up inside your heart and changed it and gave it back to the world in a completely different form. So that the terrain of our culture becomes bright and colorful and alive. That is art. Art is the product of the collective feelings and experiences of an entire people. All of the art put together, woven, is our cosmic footprint.

So that above all else we have to be putting the power into the hands of new artists every day. Storytellers. Magic makers. That output belongs to all of us. We all contribute to the art in our space. By being doctors, teachers, janitors, and by being other artists. But just like the $7 tshirt from walmart the product that we get from an artists has been built of the contributions of hundreds, maybe thousands of people that helped make it possible. The artists inhales their surroundings and then exhales energy. Energy we need to survive. Energy we need to grow.

People have a tendency to believe that we are living at the tail end of a great time of art. I think that every culture has had that feeling. But it’s not true. Art doesn’t die, or run out, it just changes. We tend to believe we’ve thought of everything. Not much room for something new. We already know a lot of stuff.

We could not be more wrong. Tomorrow is so completely filled with possibility. And we’ve got front row seats.

I am halfway through my sixth year as a full time faculty member. Before that, like many, I taught as an adjunct at various institutions. Still the experience is not the same as being a full time faculty. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how a college works. Like most things, a lot of different options will get the job done, but when it comes to really excelling, really doing something extraordinary, you have to be a little more selective.

From a faculty perspective, the purpose of a college is to educate. Simple. Clear. We exist in a space with students. We offer guidance and knowledge. We guide career paths. Sit as counselors. Listeners. Delightfully this provides a lot of opportunities for us to also become learners. But the premium product that is produced by a college comes in those hours upon hours that faculty reach through and weave the student into the college.

All the other parts of the college exist to serve this moment.

This is the super-objective.

In acting terminology a super objective is the goal that a character is trying to achieve for the course of the play. All other acts, big and small are driven by the character’s need to achieve this super objective. If an actor does not understand a character’s super-objective the part will amble off course and the play will not succeed.

All of the workings of a college should move to support faculty. An institutional super-objective. Just as I might ask an actor how a particular acting choice feeds the character’s drive toward the super-objective, I think it would be fair to insist that administrators ask themselves during the decision making process how does this decision support faculty as they lift up students?

Gordon MacKenzie writes in his book, Orbiting the Giant Hairball about his inspiration to abandon the pyramid style of business organization and move to an organizational system that resembles a tree, a plum tree he specifies. His theory is that by placing the producers at the top and administrators below as support that the content producers are put in the strongest place to not only create well, but to thrive and produce.

I love this analogy. I love it more relating it to education. Because unlike the pyramid, the tree analogy indicates a flow from the roots up. The adminstration channeling resources to the faculty. A faculty that is divided into branches but ultimately, that is connected by a central core. And that place, whether you believe it is at the face of the leaf or within the cellular struture itself, is where in very small moments multiplied thousands of times, that the really profound and important and life-giving work takes place. So that the resources that flow up are taken and transformed and allowed to grow and develop in a natural and organic way. As MacKenzie so perfectly puts it. “A pyramid is a tomb, a tree is a living organism.”

In my relationships with students and with administration I have noticed over and over again how balanced the two are in terms of my interaction.  Imagine a student and a teacher standing face to face. Behind the teacher is the hierarchy of the administration. The teacher and the student are talking. The administrator behind the teacher taps him on the shoulder. He turns and they interact. In that moment, the interaction with the student is paused. Halted.

Ideally, the interruption comes with bounty. New things. Evolution. Fuel. These interruptions are necessary, they feed and enhance that student-teacher interaction. But if the interruption is negative or sometimes worse, unclear, the faculty spends more and more time turned around, with their back to the student.

If faculty becomes frustrated or disenchanted, the interaction with the student becomes tainted. If the noise from behind continually disrupts the momentum of student interaction and evolution, faculty may hide, disengage, or quit.

The leaf does leaf things, the branches do branches things. They work together. They have different jobs. Their goals should be the same. The institutional super-objective. Flow that travels separately and together. Negotiable, cooperative, collaborative, quiet, thoughtful, sincere, passionate, dedicated, and committed.

