Our Foundation: Emotion Matters

Kids Are Dramatic is an individual, grassroots project which developed its foundations in a Living and Learning Community at Colorado College in 2011. As emotional cognition was identified as an area in need of fine-tuning in community schools in Colorado Springs, Jacob Kirksey took advantage of this opportunity to write an eight-week curriculum addressing the issues of emotional cognition using theatre arts. The object and hopes of this curriculum were to allow children to flourish academically, socially, and emotionally. By using theatre as a medium, students are able to improve their social skills, their confidence levels, and begin to understand their roles as citizens, making their voices heard.

The Kids Are Dramatic program consolidated as an after-school program at Horace Mann Middle School in March of 2012, meeting weekly with about 10 consistently attending children. This year, months later, the after-school program meets biweekly with 25 students attending consistently, and a total of 45 students enrolled in the program. Additionally, the staff of Kids Are Dramatic grew from being run as a one-man show to employing a total of three members.

In order to correctly assess the change that students have made and have seen in themselves, pre and post surveys were given out during the pilot program. This survey tracked any changes in their perception of their emotional climate, as well as their home and school climate. Research was collected, though the survey will be redistributed again at the end of this year in order to provide a more accurate and more longitudinal study with a greater number of children.

However, other professional research projects have been conducted regarding emotional cognition and the use of drama and/or theater in the classroom. A study at Wiley InterScience, at the “New Directions for Youth Development” center examined the connection between Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed and its effects on the lives of students. An article titled “Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed and How to Derail Real-Life Tragedies with Imagination,” published in Wiley Periodicals and written by Maria Tereza Schaedler, propagates that “theater stimulates dialogue and creates critical consciousness. It is a nonviolent approach to problem solving…[challenging] traditional power roles in the classroom, [stimulating] imagination and creativity, and [striking] people in a unique way that a lecture will likely not” (Schaedler 149). Theatre can provide a podium for the unheard to be heard, and for those who were taught to be silenced to, instead, develop a true and genuine voice. Not only does this improve their confidence and inter-student relations but also allows children to be comfortable enough to modify their academic environment into an atmosphere where they feel safe, making way for learning to occur in an optimum ambiance. Additionally, students are taught how to give and receive constructive criticism, making them better peers to one another.

Another article titled “Activist Awareness in the Theatre of the Oppressed Classroom” written by Susanne Shawyer, Assistant Professor at the Department of Theatre at Dalhousie University, investigated the effects of applied theatre in the classroom. A survey collected data claiming that “in subsequent self-reflections, several students commented on how easily traditional playground games and theatre warm-ups can be adapted to curtail competition and instead encourage teamwork” (Shawyer 14).

As the staff of Kids Are Dramatic, we hope to achieve similar or even more significant results with our middle school students. In the long run, we hope to make Kids Are Dramatic a community-wide program which will benefit children from various schools across the Colorado Springs area.