Ep. 68:The Teacher As Actor with Jane Cox
Link to The Teacher As Actor blog post: www.theteacheras.com/blog/beingprepared
Email for Jane Cox:
Transcript
Melissa Milner 0:09
Welcome to The Teacher As... podcast. I'm your host Melissa Milner, a teacher who is painfully curious and very easily inspired. This podcast is ever changing. And I hope with each season, you find episodes that speak to you in your work as an educator. This is the fourth season of The Teacher As... and it's exciting to see the growth in how many educators are listening. Episodes are released every other week. If you enjoy The Teacher As... please rate it on Apple Podcasts and leave a review. It helps the podcast reach more educators. Thanks for listening.
Melissa Milner 0:41
I decided to kick off this new season with an old passion of mine, acting. The teacher as actor conjures up the concept of the sage on the stage; the teacher in front of the classroom doing all the talking. This age old impression of the teacher as an actor is not one of the parallels I want to explore. There are so many ways in which teachers are similar to actors. Planning and preparation, staying in the moment, vocal qualities to keep an audience's attention are just a few. I'm creating a blog post series on The Teacher As... website about the teacher as actor, as well as dedicating at least two podcast episodes to the topic. In this episode, I talk to Jane Cox about her ideas of the teacher as actor. Jane is a professor, actress and director. I feel lucky that I found her while I was researching the teacher as actor. I hope you enjoy.
Jane Cox 1:36
Well, Melissa, my name is Jane, Jane Cox. And for many years I taught at Iowa State University, many, many years. And while I was there, I did a variety of things in terms of the theater. I was a costume designer at one point and then went into acting and directing and eventually became the head of the theater program. And I'm retired now, recently retired, and so now loving teaching the way I do, I am teaching continuing education for seniors, which the program qualifies the senior as anyone over 55. So, I'm having a really, really good time doing that teaching things I didn't have a chance to teach before. So I really love teaching. I really love theater. And I've been involved with both all my adult life.
Melissa Milner 2:35
That's amazing. I just, I just have to point out, according to that definition of senior, I will be a senior in two years. So that's horrifying.
Jane Cox 2:44
I know I think a lot of people... that definition was senior is a little aggressive, shall we say? But that's how it's defined.
Melissa Milner 2:58
I'm sorry, did you mention what you're teaching? Are you teaching theater for the senior citizens?
Unknown Speaker 3:02
Well, actually, I am not teaching, I taught a course on musical theater, I get to choose what I want to teach, which is great. And so I taught a course on musical theater. I taught courses on George Gershwin, and Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. I've taught courses on the history of the campus. And the next one that I'm going to do is about Iowa, the state that Iowa State University is in obviously, and its contribution to World War One and World War.
Melissa Milner 3:38
Two, you seem to just be very energetic, enthusiastic about teaching anything.
Jane Cox 3:45
This is true, I think, I think I am I, I love to teach, I love to learn. And I always think you have to learn a lot in order to be able to teach because you don't know it very well until you teach it and or that process of getting up to where you teach it. So I can they always say that teachers love to learn and they love to teach, but the balance of that is different for each teacher, but I think I love both equally.
Melissa Milner 4:20
Yeah, that's fantastic. So the reason that I reached out to you was that I saw your video about the teacher as actor when I was researching doing an episode about the teacher as actor. So I just would I'm going to kind of just let you go. What are some of the qualities from theater and stage acting and any kind of acting that can help a teacher in the classroom?
Jane Cox 4:45
Oh, there are so many as you know a listen. And as we were talking earlier, we both done acting. We've both been involved with the theater a lot. But I think to theater is a really good training ground for making a good teacher. And I think as time has gone by, it's gotten harder and harder and harder to keep attention in the classroom. And with all the other electronic devices that that students have, whether they're kids or whether they're adults. And so I think it is very, very helpful in order to study acting. And I think a lot about Aristotle's elements of theatre, because he listed six elements in order of importance. And in a way, even though that was directed towards theater, in a way, that's also true of teaching. So it he talked about the first one and to him, the most important one was plot and without a good plot, theater is not going to exist,. I always used to say to classes, fantastic actors can lift a bad script up a little bit. But they can't take it all the way to brilliant. You have to have a good script.