When I was a college student in Iowa I traveled around a fair amount moving between home and campus. The roads in Iowa wind and twist through the natural rise and fall of the landscape. If you have only ever seen Iowa from I-80 you’re really missing some of the most beautiful scenery in the midwest. Anywho, I had a standard route I would take from home to college and back. It was a 90 minute highway drive broken into four stretches. I traveled it hundreds of times. Snaking through downtown Grinnell, stopping at the Casey’s in Tama, the big turn just before Traer, and the endless final stretch just before Cedar Falls ending with the UNIdome and my theatre.

One day because of flooding, I went up through Marshalltown instead. I was unsettled and alert as I navigated my way on roads that were unfamiliar. This was before cellphones and GPS and cars that told you what direction you were facing. All I had was the Atlas my dad had given me when I first went away to college, now crumpled and stained with dirt and pepsi. It wasn’t rocket science. And I got there just fine. But I noticed something much later.

The entire experience was jarring. Nervousness and uncertainty led me to become more aware of not only what I was doing but of the landscape rolling out in front of me. I watched where roads lead, the map, the horizon. I saw details in my surroundings that were exhilarating and exciting. I did not fall into the sleepy trance of the road often traveled. And when I finally made it to my destination I was a little disappointed that the drive was over. Quite different from my usual feeling of relief and mild annoyance at so much time wasted.

That’s the way I feel about teaching sometimes. And I know that our students feel that way. I’ve seen it in their faces. I think that every professor wants to engage their students. I think that a lot just don’t know how. There’s a lot of different ways to go about doing that but I promise you that none of them work unless you are engaged in what you are doing.

Has the class you are teaching grown old and just . . . well . . boring? Throw it out. Start over. New textbook. New syllabus. Non-traditional space. Hell, get new shoes too. Too much work? For what payoff? When your class starts in 30 minutes how do you feel? Annoyed at being interrupted or excited to go get some shit done? It doesn’t always have to be the second but if it NEVER is, you’re doing something wrong. And if you are never excited about teaching then get a different job. There are thousands of passionate teachers who want to engage students and change the world, get out of the way, you’re holding up the evolution of my universe.

If you are still skeptical I have something I want to share with you. Just you and me. Everything you have learned about teaching is made up. All the teachers you learned from . . . well they learned from someone who learned from someone who learned from someone. There is no magic bible of teaching somewhere where the best message is writ never to be changed. You can do whatever you want. You can fail. It won’t kill your students. Some of my best classroom experience were later revealed to be horrible failures by my professors at the time. Education is a living thing.
Wake up with me and give it a try. The next step is waking up your students. This is not easy. Some will even resist. You will have to completely disassemble their well-traveled route. Change their landscape. Challenge their expectations. Give them ownership over the class that they are taking. Expect protestations. Expect bright eyes and misplaced smiles. Expect challenges. Expect magnificence. Expect frustration. Expect failure. Expect surprise.

When you leave yourself open to everything, you can be disappointed by nothing. But you, young teachers, old teachers. You have good instincts. You do not have to move within the confines of a system just because it is there. I am giving you permission to run up the down escalator. Where jeans and a mohawk. Throw the textbook out the window. We are the new generation of teachers. Teachers have alway moved and crafted their landscape. Why are we so reluctant in the classroom?

Six months ago I started using Google+ as a more transparent and effective way of managing the communication element of my online classroom. The potential benefits of the platform were clear. Most of the complications I perceived in those first few classes were resolved as the Google developers team made upgrades to the interface and from my perspective, we were able to create a fairly dynamic and interactive experience for the students as well as for myself. However, over the course of the last six months I have noticed three major problem areas that have led me to reconsider just how effective teaching with Google+ might be.

Controlled Classroom

Google+ gives an instructor the opportunity to create a class circle but unlike a regular classroom (online or traditional) when a student drops or is dropped from a class or merely has issues with the instructor it is a much more complicated process of detangling them from the class. The professor can remove the student from circles but unless all the students in the class also remove that student they still have the capability of being “there”. Often this is not a big deal but in a situation where a student feels they are being treated unfairly it creates an opportunity for a lot of back channel communication that other students might feel is unwelcome and can add a layer of negativity that no one wants tainting their classroom. Additionally, because an instructor has removed the student from the class circle, they are unable to see the posts and communications as they happen and thus, lose the ability to moderate them.

