learning blog entry 2

When drifting in and out of sleep I always come up with ideas. I have thus realised that there is no point forcing thinking time as it only leaves me with worries that I am not going to come up with any creative inspirations.

While daydreaming a research idea came to me: How teaching the arts improves your own performance skills.
This idea is closely related to me as I am a performer and teacher.

What can I do?
• Think about how I myself have improved through teaching
• Observe other teacher/performers – questionnaire
• Observe performance and employability levels of just performers compared to those who teach aswell.
• Find writings on this subject – are there any?

What could I achieve from this?
• ???????????
• I can’t think of any valuable thing I could take away from this project apart from the interesting knowledge.
• Possibly get vocational schools to include a teaching module in their course to improve performers and also allow them to improve teaching skills, because so many performers teach as well as perform and after.

I have realised I work more productively when I am in the company of others. This is because I do not feel forced to concentrate, therefore concentration comes more naturally. And I also like being able to discuss ideas with other people. I discovered this by working alone and working in a room with other people (even if they ate doing unrelated things to me.) I find light and infrequent conversation between each other allows me to focus on the task in hand for longer. My need for conversation to keep me focussed might come from primary school in which I had a teacher who was insistent upon light chatter circulating constantly.

I keep switching between reading a research book and then fiction book for pure enjoyment. This way I do not get over-loaded with information and have time to divulge the research I have just learnt. The fiction book allows me to keep my brain active, compared to switching to watch television during which I am always falling asleep! I find I remember the research information better this way. This learning thought as inspired another research topic idea: Do pupils that do singing. drama and dance consecutively (eg. In a musical theatre class or round robin) become more skilled than pupils who do all 3 disciplines at different times in the week?

What can I do?
• Observe skills of children in separate classes compared to Musical theatre/Round robin
• Ask other teachers about their observations
• Read research material on this area – is there any?
• Think about my own experiences and friends


What could I achieve from this?
• Ideas of how best to run classes for myself and other schools
• How I should actively train myself