Tag: improv

I Hate Little Buts

Cigarettes - I hate cigarettes, but it's so good. :)


One of the first rules of improv – the most important rule of improv – is to embody a sense of “Yes, and…” Chris and I wrote about it in our book, and this post served as the early draft of that chapter. Sit in a conversation with me for any decent span of time, and you’ll hear me say it. Sit a little longer, and you’ll hear me say it again. I can’t stop myself.

What you won’t know is how often I hear it in my head while I listen to others speak. A colleague in a brainstorming session in the office may respond to someone else’s idea, “Yes that’s a possibility, but here’s why it won’t work…” My brain, fills in the but with an and and begins to imagine where that brainstorm could have gone. It also wonders how the person with that initial idea heard the response. Did she hear what linguists say is actually happening when a but is deployed and process the response as actually not agreeing with her idea?

My Pavlovian response to the little buts sometimes gets me in trouble when I’m faced with a big but. A few weeks ago, when editing a piece of writing from a colleague, I went on a replacing rampage and suggested the removal of every but he’d used throughout the draft. Having satisfied my compulsion, I sent the draft back.

A day later, the next draft arrived in my inbox. All of the little but-to-and revisions had been accepted. Midway through the piece, a comment, “These ideas don’t go together. If I use and here, people are going to think I support the bad policy I mention first, and the more appropriate policy I pose after the but.” He was right. In my flurry of ands, I’d obsessed with form and ignored function.

The answer is moderation. Each of the other edits I’d made set a tone of unity of ideas. The new ands pulled concepts together and tore at false dichotomies. That last but, the one that stayed, wasn’t little. It was deployed to draw attention to why a common misconception needn’t be so in readers’ minds.

This is the danger of Pavlovian responses. We hear the bell ring, but nothing is in the dog bowl. In my instance, I’d become so accustomed to the frequent mindless use of language that I began mindlessly dismissing what they were saying. Not everything is a little but. Some buts are big and necessary. As is the case with so many words, when used without thought, buts used without thought can also start to be buts used without meaning.

This post is part of a daily conversation between Ben Wilkoff and me. Each day Ben and I post a question to each other and then respond to one another. You can follow the questions and respond via Twitter at #LifeWideLearning16.

72/365 Say More, Talk Less

We talk a lot in classrooms. We talk a lot in schools. We talk a lot in education.

We talk a lot.

Sit in any traditional classroom in America and you’re likely to hear much talking. Traditionally, this will be the teacher. Oftentimes, it will be in lecture mode. If you (and the students) are lucky, the class you are watching will feature a lecture from the teacher and then time for the students to practice…alone…no talking.

If fortune turns his back on you, the lecture will last the entire class period with the expectation that notes are taken the whole way through.

In the schools we need, we say more and talk less.

Improvisational theater gives us an appropriate structure for considering this approach – economy of dialogue. In her book, “When I Say This…,” “Do You Mean That?” Cherie Kerr explains, “What this means is the improv player can say only what is absolutely necessary during any scene in any show.”

An economic approach to talk in the classroom, well-deployed can increase the value of what’s being said. If a student no longer has to filter out the excess speech, it stands to reason those words he does hear will have greater value.

From a practical perspective, respecting the economy of dialogue also helps to adhere to Dan Meyer’s directive, “Be less helpful.” With fewer words to instruct them, students will find themselves the chief technicians of their learning, needing to parse out the meaning of the judiciously offered information from the teacher.

This only speaks to one segment of the classroom population – the teacher – but the rule applies to students as well.

When we ask students, “Why?” after they’ve answered a question or offered an opinion, we are creating a semantic implication that there is a right answer for which we are looking. Sometimes, there is. Much of the time, there is not. What we are after when we ask follow-up questions in class is more information from our students. We literally want them to say more to help us understand their thinking and help themselves to play out their nascent ideas.

If this is what we mean, then this is what we should say. In the cases where students have offered information and our instincts tell us there is more to be mined in their minds, rather than narrowing the scope of what they might say next, we can simply invite them to “Say more.”

You will note a discrepancy between the application of this principle to teachers and its application to students. It is true, teachers are being asked to talk less while asking students to “say more” and thereby talk more. As it turns out, this is intentional.

By and large, I’ve not noticed a dearth of teacher words in the classrooms I’ve seen. Students, on the other hand, are given little practice using those voices teachers are so quick to purport wanting to give to their students.

First, let us ask students to say more, get comfortable with playing with ideas out loud and finding the meanings they intend to make. After that, once teachers have practice themselves, let us begin teaching economy of dialogue.