Student Frustration

Not every student is tech savvy.  Though the feedback from students about google+ has been largely positive there is a consistent number of students who really seem to dislike using google+ whether because it is new and they resent having to learn it or because it requires them to log into an additional “system” to access parts of their class. There are a lot of reasons why I tend to minimize this complaint personally. Most of the students have a learning curve for the LMS and google+ is no different. With google’s email alerts students get notifications about class posts to their student emails. It is possible to make them aware of what is going on in google without them logging in constantly.

There is a difficulty though. It isn’t possible, often, for students to understand just how much more they are getting from having such a dynamic platform in which to communicate with one another. Even if I explain it and my philosophy behind it, it is impossible to balance the two in the eyes of the student who is determined to see it as a hassle. I think about other courses where we ask students to do things that are unconventional or outside the mainstream student experience. In my acting class my students must get use to sitting on the floor. They must wear clothes that enable them to be able to move freely. Some complain. Some embrace it. The class cannot be successful without it. In this situation it becomes an issue of measuring how I define success for the course and determining if the inconvenience outweighs the benefits.

My Personal Expression

I love Google+. I have a lot of things that I post personally. That makes for a big problem however. Whatever I post to public turns up in their circle. Whatever THEY post to public turns up in the class circle. So far this is a minimal intrusion from the student end, but for myself, who engaged deeply with social media, I have had to curtail my own personal expression out of respect for the students’ need to have a fairly clean classroom environment. Even something as trivial as changing my profile photo becomes an issue. It seems like a bit of a design flaw that I cannot have students simply see the things I post to their specific circle with the rest of the information weeded out. I could employ the use of hashtags but that would add an additional layer of complication and for that, see problem #2.

I’m not saying that I’m done with Google+. I think from the educator standpoint it has so many rich advantages that I’m hesitant to completely close the book on it. But I also can’t ignore an honest assessment of the problems. It seems, in some ways, that the very things I love about it (the openness, ease of posting, dynamic platform) are the things that hold the root of the problem. And honestly, I’m not sure how to solve them.

Every semester, in my Public Speaking class, I ask my students to write down their favorite teacher/professor and what they did that made them a favorite. Originally I envisioned that the students would talk about elements of speaking that would feed later lessons on being a quality speakers. Instead I found a list of stories that did have a commonality but it had nothing to do with public speaking skills. What I found equally intriguing was the fact that five elements emerged over and over again, semester after semester as traits that set some of their teachers apart from all of the others. This is that list.

1. Be challenging. Many of the students talked joyously about teachers and professors that expected great things from their students. Who set lofty goals. Higher than the student thought was possible for them to reach, and then gave them the tools to reach it. Never, not even in one of these descriptions did a student like a professor best because they were easy. As one student so succinctly put “I would rather have a teacher have high expectations than not care and just pass you.”

2. Relate your material to the student’s world. This is sometimes easier said than done, particularly if you have abandoned the world of the younger people. It’s understandable, but being completely unaware of the culture that makes up the framework of their daily lives creates a barrier, a distance between you and them. And the greater the distance the harder it is for them to hear you. And if your response to their culture is to shake your head and express your distaste, you might as well tell them that you value them at the same level. Our culture is no more than a reflection of who we are and no culture has more value than another’s.

3. Be available. If you are arriving 10 minutes before classes start and leaving 5 minutes after your obligatory office hour is up, you’ve got a big problem. When a student comes to your door unannounced, what is your response? What does your body look like? Are you still keeping one eye on email? Are there papers on your lap? Are you quick to hustle them through the conversation or do you stop and give them a chance to think and speak. Do you have rules with “no exceptions?” Professors want to fight for the right to be more than content experts. To do this we must act more like mentors and guides than lecture and grading machines.

4. See the individual and care about them. Your students have names. Learn them. They have majors. Ask. Find out who the people you are sharing this time with are and incorporate that into what you talk about. Students have been trained to behave a certain way. They might not care that you have no idea who they are. But then don’t expect them to care about you either. You are modeling a lot of different behaviors that you might never intend to. Your students learn more from you than the information in your content area. You are a classroom leader. They will model their own leadership styles after the ones that are demonstrated to them. Whether they work or not. “Be the change you want to see in the world.” A beautiful idea. Tough to execute. But then, all the best things in life have a little bit of effort to get to the payoff.