Melissa Milner 6:12
It's so funny when you say that because you know, I go to see a movie because maybe I like an actor. And then you know, it's not getting great reviews. But I love that actor, and at least I can enjoy that actor's performance in a really bad movie.
Jane Cox 6:26
That is very true. Even the best actor in the world can make a bad script, brilliant enough, to the point where you walk out of the theater of the movie thinking that was a terrific, terrific show. So I think it's kind of the same way in terms of when you're in front of a classroom, because I think you have to think about the plot in terms of the beginning of the middle and the end. And how am I going to start and try to get an audience's attention? Or in this case, a student's attention? How am I going to develop that attention? And how am I going to conclude at the end, in a way that encapsulates what this the journey of this class has been? Or this, this trip through learning something new? So I think that that idea of a plot is very, very important. And we've all we've all heard of teachers, but you have too who say, "Well, I'm just going to go in and wing it today."And that is, I don't know, anybody who does that well.
Melissa Milner 7:35
As far as maximizing the time you have in the classroom, being prepared is absolutely number one.
Jane Cox 7:42
Right? I don't mean that you want it to be formal or stiff, or anything like that. And so and sometimes somebody asked question, and that takes you in a different direction. And you should be up for that in my view. But I think it's a good idea to have some sort of plan from which the improv part of it will develop. And then you can adjust as you go along.
Melissa Milner 8:09
That makes sense.
Jane Cox 8:10
Aristotle also talked about this was not the second one. But he talked about diction, which in his definition, meant word choices and how word choices are used. He talked about music, that can also apply to a teacher. So diction, the word choices that you have, I think we've almost all said things and you think to yourself later, as I will do when this is over, Melissa, it would have been better if I said it this way. So diction, and the choices of words and how you express yourself. And that's something that is, is tied to playwriting, and it's also tied to good teaching, I think. And the music part of it is, of course, in Greek theater, there was a lot of music, but more and more people are looking on the music as the kind of vocal qualities that you have. So I know we've all been in classes and on occasion, have even taught classes where our voice just goes along at one steady level all the way through. And that is, that is really difficult to stay awake through if you're a student.
Melissa Milner 8:24
Bueller, Bueller?
Jane Cox 9:35
Yeah, that's a great movie for a teacher and students too. I always remember I had a history of art class during the winter, when I was a student, and it started at one o'clock right after lunch, and we would come in and we would sit down and we would take off our coats, and the professor would start to talk and there was nothing in her voice, but the same monotone level all the way through and the same speed and the same tempo. And so I read someplace not too long ago that the Irish dialect is supposed to be the one that most people love the most. Listening to dialect, or accents from a variety of countries. And I think the reason for that is that it has so much melody in it, it is so... such a variety of pitches you go along. And so I had a director one time that used to have as take one long sentence that we had from the play we were working on. And he would have a start that sentence at the lowest pitch we could vocally reach, not singing, but just speaking, and the
Melissa Milner 10:54
I definitely do it more when I'm doing a read aloud, like that's when I'm doing my most actfull self is when I'm reading aloud to students, and I'm doing different voices and different pitch. And I need to be more aware if I'm doing that when I'm teaching something regular. I assume I am. And my face is so animated. Forget about it. So, I can't even control what my face does. So it's interesting to think about that, when you're teaching, the pitch of your voice can really captivate and keep us, you know, a class' attention.
Jane Cox 11:44
Well, Melissa, I saw you briefly and I've listened to you, and I think you're doing fine in that department. I think you're a great teacher. And I bet your students just love love it when you read aloud.
Melissa Milner 11:57
They think I'm funny. That's for sure.
Jane Cox 12:01
That's a good step forward.
Melissa Milner 12:03
All right. So just to just to I know, you're not even done yet. But you've got plot, diction, and the diction, it's interesting that you say it's word choice, because I hear diction, and I think it means to be very succinct with the words. But diction is also the word choice. I think that's interesting. And then the pitch of your voice.
