In my micro-teaching session, I decided to explore the theme of Micro-fiction (concept developed by James Thomas-1992 , and often illustrated by Hemingway’s six-word story “For sale: Baby shoes, Never worn”, although there is a possibility that Hemingway did not author this story) in order to open a practical workshop in storytelling and narrative which I call “Whose story is it anyway?”. The workshop aims to empower students to become storytellers themselves through understanding story’s structure and the subversion of those structures in a succinct and collaborative manner.

Exploring this, I introduced to my class the aforementioned “For Sale/ Baby Shoes/ Never Worn” firstly as an object (please refer to Stock Image in Part 1-3) and the structure that the six-word story provided – leaning in the brevity offered by it but also it’s clear structure of Beginning, Middle and End. After analysis of the structure, in pairs, students had a go at writing themselves a six-word story, taking as an initial source of inspiration a wooden Zebra.

Timed Lesson Plan:
– Introduction of initial image (baby shoes) and Micro-fiction concept (3min)
– Practical exercise analysing the structure of the six-word story “For sale/ Baby shoes/ Never worn.” (5min)
– Creative Task: responding to the stimuli object (wooden zebra) and try to write your own six-word story. ( in pairs – 8min)
– Sharing of stories and feedback on their structures (4min)

The collaborative nature of the practical task and the built knowledge of the structure they could rely on or subvert from produced enticing short stories, as you can see in the image below. It allowed me to marry my expertise in drama teaching and as a storyteller to the object-based learning techniques explored in the texts such as Meecham’s and our sessions with Chris and Linda, as well as the collaborate sessions led by Lindsay on Wednesdays.

The feedback received was incredibly positive, with specific praises to my engagement with participants, framing and structure of the activity and stimuli to the creative task proposed. There was point made by both our tutor, Chris, and our colleague, Beth, that the feedback portion of the Micro-teaching was slightly rushed and there was an element of restructuring one of the stories that I could have expanded on by further reflecting on the contextual explaining on Micro-fiction and story structure I had put forward at the start of the micro-teaching session. I completely agree and would add that this was a reflect of my shortcomings with time-keeping and worries about going over the timeframe of 20 minutes given to each of us.

It was incredibly helpful to also observe and participate in the micro-teaching sessions of my peers Beth, Beth and Bernadette, who are incredibly accomplished educators in other creative fields (textile, photography, and fashion jewellery, respectively). At times, when involved in your own teaching subject, it is easy for one to lose perspective of the intersections that all creative subjects have, and how much we can learn from one another on how to approach object-based learning in our sessions. I was initially reluctant in engaging with the practice, finding it distant from the approaches I was used to engage with when teaching at the BA Acting and Performance. This experience has allowed me to not only understand my successes and short-comings in my teaching methodology, but also seeing the importance to foster a creative, tactile, visual and hands-on environment in my classes with a plethora of stimuli which could be borrowed from other creative disciplines. To engage with the mission of the Theatre Teacher (Hobgood,1987) goes beyond comfortably experimented theatre practices, asking from us, tutors, to be fully open to international references and holistic approaches to foster our students creativity and talents.

References:

1. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Bloomsbury Publishing.
2. Meecham, P. (2015) ‘Talking about things: Internationalisation of the curriculum through object-based learning’, in H Chatterjee & L Hannan (eds) Engaging the senses: Object-based learning in higher education, Routledge, New York: pp.66-81
3. Hobgood, B.M. (1987). The Mission of the Theatre Teacher. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 21(1), 57–73. https://doi.org/10.2307/3332813 (Last access – 04.03.2024)
4. Boal, A. (2008). Theatre of the oppressed. Theatre Communications Group.
5. Thomas, J. (1992). Flash Fiction – 72 Very Short Stories. Rose Metal Press.