Me, myself and I

The new term has started, and we are off to a running start.

As with everything we have been doing since the dreaded pandemic struck the globe, we have had to put a new twist on what we are teaching this term. For the most part we are still working online, and, in some cases, we have a bit of a hybrid system going.

The third term is usually when we start working on our year-end productions and planning on which plays we will be doing with our respective groups. This is by far one of the most exciting times in our calendar for teachers and students alike. But, for obvious reasons we had to relook our strategy.

The Helen O’Grady way is really based on a lot of teamwork and teaching the students how to be a part of a whole, having your moment in the limelight and giving your friends their chance to shine as well. Encouraging and helping each other to achieve a common goal. Many of our classroom activities, and especially our year-end productions are built around this. All of these are such amazingly valuable life skills for students to learn. As far as the productions are concerned, we will have to put this on ice and change things up a bit.

So, for example, this term we are challenging our Upper Primary students to focus more on individual performance skills using Monologues and adapting our Verbal Dynamics group activity to a one-person performance. It is actually very exciting to be able to give the students an opportunity to work on a different skill set focussing more intensively on the self with characterisation, speaking directly to the audience and communicating inner feelings. Making good eye contact (or speaking directly into the camera), and working on modulation techniques, like Pace, Pitch and Pause. And, how to use costumes and props to help with characterisation.

This will really push individual creativity and self-confidence. Especially for those who usually feel quite safe in the group activities and shy away from the individual challenges.

We are looking forward to what this term and this strange new world will bring! If there is one thing we have learnt this year is that our students are brilliant at adapting and doing whatever we throw at them.

The Rah-Rah file by Charlotte Tervit (Vice Principal HOG Drama Academy Pretoria (Pty) Ltd)

Many moons ago when I worked as a PA in the corporate world, my boss, the MD of an insurance company, used to keep a Rah-Rah file. Simply put, it was a brag file, a thing of pride, stuffed full of articles and information about our company’s achievements and accomplishments. Every now and again, he would take out the file, dust it off and page through it with pride.

This week’s post is dedicated to all the amazing Helen O’Grady drama teachers. As we come to the end of a truly unexpected, interesting, challenging and surprisingly fun term, I think we should all file this term and our mind-blowing achievements in our collective Rah-Rah file. In future, when we have a rough week, or just feel nostalgic, we can take it out, dust it off, page through it, and look around the room and say “Wow, we really did this! Well done me and well done all my amazing colleagues.”

There have been very few times in my life that I’ve been prouder to be part of an organisation as I am to be part of Helen O’Grady Drama Academy. And to be part of the greater fraternity of teachers everywhere, who worked so hard to bring education into the homes of our children during these unprecedented times, whilst navigating their own personal lockdown journey with their families at home.

So hats off to all you phenomenal ladies and gentlemen! Rah-Rah!

- Charlotte Tervit

Student Feedback:

The Grade 1-3 Reddam students Charlotte teaches on Zoom were asked to send feedback to her...here are some of their comments:

"I love everyone thing in drama but my truly favourite thing is you!"

"I really really really like the cruise ship one and I also like the one where we got to dress up as a bird it was really really fun, I love drama!" - HN

"I like drama a lot. I like doing the guessing game we played today. I also enjoy intro activities and the Octopus activity it was fun. Thank you Teacher 👌😘"- PT

"Thanks Charlotte that was fun 😂"- TB

"I really liked the drama exercise today teacher Charlotte because my mom and I acted it out" - HN

Parent Feedback:

"Ahhh thanks ... and thank you to you guys as well for making it such a fun lesson"  

"Thank you very much. My daughter is really enjoying every minute of class. The birdie mask, blanket, the matching colours... everything, she did on her own  Thank you for being an awesome teacher too!"

"Thank you Juliet! Super fun for A!" - NB

"Class was awesome, Juliet!" - JP

"Thank you, the session was brilliant!" - SZ

Another Day, Another Plot Twist!

One of my favourite sayings at the moment is:

If something doesn’t turn out the way you hoped, just yell “plot twist” and continue to Sparkle! 