5. Show your passion. How many times have you taught the class? Does it excite you? Did it once? What about it made you so passionate? What was that idealistic vision you had walking into the first class you ever taught? If you’ve lost that feeling of excitement and passion think perhaps that it is not the repetition that watered it down, but that you made a misstep somewhere. We too, model our teaching off of those that went before and believe it or not, the ones that came before us didn’t know much more about teaching than we do now. Pick one class and find the things about it that you love. Things that speak to you. Let them see your excitement. Show them the crazy grad student whose mind reeled with new ideas. Help them to unlock the passion that is inside them.

And YOU, reading this thinking that not every student has a passion. You’re dead wrong. Start over or quit teaching. I so often hear colleagues venting their frustrations with students who are just not performing well. I have them too. It’s going to happen. But the dissatisfaction never leads to change. What I have difficulty accepting is the quick insistence that the way that has always been done is good enough. Good enough sounds like a C to me. Average. As professors we should be getting a 4.0 every semester. We are the Masters right?

So, a challenge, teachers and professors. Pick one class for spring and throw out all the notes and plans and systems that you have always used. Do something risky. Try something new. What on earth do you have to lose? And what might you gain?

Try it and see. I dare you.

It was a couple of months ago now that I was asked to be the keynote speaker at a graduation that would be taking place inside a correctional facility near here. I didn’t think much of it at the time. One of the programs my college runs is prison college courses. It makes sense. Educating people who are incarcerated makes sense on a ton of different levels.

And so I wrote the speech. I love graduation speeches. They are always a time to talk about hope and change and dreams. Even for people who are currently not in the best situation. And I have to admit, I was pretty proud of the speech that I ended up with. It was sincere but honest. It touched on the realities of their situation but not without hope.

Going to the prison was another experience entirely. I don’t know exactly what I expected. I hadn’t really thought about it to be perfectly honest. I mean, I expected guards and things I guess. Fences. Uniforms. But when I arrived the experience that I had was much more intense. From the moment that we walked into the small receiving room. All I was allowed to take with me was my notes and a photo ID. My cellphone stayed in the car.

Once we were through the small receiving area we were walked across the grounds to another small building. Inside was a tiny gymnasium that had been set up with a small platform and several tables that held around 50 graduates. They proceeded in, in the traditional blue cap and gown, to Pomp and Circumstance. It was clear that many of them were triumphant. In spite of the meager surroundings and the small group, this was definitely a graduation.

The warden spoke briefly. I wondered about my own speech. I wondered a lot about these men, why they were here, how they felt, what this all meant. I wondered how effectively you could talk about hope to people in prison, about the future, about dreams. But I did. And I meant what I said. Because from my perspective, I cannot see the reason they were there in the first place. That is the job of the police and the judge and the rest of our judicial system. I have to see the person who is going to come out. As a teacher, as a leader, that is how I can help make my world better.

The speech went well. Most of them listened with open hearts. Clearly. After the speech I was able to shake each of their hands as they received their diploma. And though graduation was over, my experience was not. As I ate I spoke with some of the people that worked with the inmates in the education program. We talked for a long time about the life they lived in prison. About the effects of being told that you are worthless. About the effects of having something to be proud of. About how the mentality of an inmate on the inside ripples to the family on the outside. About how educated men and women are less likely to end up in prison again. About hope. About value.

Toward the end of the meal that had been prepared by the culinary arts class, one of the graduates came over to the table. He waited until the director I was talking with to turned to him and then he spoke to me. He told me that he really loved my speech. He asked if it might be possible for him to have a copy of it. As he asked his eyes shifted between mine and the director’s. I opened my portfolio and handed him my copy of the speech. He looked at the director before taking it and thanked me again.

But you know, it was me who felt thankful. For a lot of things.