Jane Cox 12:25
Yeah, Aristotle's definition is not what we usually think of as diction that that is true. He did not mean that we put the G's and T's and on the ends of words.
Melissa Milner 12:37
Yeah.
Jane Cox 12:38
He didn't mean that. And the last one he talked about was spectacle. So but the spectacle is what we see. And certainly, students today, I think, really, really love spectacle. They're used to seeing spectacle, they're used to seeing colorful, exciting things. Aristotle would say that spectacle is important, but it's the least important; that you have to have all the other things or spectacle eventually gets kind of dull. If we go to a circus, so the circus as people used to have, that's all spectacle, that's all spectacle. What we, what we see there's some there's music, of course, but it's mostly spectacle. And Aristotle would say that's, that's the least important. Now, I left out two of the six but those are those are six that I think are four rather, I think are really important in terms of teaching and being able to or hopefully be able to keep a student or class' interest.
Jane Cox 12:38
Yeah, so spectacle in a classroom. Are you talking about having visual aids? Like we have smartboard slides? We show a video here and there, especially social studies, science, that kind of spectacle?
Jane Cox 13:58
Exactly. Yep. All all those things. If you if you when you're reading to your students, I bet you do this, if you put on a funny hat, or you put on some kind of costume or anything like that, that fits into the category of spectacle, so.
Melissa Milner 14:23
Okay, I do not actually. I use my voice in my face. I don't... I actually use my body, but I never even thought of bringing an actual costume that's actually given me some ideas.
Jane Cox 14:40
My sister was principal of an elementary school, just outside of Chicago, and once a year at Halloween she would wear a costume. She always wore the same costume. It was a Cat in the Hat costume. And the students always loved, loved, loved, loved to see her in that. It's not only costumes or things like that all the things that you mentioned, are certainly spectacle.
Melissa Milner 15:09
Are there other things that you tend to, to talk about when you talk about the teacher as actor, other than just Aristotle's points?
Jane Cox 15:13
Well, I think that both of them are trying to do similar kinds of things. They're trying to keep the attention of the audience, and the interest of the audience in order to get across what they what they are choosing to get across. One of Aristotle's elements of theater is concept or what is the thought? What is it that you're trying to say, or trying to get your students or your audience to think about? So both both actors and students, they're hard to keep engaged for a long period of time. My sister started off as an elementary school teacher, and she said, the first day of class she went with with what she thought was probably four hours of material.
Melissa Milner 16:13
Oh, yeah.
Jane Cox 16:15
You know what happened? Right, Melissa? She got me out and 25 minutes.
Melissa Milner 16:21
Yeah, you have to do like triple the amount? I know.
Jane Cox 16:24
Yes. But the ways that actors go about keeping audience attention, for example, if if you're onstage and you have a very important line that the audience needs to understand, and take with him, the strongest position for you to be in when you say that line is downstage or close to the audience center. And so when directors are blocking, for example, and there's just really an important line they don't want the audience to miss, that is most likely where they will have the actor stand. And so even when you're teaching when there's something very important, getting close, close to them in the middle.
Jane Cox 16:35
Yeah, I find that volume, I actually, it's proximity, getting close. And then it's bringing the volume down. And they all lean in. That's when I feel that's when I feel the theater in the classroom. Big time.
Jane Cox 17:31
Yes. Yes. That is, and that's the reverse of what people expect. And so that that, great, great, that's right out of the theater, too. Singers do that sometimes. I've heard singers talk about if they want, they're in a club and singing, and it's very, very noisy. And you can't sing over the noise that sometimes not always, but sometimes, if you bring the volume way down, the audience will listen, more.
