Week 6 - Drama and social education
I have personally found due to my own participation in bullying workshop activities that the issue can be tackled and understood from a range of perspectives. Approaching the issues from the victim’s and bullies point of view allows for the issue of bullying in schools to be looked at in depth and allows for deeper understandings to be made by students on the issue. This deeper understanding is the aim of learning and teaching under the new VELS and I therefor find the activities to be excellent teaching and learning activities. I believe the activities provides students who are experiencing bullying a certain degree of control over the situation as they have many perspectives to look at the situation with and are provided with techniques or ideas to help resolve similar situations.
All of Helen Cahill’s activities required students to investigate in-depth the deeper issues behind bullying, aiming at students developing an understanding of human responses, feelings and an overall sense of human rights, safety and community connection, they gain the practical experience of finding ways to prevent bullying and/or conflict through examining the issues from different angles. These understandings and tools are essential for students as they develop into contributeting thoughtful ethical citizens of a local and global community.
Such workshops could be developed to tackle other issues such as Health concerns including body image, anorexia, depression and mental illness, sexual orientation, sexual harassment, relationship concerns, crime, stress and anxiety or even issues of career guidance/planning for the future.
Many schools have implemented Drama as a means of assisting students with special needs to develop a sense of social awareness and transformation. Programs that advocate drama for everyday life are supported highly by organisations such as Autism Victoria, which insist that they enable students with disabilities to develop their social skills and a self confidence.
many healthing organisations such as Health Victoria make use of travelleing short plays to educate students to personal health concerns and those that are within their community, the aim is to use drama to develop students social awareness.Â
There are numerous organisations found on the Internet and within local newspapers that use drama to showcase their social/community concerns, many childrens’ theatre companies deal with issues that apply to a particular group of studnet’s and community groups often put on plays for children to introduce aspects of acceptable behaviour and encouraging team-ship.
As a teacher I would definitely approach issues within the schooling community through the use of drama, I believe it reaches students in a deeper way than a discussion on the topic would as it allows students to understand the issue in a variety of ways, as they are watching, listening, feeling and analysing the issue.