The Teacher As Screenwriter: Understand Your Characters
“Think of your character as a jewel that has about a thousand different facets. If you keep turning them over and exploring new sides, you’ll keep discovering new information about their personality and motivations. And there’s always another way to turn things. There’s always another side to explore.”
I am a third grade teacher and a huge movie nerd. I look forward to sharing many metaphors with you that link film making to education. In the classroom, it all starts with your students, so The Teacher As Screenwriter series begins with the topic of characters (your students). At the end of this post, you will find take-aways for understanding your students and tips for building a safe classroom for them to take risks and shine.
Think of students that you felt a special connection with and think back to how that connection was built. Was it a rough road at first getting to know this student or was it a mutual admiration society from the beginning? Were you able to see their endearing qualities and understand their attitudes and behaviors? Were there socioeconomic challenges, trauma, learning disabilities, etc., that caused these students to act out or behave differently with the whole class than when they worked with you one on one?
Teachers are actors sometimes, directors other times, but they are also the audience striving to understand and empathize with the characters, their students. We know, instinctively, that the wants and behaviors we are seeing in the classroom are motivated by deeper, sometimes hidden needs. We can learn from screenwriters and how they create engaging characters. This metaphor helps us understand that our students are individual characters with their own stories.
Tyler Mowery’s screenwriting videos on YouTube were an excellent resource for learning about how screenwriters create their characters. I also found fascinating parallels to the classroom by researching the approaches to character creation used by famous, diverse screenwriters. Below, I will lay out for you just a small fraction of the research I found and make connections to what it could mean in our classrooms..
Fundamentals of Building Great Characters:
Want - As Mowery explains, this is the visible goal that makes up the events of the plot. It is external and the audience (the teacher) is aware of it. The want is opposed by external forces (antagonism). Smaller wants change throughout the story and lead to the ultimate want.
Some examples of possible “character” wants in the classroom:
The student who is clingy with friends
The student who calls out constantly
The student who is silent or speaks very quietly
The student who throws things
Need - Mowery explains that the need is usually the same from beginning to end. It is what the character must discover about themselves or the world to become complete, balanced, and whole. What is the lie your character believes that is keeping them from evolving (more about this in my next post)?
Some examples of possible “character” needs in the classroom:
The need to be loved
The need to belong
The need to be seen or praised
The need to feel safe
The need to have control
How to Get an Audience Engaged with Your Character:
Understanding who your characters are is necessary to start your story in the right direction.
Getting to know students at the beginning of the year is worth the time!
They will appreciate you caring about them authentically.
Empathy is all about understanding why characters do what they do
Every behavior is communication so try to figure out what your students are communicating to you.
Find a way to relate to every student. It helps to find things you have in common, especially weaknesses, so you can build empathy for them and share your struggles with them.
Get the audience to stay engaged even if they don’t agree with every decision the character makes.
You as the teacher (audience) need to stay engaged with students and show that you are still going to be there for them and we all make bad decisions sometimes, etc.
A character is engaging when we are interested in his or her struggle and want to know what will happen next.
Be genuinely interested and fascinated by your students and their strengths and areas for growth.
Give your characters endearing personality traits.
Trust me, even your most challenging students have endearing traits in which to focus and foster.
It helps if the audience can see themselves in that character. Is the character misunderstood? Rejected? If so, the audience can relate to them.
See yourself in all your students. Find commonalities.
Share these with the students and build a bond
Another way to get the audience engaged with the character is if they see something in them that they want to be. Maybe the character is very competent at what they do, have great power, or simply say what they want to say whenever they want to say it.
I have had students who were very difficult in some areas, but they were so amazing in other areas. Know every student and embrace their uniqueness.
Know Who Your Characters Are When Alone And Know Who They Are Presenting Themselves To Be Around Others:
Informal: This is the comfortable state the character is in when alone or with people in whom they are comfortable. The informal reveals their true character in their natural state.
