Opinion with Keith Burt

Leading a double life

I hope you are sitting comfortably as I have something to admit to you. After years of hiding the truth, I finally have to come out in public and confess that I teach English as well as Drama.

The truth is out and it feels good.

The strange thing is though, this is sometimes how I feel about teaching English. In a room of Drama teachers, I hide that fact. Members of the school leadership team tread softly when telling me that I have to teach English again. Other English teachers treat me with sympathy, assuming that I would rather be teaching Drama but have to teach English as well.

Instead, I have reconciled being a teacher of both Drama and English.

The approach taken in Drama to understand, deconstruct and explore plays may be different to the way it's done in English but the questions about plots, characters and contexts are the same. I've had so many conversations about the motivations of George and Lennie in Of Mice And Men only to then to go into the Drama Studio and have the same conversations about Mickey and Eddie in Blood Brothers.

But there is more to it than this. I find that there is a symbiotic relationship between the subjects – teaching English has improved how I teach Drama, which has improved how I teach English.

As an English teacher, I am not afraid to get students standing up, moving around and engaging with topics in a different way like I do in Drama lessons. I encourage students to look at topics from a more personal level. I help them find a place where they can empathise with the material like an audience do with a performance.

As a Drama teacher, I take my time to make sure that students fully understand a topic as I would do in an English lesson. I used to think that Drama was all about teaching performance skills and the creation of performance, but performing is the means of assessment. What students are assessed on is how they demonstrate their understanding of the topic through performance.

As a teacher of both subjects, I am in a much better position to help students write more accurately and concisely, to structure sentences and to confidently expand students’ use of adjectives and adverbs for description.

Thus, I have decided to embrace the fact that I teach Drama and English – although Drama will always be number one!