Melissa Milner 18:06
That's true. I, you know, I'm sitting here, and I'm thinking, okay, great, I get this. But what about, you know, there are teachers out there that don't feel that they can be dramatic, but everything you've mentioned, is not over the top, it's very much, oh, once in a while, I need to make sure that I changed the pitch of my voice, like, that's not something that you have to be this huge, you know, actress to do and making sure you have plot, you know, that beginning, middle and end of your lessons and, and word choices and, and the spectacle, those are all things that any teacher can do. But being aware of that, and, you know, incorporating it more, I think is is could could make for a very powerful teaching. And teachers might see a huge difference in the attention of their students.
Jane Cox 18:59
I think so I think a lot of times when we hear the word drama, it's associated with drama queen or there's a lot of drama in here. And actually, I absolutely agree with you that that is not... people, people are often apprehensive about being too theatrical and too dramatic. But you don't have to go into that cliche about what drama is...
Melissa Milner 19:32
An actor...
Jane Cox 19:33
Yeah, that's right. In order to bring some theater concepts and acting concepts into the classroom.
Melissa Milner 19:43
Does this come into how you help students feel comfortable getting up in front of the room, when you're speaking confidently with the pitch and so on, you're modeling, how they can come up and be an actor.
Jane Cox 19:58
It's really excellent point that it really is. We all do, what we see other people do. People we admire, I read somewhere that there's a, there is the idea some people have, that each one of us is, we're not really unique. It's all the little things put together in maybe a unique package, but lots of little things that we copied from other people. And we put that together in maybe a unique way. I think of when I was in elementary school, I loved the way a particular teacher of mine made her capital letters, wrote her capital letters, and I still make them that way today. And so I absolutely agree with you that that if students see the teacher being confident being interesting, they'll do the same.
Melissa Milner 20:57
Yeah, it's almost like they can inspire the students to get up and give that book buzz or whatever. We do podcasting. So you know, I have two podcasts, and I podcast, we podcast, the fourth grade, as well. And it's very interesting when they, like, record themselves and then listen, that's another teacher. I think that's where they, you know, it's the same as me saying, this is what it should sound like, but they're recording themselves. And then they're listening and going, Oh, I can do that better.
Jane Cox 21:31
Yes, exactly. Exactly. elementary school teachers are doing such important work. Oh, my gosh. You're the first line of offense there in the trenches, I guess, right. Going off World War One.
Melissa Milner 21:50
Yeah. And you know, and this leads into teacher as director, because, you know, sometimes if I've got something like, I really want to set something up, I'll play a little music, you know, I'll set the scene. It's very directory, too. But I'm going to, that'll be another episode. Cuz I've directed I've, you know, directed school plays and stuff. And, and it's really, it's really interesting. Seeing the kids like, let's put on a show. It's just it changes the teamwork element. And it it, it gives confidence to kids, like kids didn't want to do it. And all of a sudden, they're like, Wait, can I have a line? Like they see it? They see people doing it, and now they want to do it? It's, it's just that modeling. It's so exciting.
Jane Cox 22:34
Yes. Yeah, then that is absolutely true. So you doing, you're doing great work. And I can tell you're really interested in teaching. And so I think I think you're doing great stuff.
Melissa Milner 22:50
Thank you. Thank you. The kids are amazing. Are there any other pieces before I ask you the next kind of bit of questioning? Because we're almost done already, believe it or not? Any other things about teaching that are related to acting or the theater?
Jane Cox 23:09
Well, I think the thought that you expressed earlier about getting the students to model confident behavior. I know that in the Guinness Book of Records, there was a statement at one time, there were a list of the things that people were most afraid of. And there were two things right at the top, that went back and forth, and one was dismemberment. You you lose your limbs, or or, and the other one was getting up in front of people and talking. And I thought to myself, oh, my gosh. I'll take the getting up in front of people and talking, then. I know. But I think a lot of it I remember when I first started when I was in elementary school, and it is scary, but what a valuable thing to be able to teach and model for your students that this is fun. It's interesting. It's a way to share your ideas and you did a great job with that.
Melissa Milner 24:17
Right. And it's like, it's like an Actor Prepares. You're gonna feel more confident if you feel prepared.
