Goal #2: The Education Plan
The second one of our big goals for the coming year is to create an education plan for the Drama Farm. What exactly do we mean by that? Well, I’m not entirely sure…
We’ve got lots of ideas for the educational principles behind the farm: students learning in an informal environment; letting them loose to do their work and seek help as they need it. But, I know there are a lot of ways we can facilitate that learning - “Free-Range” doesn’t necessarily mean “Free-For-All”!
I’ve got a few specific ideas for ways to guide the students’ educations while they’re at the farm. We could have single-day workshops and seminars on various topics, taught by the staff advisors and/or other professionals in the community. We could do an informal round-table discussion (maybe over pizza one night a week?) where the students could talk with each other and the advisors about topics of their choosing. We could even give the students the opportunity to teach workshops for each other if they’re interested. There are a million possibilities out there - these are just a few.
The question is, how to we take all of these ideas and put them together into something cohesive? I hesitate to call it a “curriculum”, since that brings up images of formal education with lesson plans and such; I think what we want is more like a roadmap - something to plan out where we’re going and what we’re doing along the way, but not necessarily exactly how we’re going to get there.
Does any of this make sense? I don’t really have the knowledge to talk about education plans and philosophies in vocabulary that other people use - but I know that some of you do! Want to help us mold all of these loosely-related thoughts and ideas into a real education plan? Leave a comment below - we could really use the help!
andrea said,
January 26, 2008 at 7:22 pm
don’t be afraid of the word “curriculum” - it doesn’t have to be about paperwork, but it SHOULD be about a cohesive structure with measurable objectives and a method of evaluation. just because it’s informal education doesn’t mean it’s totally off the cuff.
that said, i think a roadmap is a good place to start, and the natural first step towards planning an actual curriculum. do you know anything about backwards design? http://www.ltag.education.tas.gov.au/Planning/models/princbackdesign.htm is a site with a pretty good overview (although amusingly enough, it’s from tasmania. awesome.) and might be interesting for you as you start the planning process.
David said,
January 26, 2008 at 8:52 pm
When we went through this process we started with our mission statement. Then we did “learning objectives” and then sort of collated and matched objectives to the mission. It was a pretty cool process.
I’d be happy to do the same process with you - I kinda liked it.
Rob said,
May 24, 2008 at 8:28 am
Yeah, don’t be afraid of the “C-word.” An open plan can lead to chaos. The big question to my mind is whether or not you want the process to lead somewhere, i.e. does it have to structurally support a process leading to an end result, or can it be a flat structure.
The former requires a tighter curriculum, i.e. you take acting one, then acting two, then production, etc.
The latter looks more to me like a workshop model, i.e. you have 10 professionals each offering 6 week-long workshops in a variety of areas, students sign up for two workshops per week (one morning, one afternoon). Workshops run Monday thru Saturday, Sunday is a free day for doing something like putting together a scene or a short piece for performance of some kind.
How does that sound?