3/365 Let’s Have Students Perform without Nets

When I lived in Philadelphia, I became enamoured with story slams. Produced by First Person Arts, the monthly slams had three rules for those who signed up to participate:

  1. Keep your story to five minutes.
  2. Tell your story in the first person.
  3. No notes.

Around the same time, I discovered the Moth podcast featuring the Moth Theater’s best stories from their storytelling shows.

A similar rule featured in the Moth podcast – stories were told live and without notes. As someone who’s been performing in improvised theater for about 15 years, this rule never really struck me as exceptional.

As a classroom teacher who worked to help students scaffold their knowledge and prepare for presentations, it gives pause.

Today, I finished reading the article I mentioned in yesterday’s post. As the writers were describing some of the mechanisms deployed by teachers to foster knowledge-creating communities, the issue of notes appeared again.

No Notes Permitted

When students did research on a topic, such as Buddhism, they were not pennitted to use notes from their research when they were writing their entries in the Knowledge Forum database. This was designed to prevent students from copying out what they found in books into the database. Students had to synthesize their own understanding of the topic they were writing about and characterize in their own words what they bad learned. They were encouraged by the scaffolds in the system and by the teachers to develop their own theories and questions, and to pursue them through reading and discussions with other students and adults. The emphasis was on students creating their own understanding and expressing it in the tentative voice of a learner rather than repeating the words of an author.

Mostly, I noticed this section because it seemed strange to me and so I asked myself why.
Notetaking is a skill I’ve heard discussed ad nausseum in faculty meetings and various “So you wanna be a teacher” books. Pulling out key information, organizing it for easy retreival, and stowing it away in a tidy notebook are steps with which I’m intimately familiar as both a student and a teacher.

This suggestion, though, highlighted a key step that has been missing for me in both of those roles – leaving the notes behind. Much like improv or storytelling, presenting new knowledge and forming it into something useful loses its luster if you haven’t owned the ideas in real and personal ways. A student still reliant on the notes she’s taken isn’t yet the owner of this new knowledge. She’s leasing it.

Building an activity where students have to synthesize and apply their knew knowledge without access to or use of notes based on the old knowledge pushes them a little farther out on an intellectual limb. It will be scary, but I’d wager the learning will be deeper.
If you’d like to see my highlighted copy of the article, you can download it here (PDF).

Things I Know 239 of 365: My idea is good, and I like yours better

The focus of Improv leads to conversers being present, meaning they exist in the here and now. The acceptance in Improv leads to the speakers’ connection, meaning each becomes part of a co-creation team. The distance between the communicators is thereby no longer a gap to be closed. It becomes a connector, filling the space between bodies like a see-saw connects the two riders on either end. Each is dependent on the other for flow and movement. This synchronicity of focus and acceptance is what results in full body listening.

– Izzy Gesell

We sat in the breakout section of one of my courses yesterday. Once per week, small sets of students from the course sit with Teaching Fellows from the class to look into the readings and ideas of the week more completely than we’re able to in a larger lecture class. For an hour-and-a-half, we delve more deeply. Not quite a study group, the time still pushes my thinking.

Thus far, it’s been a way for me to better hear the plurality of views in the room.

Yesterday’s was the first of of the student-led sections. In pairs, we each have a week during which we’re responsible for leading 45 minutes of the conversation.

Yesterday’s leaders reminded me of one of the more difficult rules of improvisation, “My idea is good, and I like yours better.”

We each took three notecards.

On each card we wrote a quotation from or question inspired by the readings.

When everyone was ready, someone in the group started by stating their question and throwing the corresponding card into the center of the table (whether what was written on the card was relevant or not).

Whoever responded did so and threw one of their cards into the center of the table.

Conversation continued according to this system.

If there was a lull, someone would read a fresh question from the cards remaining in their hands.

If you ran out of cards, yours became a job of listening.

Often, people had selected quotations that could easily shift and be re-purposed to fit into the flow of the conversation.

Sometimes, though, the cards and what people wanted to say were out of sync. In these moments, folks were faced with a choice.

Enter, the rule of improv.

In grad school, like any other school (or any meeting of more than one person, really) conversations are often peppered with unrelated remarks. Though I’m as guilty as the next person of occasionally moving things to my point rather than appreciating and building off of others’. It’s a tough skill and not something completely in line with rugged individualism.

Yesterday’s process required us to make some choices. We were forced to evaluate which of our thoughts was worth sacrificing in exchange for access to the contribution – “My idea is good, and I like yours better.”

