From a website that my professor posted to
The broadway educator website is a website that is used by my professor Mat Kizer and a few other professors in the theatre program. Laura Cole is the author of the article that I found. The article dates back to 2013. In the beginning, she talks about how theatre is in elementary schools because commonly children of that age love to use their imagination. She gives an example role- playing teachers often use role-play to teach math and language, and art classes. She talks about how role-playing can help young children with memorization simplicity because when children are having fun; they are more likely to remember it. Also, theatre, in general, helps children learn life skills like “Listening, following directions, respect, and communication”. Most importantly, classroom theatre is accommodating for visual, auditory, and hands-on learners.” (00)
Then she talks about theatre for middle schoolers and middle school can be a challenging time for a lot of students. Your body is changing. How you think and feel about yourself changes. Middle school can be a rough place for students, but theatre can be treated as a safe space for students. They can make friends they can use theatre as escapism through the characters they play in musicals or plays.
For high schoolers theatre can be the key that opens many doors for them, some students could want a career in theatre one day or theatre for them could be used to relax and can also teach them about important things once off to college like responsibility, commitment, and time management.
This article talked about the effects theatre has on students’ overall performance in school. Research shows that students’ attendance in school is better compared to other students. It also talks about how students’ reading comprehension improves and overall their engagement in school improves, too. The way students get better reading comprehension is from acting out plays like Shakespeare. They can understand the language better and comprehend other works just Shakespeare. Also, they get improved verbal skills, and recollection skills and can remember written material. Working in theatre also helps build self-esteem and communication. Students have to work together to put on a play or musical which is why their communication skills improve satisfaction from completing the play or musical everything going well helps with self-esteem because everyone put a lot of work into it and seeing that work completed can be great!