The one thing that is certain at the moment is that everything is uncertain. We plan and plot and just when we think we've got a handle on things, understand the game, someone yells “Plot twist” and the rules change and it's back to square one. And so the plot thickens.

One such area is the reopening of schools and the rules and regulations around it. It is causing much frustration for parents, but sadly also confusion and even anxiety for our kids. While venting about this and processing my own frustration, it dawned on me that once again we have a wonderful teaching opportunity here. We can teach our kids to roll with the punches.

Pre COVID 19 our lives, and importantly our children’s lives, were for the most part very structured (some lives more so than others) but nonetheless, it followed a very clear and certain path. All of a sudden it is all up in the air and things seem to change on a daily basis.

Perhaps we can teach them the life lesson that things do change and that things don't always work out the way we planned. But we as humans can adapt, embrace the challenges and try to make the best of it - the whole life and lemon thing comes to mind....

But even if there is not a jug of refreshing lemonade at the end of the tunnel, we can still roll with the punches, work through the tough times and make it to the other side. Pretending that going back to school under the new circumstances will be fun is possibly setting the children up for disappointment, but they will get through it and they will get used to it. Or if they are not going back to school at all, explaining that they won't be with their friends every day might seem like punishment, but they might end up looking at the world in a whole new way.

Our drama classes can be a great example of how change is not always a bad thing. We have been able to bring high quality and fun drama lessons to all our kids making use of various digital platforms. But we can go back to face to face classes at any time and have awesome classes, or even do a hybrid of the two. We do not need to view the change from the one to the other as bad, just as a new chapter.

We, the teachers and students of Helen O’Grady Drama Academy, can adapt, change and embrace this new reality. As I’ve mentioned before, drama is so fluid and, well, creative that we can make great performance art out of almost anything and any situation we find ourselves in. Social Distancing? No problem, we just inflate our drama bubbles a bit and exploit a good opportunity to work on projection. Protective gear? Bring it on, we love dressing up – hazmat suits are the new black! 

Our classes are incredible, our content is pliable and we are even adapting our year-end productions to, not just a sad watered down version of what it used to be, but an exciting, thrilling new challenge that the children will love. (Watch this space for more on that!)

The important thing is that we SHALL keep going and we SHALL be there for our drama students and we will come out of this in the end with bells on! 

So just yell “plot twist” and continue to sparkle!

Drama Dress Up Day

This term we introduced Virtual Drama Dress Up Days - the children have loved it! One of our favourites was when we all dressed up as birds, learning to fly for the first time.

Dressing up is a great way to get children to transform into their characters and make the activity come to life. 

By using objects they had at home, and clothes from their (and mom's) cupboards, and with a dash of creativity we had the most colourful and exciting birds in town! 

The lockdown has presented us with a surprising bonus. In some schools or studios, it is just not practical for children to take part in our dress-up lessons. With everyone one being at home, this is a brilliant way to add another level of excitement and creativity to the lesson. They can use props, and even select a setting or “stage” where they can do the activity, like in the garden for the birds or the kitchen for the chef.

TEN weeks is an extraordinarily long time to be confined to your house and unable to go anywhere fun and exciting. Giving children the opportunity to transform their house and garden into a forest or restaurant or desert island or haunted house is a great way to give them some ideas of how to start playing pretend more often and give them a break from their electronic devices to use their imaginations freely.

Electronic devices used to be their fun time, their “escape” whether to watch animated movies and programs or to play video games, and there is one thing these things all have in common – the children don’t have to use their imaginations much, the graphics and animation are so amazing these worlds seem real.

What a lucky happenstance it is then that we have a beautiful moment to teach our children how to step away from these devices, which is now a learning tool (and not only for fun as much) and reignite their own ability to create worlds and stories beyond anything they have ever been spoon-fed by popular culture. Let’s help them, through dress up and imaginative play to try new feelings, come up with fantastical ideas and let their imaginations soar!