Tonight we open our production of Assassins. I spent a lot of time yesterday thinking about the process as a whole. Were auditions really September 6th? Music rehearsal, the rehearsal room. The stage. It all seems like a blur. Assassins isn’t the most complex project I’ve ever worked on but it’s up there. When you think of the sheer number of things that the actors and crew are juggling it borders on the absurd and they are doing a fantastic job. Yeah, the actors and crew. I sit in the audience now. Oh, and I unlock doors. Or I just hand my keys to people and take them back when they are returned. Yesterday I got 72 points in Words with Friends on one word before the show.

What it comes down to is that directing is weird sometimes. The way that it pivots and in the space of a few weeks you go from being the source point for the entire show to being a guiding observer. Nudging. Watching. Keeping your mouth shut.

I know almost nothing about how the show works backstage or what goes on back there. Honestly I always feel like I’m trespassing when I go backstage during a show. I’d rather not do it anyway. My eyes are on the product, what happens when they come on stage and the lights come up. The mechanics are the “how” and as long as they work and are safe, game on.

Directors shouldn’t be involved in the production side of things if they can help it at all. The people involved bond with one another and their bonds make the show richer, seamless. You have taught them to count on one another, and they do. That’s a wonderful feeling, if a little bit isolated. I’d rather be party-of-one in the audience though, and know that the cast and crew were moving together as one unit.

We take pride in what we have ownership over. Limit ownership and you limit investment.

Opening night though. Opening night is magic. It is the theatre practitioners official holiday. Somewhere between a birthday and thanksgiving. Over time the people who have theatre people in their lives learn that everything stops for that last week and a group of people push and pull and laugh and give up and start again until the day is here and we throw the doors wide and say to the world, “come in, we have saved a spot for you. Let us show you just what we have been doing these last few months.”

It IS magic. I went back this morning and counted and Assassins marks my 40th production. My 40th opening night. And it’s just as exciting as the first one. In 8th grade. Where I’m pretty sure I sang a song called “Puberty Blues”. Oh yes I did.

So happy opening night to my cast and crew and to all the other shows out there opening this weekend. Great job! Break a leg! Make magic! We’re all in this together.

There is a lot of business to the craft of theatre. It’s not the interesting or fun part of the job but it is a necessary one. One of the most important and most complicated parts of putting a production together is navigating the intricacies of the royalty agreement that you must enter into before you can present a play to the public.

That’s a very important bit. “before you can present a play to the public”. That is about all it takes to earmark your project a performance and therefore subject to laws that protect the copyright owners from having their work used without their permission and without compensation.

That means any performance, even free ones, that take place for the public. This also includes excerpts from the play or a song from a musical. Just because it’s not the whole thing doesn’t make it fair game. If people are coming from outside to see it and especially if you are charging admission, you must have an agreement with the publishing house who own the play or the author him/herself.

The agreement doesn’t end with simple permissions. Copyright agreements are filled with usually very strict guidelines addressing everything from cutting lines to how big the font size on the poster must be and what you must put on the poster regarding the company. Musicals usually have an insane amount of stuff they want on the poster. It’s really tempting just to skip it for aesthetic reasons. Believe me I know.

When I took the agreement to our graphics department as they were creating the poster for Assassins I thought the designer was going to cry. He’s an artsy kind of guy too, but we shared in our frustration and he did an excellent job incorporating all the elements from the royalty agreement into the poster.

Copyright isn’t just a problem for the producer of the play, it can affect everyone involved. Not only can a royalty house sue the person running the production but they actually have the right to go after everyone involved with the play and the venue that houses it if the two aren’t one in the same. Add to that the fact that copyright violation can be a criminal offense and you begin to see why it can be a problem.

They are more able to monitor production activity now than they ever have been. When I was studying copyrights in college, big publishing houses would use clipping services, people combing newspapers from various cities looking for announcements and adds. Heck, now all they have to do is set up an alert in google and in one minute they are looking at everything from your poster to the video you posted on youtube (which is also a violation of your copyright agreement).

In the end, the play or musical you are doing belongs to someone. It is their creation. Whether it is a broadway blockbuster or an obscure unknown show. Someone created it and if you are going to present it to the public they not only deserve credit, they deserve compensation. You are using it to get something, whether that is money, or visibility, without the proper permissions it is tantamount to stealing.