Melissa Milner 24:23
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Like all things. I exactly talked with the amount of was, who was very successfully at Agnes, Angus, not Agnes, Angus cattle, and he won all sorts of prizes with him. And he said, he always told people that working really, really hard, does not mean that you're going to be in first place always. But what it does mean is you'll be a lot closer to first place than If you hadn't worked very much at all. I think learning to learning to speak and be comfortable in front of other people, that that's great too. But it takes work. It takes experience, doesn't it and, and the plot, figuring out what it is so that you've got a basis for what you want to do and say and then moving forward from that.
Melissa Milner 25:24
Absolutely. In wrapping up, I really would love to hear what you're zooming in on right now. You mentioned that you're working with senior citizens. What are you zooming in on right now with that? And or are you doing any theater yourself? Are you doing any acting or directing?
Jane Cox 25:44
Yes, yes, I wrote and performed lots of one woman plays because I'm very interested in in history, as well as theater. And so I performed and, and wrote, and the costumes were lots of woman, one woman plays from musicians, to political figures to scientists. So I still, I still am doing that. I still am doing that. And then I still am teaching at the, at the college for seniors, yes, still teaching there. And as I said, I really enjoy doing that because I get a chance to talk and research a lot of things I never got the opportunity to do whenI was teaching theater. So that's a lot of fun, too.
Melissa Milner 26:41
I just want to say you just inspired me, you were talking about the one woman show. And I thought to myself, couldn't a teacher take a piece of and I've done this in the past, but I've kind of gone away from doing it. And couldn't you take a piece of history and pretend that you're a person and you know, and just write a short monologue as that person and come in and that would be so cool.
Jane Cox 27:09
Right? Right.
Melissa Milner 27:10
Like just to kick off a unit, or in the middle of a unit or at the, you know?
Jane Cox 27:15
Right?
Melissa Milner 27:15
I, you just inspired me when you said one woman show because you said you wrote it. And I mean a teacher, certainly, especially during their summers, because you know, we actually do some work during the summer, a teacher could just write like I'm teaching, you know, American Revolution, you can maybe even find diary entries. You don't have to write it yourself. And you come and you come in, and you you pretend you're that person like, you know, like you would a docent at a museum or, you know, and perform.
Jane Cox 27:47
Exactly. I think it's so important for everybody, not just actors and, and students and teachers, but so important for everybody to be able to try to understand how other people think. What, why did they think the way they do? Why did they express themselves the way they do? What's in their background that led them to this point. And how was that time different from ours the same in some ways, but different too. And with that old adage about stepping in someone else's shoes, that that is something that can come in. Be wonderfully helpful all the way through their life.
Melissa Milner 28:28
Yeah. And then I think to myself, and they'll remember that because it's its novelty. I think sometimes acting is novelty as well, you know, like bringing something new, and they're gonna remember it.
Jane Cox 28:42
Right. And it's spectacle in a way, isn't it? It's yeah, yes.
Melissa Milner 28:45
Yes. Amazing. Amazing. So do you, I think you said you don't, you're not really a social media type of gal. What if, what, what if someone listens to this and wants to know about your courses that you teach? Or was just interested in talking to you about what you've done in the past or will do in the future? How could they reach you?
Jane Cox 29:07
Well, I'll give you my email address at the university. I still have an email address there. And so that email address is J for Jane. F as in Frank, C-O-X @ I A S T A T E. E D U. So it's the abbreviation for Iowa and then edu.
Melissa Milner 29:35
Okay, perfect. And I will put that on the episode page.
Jane Cox 29:38
That's great. I'd love to hear love to hear from people and, and it's just been great being with you, Melissa.
Melissa Milner 29:46
This is really... this was really great. I feel like we're kindred spirits.
Jane Cox 29:50
Yes, I do, too. I do too.
Melissa Milner 29:52
All right. Thank you so much.
Jane Cox 29:54
Well, you're sure welcome. Thank you. Thanks for reaching out Melissa.
Melissa Milner 30:00
For my blog, transcripts of this episode, and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www.theteacheras.com. You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram @melissabmilner and I hope you check out The Teacher As... Facebook page for episode updates. Thanks for listening. And that's a wrap.