Dramatic: This is the heightened state the character is in when in dramatic situations, often taking on a certain kind of persona as a defense mechanism. They are playing a role/character in the dramatic state.
I found this to be a very powerful parallel to working with children. I am sure we have all had students who were one way during whole-class discussions and completely different during small group work or one on one. Maybe you observe a completely different student when out at recess with his/her friends than when in your classroom. Building a safe classroom culture and working to make sure everyone is comfortable can enhance everyone’s learning experience (Informal State).
Don’t judge and think you know a student based on their words, behavior and reactions when heightened (dramatic state). What is this heightened, dramatic state revealing to you about the child’s needs?
“One character might use multiple coping mechanisms to deal with different weaknesses.” — Jami Gold, quote from How to Make Characters Vulnerable to Readers
Take-Aways and Resources for the Classroom
“Every child deserves a champion: an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists they become the best they possibly can be.” - Rita Pierson
The big take-away is to be intrigued, fascinated, and curious about your students. Learn about their interests and talents and understand what they want and need. Don’t underestimate them. How do you help students feel that they belong and are safe to take risks and succeed in your classroom? I would love to hear your strategies for having a trauma sensitive, equitable, and safe classroom culture. How do you give all students what they need? How do you get to know your students on a deep level that helps you work with them day in and day out? I do not claim to be an expert in the realm of learning disabilities, equity, trauma sensitive classrooms, social emotional learning topics, etc. Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Here are some ideas (by no means an exhaustive list):
Websites for Social Emotional Curriculum
Open Circle or Responsive Classroom are powerful tools in the classroom. I prefer Responsive Classroom, but there are Open Circle lessons that I use as well that can be very powerful.
“I get to know my students through morning meeting games and shares (Responsive Classroom). Honestly, just spending the first two minutes of my lesson with an informal chat helps me to know my students.”
- Laurette Cullen, Special Education Teacher, MA
I highly recommend the book Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension by Sara K. Ahmed. The school psychologist at my school let me borrow this book and it has been a game changer for my class this year. The students enjoyed exploring their own identity as well as those of their classmates. The different chapters are powerful and are presented in a very user friendly way. They include discussions about bias and analyzing perspectives.
I also highly recommend Jessica Minahan’s work. The Behavior Code Companion: Strategies, Tools, and Interventions for Supporting Students with Anxiety-Related or Oppositional Behaviors was recommended to me by my principal and it is perfectly aligned with the screenwriter metaphor of wants and needs. Every behavior is communication.
If you are interested in an in-depth approach to working with behaviorally challenged students, check out Ross Greene’s work. I attended a seminar in which he taught how to implement his ideas schoolwide and would highly recommend his workshops. This approach focuses on the idea that all students would do well if they could and centers around identifying lagging skills. I recommend starting with Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them although The Explosive Child is excellent too, but more geared towards parents.
Articles
8 Reasons Why One On One Instruction Benefits Students - This is not always possible in a classroom setting, but reading about the benefits reminds us to make time for one on one instruction when we can.
Videos
The Power of Relationships in Schools - Edutopia
Knowing Every Child Through Index Card Rosters - Edutopia
Making Sure Each Child is Known - Edutopia
Ideas to Try
Red and Green Cups: A colleague shared with me the red cup/green cup idea similar to the cups in the article above. Students’ sticks are all together in the morning. When they come in, they can move their stick to the red cup if there is something wrong and they need to talk immediately. The green cup means they want to share something that happened and it is not necessarily a negative thing or urgent. I pull the green sticks during snack time for students to come up one at a time to talk with me. This is time well spent.
“I wish my teacher knew…” is a prompt that can be an amazing tool for getting to know your students’ wants and needs. I did it a couple of different times this year. Some responses were very revealing.
Next up, I continue the screenwriting metaphor and focus on character arcs and tips from Shonda Rimes, Aaron Sorkin, and other screenwriters.
Please share in the comments about how you build relationships with students.