In an improv scene, two people enter a scene, often with only a single word as a suggestion, with the purpose of building of a narrative that looks effortless. In good improv, Person A will speak a line and Person B will edit whatever was about to come out of his mouth and speak to build on the idea of Person A.

In great improv, the whole process takes a fraction of the second and the audience has no idea.

It’s not a negating of a person’s idea, but a shifting of purpose. I could cling to my idea or I could work to build up another person’s equally valid proposition. If it’s about good ideas and the building of understanding, my plan can easily be abandoned so long as we’re building something.

And, if there’s a fire to my idea and what I’ve written on my cards is imbued with passion and inquiry – then I spend that card as is.

This is something we could do well to teach the children in our care, the adults at our sides and, most importantly ourselves.

Things I Know 157 of 365: Improv

After an improviser learns to trust and follow his own inner voice, he begins to do the same with his fellow players’ inner voices. Once he puts his own ego out of the way, he stops judging the ideas of others – instead, he considers them brilliant, and eagerly follows them!

– Del Close and Charna Halpern

Tonight was the first of what will be a precipitous stream of lasts in the next few weeks.

Tonight marked my last rehearsal with Fletcher, my improv troupe here in Philadelphia for almost 2 years.

I realize the idea of an improv rehearsal elicits the obvious jokes. Let me head those jokes off by clarifying that the habits of mind necessary for successful improvisational comedy come from working with and learning from your fellow performers over time.

During my first week of my freshman year in college, I followed the advice of some fliers on the Quad and went to a show for the Improv Mafia, the campus’ improv troupe.

I’d never seen live improv before, and I was hooked.

The following weekend I auditioned and I’ve been improvising in some fashion for the last dozen years.

During my first year in Sarasota, something was off and amiss. Again, I followed an ad in a local paper to an improv show. I realized what had been missing.

Twice weekly for four years of college I met with the Mafia and had a kinetic, hyperactive release for the energy in my brain. For the first year in Sarasota, that energy had nowhere to go. Sure, humor and improv had worked their way into my teaching, but it wasn’t the same.

Soon after that first show in Florida, I had an audition and place in the troupe.

The pattern repeated itself when I moved to Philadelphia.

Performing improv allowed for a voice and persona different than the one I take with me to SLA and different even from the voice I use when writing here.

Though improv is different than my teaching, the language that guides a successful improv scene has certainly influenced my classroom practice:

  • Show, don’t tell.
  • Never negate.
  • Yes, and… not No, but…
  • Always support your scene partner.
  • Approach every interaction from the mindset, “My idea is good, and your idea is better.”
  • You can pull anything out of your pocket at any moment.
  • Agree.
  • At least 70 percent of improv fails.
  • Expand and explore.
  • Listen.
  • Check in with your scene partner.
  • Focus.
  • If you’re trying to be funny, you probably aren’t.
  • Say what you see and do something different.

Honestly, I think a person could build a pretty superb life around these guidelines.

By all accounts, next year I’ll be busier than I’ve ever been before. Things aren’t looking hopeful on the improv front. Still, somewhere between all-nighters and final exams, I hope I can make time to catch a set somewhere. No matter how busy I am, I know I’ll need to laugh.

Things I Know 150 of 365: There’s comedy in truth

It is easy to become deluded by the audience, because they laugh. Don’t let them make you buy the lie that what you’re doing is for the laughter. Is what we’re doing comedy? Probably not. Is it funny? Probably yes. Where do the really best laughs come from? Terrific connections made intellectually, or terrific revelations made emotionally.

– Del Close

The school year’s winding down at SLA. Courses are drawing to a close.

For my senior Storytelling class, Friday marked the final class story slam of the year.

Amid all the stress and work of closing out the school year, the slam reminded me of something I’ve known since I was a little kid – it’s important to laugh.

Four of the stories Friday reminded me of the humor possible in the mundane.

Christine told the story of how a childhood affliction frequently led to quarantine.

Then Talib recounted how a trip to the bathroom when a bit off course.

Andrew gave us the choice between a story of a trigger happy 7 year old and stealing from his father.

Finally, Narcissa copped to her paranoia brought about by marathoning television.

The theme for the day was “Prohibit,” and each of the kids presented their own unique take on it.

I laughed harder than I’ve laughed in a long time.

There is truth in comedy.

The story each kid told wasn’t necessarily anything supernatural. Each was a moment that could have happened in anyone’s life. The key to the stories and to the class was to find a way to explode the moment so that its sharing seems at once interesting and personal for the audience.

Each student exploded the moment, and we were better for it.

If we built community within the classroom and had a good time along the way, well, then so be it.

Enjoy.

Four stories inspired by “prohibit” by MrChase