Art and Theater: How Fulbright Helped Me Out of My Comfort Zone
Before I started my Fulbright Program, I was working as an Arts Program Administrator for children in Egypt and the Arab World in non-formal settings. Parallel to my professional pathway, I had explored hobbies like applied theater, creative writing, acting, drawing, and filmmaking. At one point, my career became a comfort zone; I was neither growing into it nor moving forward to new endeavors. At the age of 35, I lost the compass of who I was and my purpose. The dreamer inside me kept looking for different opportunities, until I was exposed to a drama in education professional development program. During this experience, I remembered the children I worked with who struggled to acquire basic learning skills and how those same children flourished and grew through theater. That is when I decided to weave my interest in theater and practical experience with children and pursue an academic education. Through the Fulbright Program, I enrolled in the Educational Theater Master’s Program at City College of New York. I wanted to explore how theater contributes to children’s academic learning skills and social and emotional development.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes” — Marcel Proust
On an artistic level, I know theater engages children by playing an active role in their learning. Soon, I learned that children display their engagement through being inquisitive, listening to each other, working together, expressing themselves, taking responsibility, and self-organizing. On the first day, my Fundamentals of Teaching Theater class professor, Wendy, said we would choreograph a scene from a musical. I freaked out; I had never directed, acted, or was engaged in a performance-based theater. All I was thinking was, what am I doing here? In the second class, Wendy said noone is expected to know how to choreograph. This is a learning opportunity to try to push yourself out of your comfort zone. I was intrigued by this statement. It reminded me of my purpose — to challenge myself and start a new journey. I decided to sit back and learn from students, teachers, and classmates and see how theater engages them.
The first principle to motivate engagement, Wendy said, was to cast everyone who comes to an audition; every student will have a role on stage or off stage. I witnessed students’ ownership, care, confidence, responsibility, enjoyment, and collaboration develop as an ensemble at different moments with strategic adult intervention. For example, I saw how students started their rehearsal from chaos to self-organizing themselves to achieve the set goal. I saw students motivating each other at moments of disengagement. They created their discipline when they wanted to enjoy it. I witness the musical director building students’ confidence in themselves and their work. On performance day, I saw a show almost independently run by students, who took responsibility for their work. They oversaw their scenes’ cue sheet and, backstage, reminded each other of the script line, calmed down each other, helped each other with the props and costumes, and encouraged their friends on stage. It was eye-opening to experience how everyone built on and worked from their strength: the directors, the teachers, and the students.
I witnessed this concept through my hands-on experience at PS 161 Drama Club. PS 161 was one of the milestones in my learning journey. The diversity and the interaction with students are what made it feel like home. Walking every Tuesday to Amsterdam Hilly Street in Harlem to reach PS 161, wondering what I will learn today from the children was one of my inspiring weekly endeavors. I learned from my Drama Club experience that children are adaptable humans- they strive for belonging and nurturing to flourish. This occurs when the educator shows support, love, trust, direction, care, and listens to them. Through trial and error, I have learned to be patient about my learning when experiencing a new field. I learned to trust the process, the children, and myself. I learned to let it go and find the balance between planning very well and going with the flow.
Developing an understanding of the pedagogical and advocacy potentials of the theater was another milestone in my learning journey. It took place through exposure to inclusive practices through the arts — culturally responsive teaching and learning, and applying a social justice lens. I was able to see through the inclusion lens barriers for such practice, and the opportunities theater provides. I learned that one of the barriers to inclusion is how society perceives disability, which “is caused by the way society is organized, its structure, values, and attitude rather than by a person’s limitation, impairments, and difference” (Mooney, 150). The prevailing culture of ableism and normalcy leads to such attitudes of prejudice or stereotype about people with disabilities. Accordingly, it impacts educators’ perceptions of children with different learning capacities. I was also intrigued by the understanding that children don’t need equal access to the same resources in their learning. But they need equitable access to learning resources based on their individual needs. It was eye-opening to learn about different examples of theatre inclusivity capacity.
I was inspired by how different artists with disabilities self-advocate for themselves and their communities. I aim to foster children’s self-advocacy in my pedagogy. I intend to be acknowledging that YOU are different and unique, not despite your difference, but because of your difference; love yourself for who you are, not who you are not, or who you think you should be. The first step I took towards creating this awareness is to advocate for myself and ask for accommodation to my learning differences in the program, for which I was reluctant to ask. The inclusive practice lens is a call for social justice and equity. This could occur through a paradigm shift that can happen through a diversity model that stipulates human variation as a new reality and having the right to be different. By the end of this learning journey, I could not but wonder: what if people realize inclusive practices and human variation would be the only key for humanity’s salvation and co-existence?
My home, Cairo, like New York City, is considered one of the most racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse cities in Egypt, and it never sleeps, either. I work with multicultural learners, educators, and communities. Another milestone in my learning journey was being introduced to the Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning (CRTL) approach. I was first inspired by the concept from James Miles’ Ted Talk. He said school can be fun and educational when children connect to what they are learning. The application of this concept was laid out by Zareeta Hammond in her book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. This provided us with four practice areas to utilize CRTL to move students from dependent to independent learners. It calls for building our awareness of who we are as educators and our students. It focuses attention on building learning partnerships with our students. It points out the importance of developing content that stimulates and is of relevance to the student. This can only happen through building a conducive learning environment and communities as fertile ground for students to grow. It was mind-blowing to learn how students’ brains positively function, expand, and learn when geared towards these practices (Hammond, 16). In addition, it highlights the value of being self-reflective on one’s work. It starts by knowing who I am, my privilege, implicit bias, and cultural frame of reference as an educator and human.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution” — Albert Einstein
I believe the upcoming world needs children to think like an artist who seeks questions, solves problems, makes connections, deals with ambiguity, and imagines possibilities. They need to use the skills and creativity necessary to face the world, find their voices, understand it, and perhaps, change it too. I know that Educational Theater has all the answers.
By the end of this journey, I realized this Master’s program took me through a reflective and exploration process of navigating educational theater as artistry, pedagogy, and approach to advocacy and social justice. My takeaway on the human level from this program is my colleagues, who I have learned from just by being who they are. My professors created meaningful learning experiences in classrooms through modeling the approaches they teach by example in their communication as educators, artists, and humans. I came to this program in search of who I was. Today, I came out with more questions than answers, but that puts me at the beginning of my new journey.
At the age of 39, there are pivotal takeaways for my future self: work from your strength, look for your element, identify your why before exploring any endeavor, look for your passion, do not settle for less, less is more, and life begins at the end of your comfort zone. A growth mindset is what you need for your non-linear life journey. Remember, people are wired for connection. I recommend you collaborate, find your mentor, and your tribe. Keep working on your artistry; it will keep inspiring your pedagogy. Be resilient, kind, grateful, empathetic, and compassionate for yourself and others. Don’t forget to tell stories because this is what keeps us alive.
Shaimaa is a recent Fulbright graduate from Egypt. She received her Master’s in Theatre from City University of New York.