Friend or foe, that is the question:

January 2020:
"Johnny, please go play outside, you've been on your iPad all day!"April 2020:
"Johnny, please stop playing outside, you haven't been on your iPad all day!"
Who would have thought a mere few months ago that our iPads, mobile phones and laptops would become our most valuable partners in education!

Long gone are the days (well, actually not so long!) that we obsess about too much screen time and worrying that our children’s brains will turn to mush from looking at their mobile devices for more and an hour a day!

It's true that in many countries, like in North America and in Western Europe many education systems have successfully integrated technology and multimedia as part of their basic education platforms, but nothing like it is now and most certainly not in most of South Africa.

It is actually phenomenal how we have been able to embrace technology as a teaching tool, and especially the mobile device, and how we have started using it, neigh, depending on it to bring all sorts of educational material and programs to our youth, as is the case with Helen O'Grady Drama Academy. We made an almost seamlessly smooth transition from face-to-face classes to delivering our classes on multiple platforms, from pre-recorded lessons on Facebook, to live Zoom lessons right in our students’ own homes. To be honest, there was a lot of frantic paddling beneath the surface for the first few weeks, but for all the world to see, it was swan-like and graceful 😊

And it has been a roaring success! Drama has just been one of those subjects or activities that works brilliantly on a screen. The children enjoy it, they participate with gusto and are incredibly creative under these conditions. Perhaps we should not be surprised - children have known for years how much fun it can be to stare at a screen and now we are capitalising on it.

But it does beg the question though, what happens when this is all over? When life can go back to a more familiar routine of leaving the house, going to work and attending classes again face-to-face? Do we abandon all we have created and established during this dark time in our history and pretend it was just a bad dream, or do we continue with a hybrid system of face-to-face classes and an online offering to those who might not be able to attend classes in person? All our hard work and lessons learnt for the greater expansion and footprint of our amazing Academy?

I guess only time will tell, but it would be interesting to watch. I, for one, am very excited about what our future holds. 

Here are a few testimonials from Happy Parents:

Mrs Dinath: You doing an awesome job with them 😘 Thursday is the highlight of the week!

Mrs Govender: Yes and the kids are loving it as well. This is the new way of life I guess until further notice 😊

Mrs Paruk: Thank you for introducing the kids to Zoom! Both Uzayr and Isa loved it!

Mrs Nel: Hi Juliet, G is enjoying the videos, thank you. We do one video per day. G likes me to participate with her. The length of the videos are perfect! Not too long and not too short, and they are wonderfully engaging. 

And testimonials from Teachers:

Hi Juliet! It was lovely. Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m very impressed with how these kids stayed engaged. I was wondering how that would go and if they wouldn’t lose interest. You are such an amazing teacher even on screen😉 – Larisa Grove JP Drama Teacher Redhill

The kids are loving the Zoom lessons! - Tanya Gerasimo Reddam House Early Learning School, Deputy Head

If are interested in finding out more about our Online Pre-recorded and Zoom Drama classes please feel free to contact, Principal Juliet Jordaan, on 0829091630 or email juliet@helenogrady.co.za

Much needed Comic Relief

We are now approaching our 6^th week in Lockdown and the fatigue is starting to show. Parents are taking strain as they try to juggle work, home schooling and entertaining children during their off time, not to mention cooking and cleaning.

It is now more than ever we need to keep our Drama classes entertaining, fun and engaging for much needed Comic Relief. Many children are under immense pressure from school and their Parents who are, justifiably, concerned about their academic progress, as well as the inescapable boredom and cabin fever setting in. They also just miss their friends and the social interaction at school – children are (for the most part) social creatures who are at their happiest surrounded by their peers.

This is where we step in – Drama is, in its simplest form, a form of escapism where students get to interact with their Drama friends and to just have fun, laugh and be silly – especially during lockdown!  It is also a creative outlet where they can take a breath away from the books, as it were. And honestly speaking the kids just love the lessons! We even have some lessons continuing on the Public Holidays because the students couldn’t bear not doing Drama for a whole week!

So, we just need to keep on bringing our A-game to each lesson. This is when our Parents are going to appreciate us the most and the children become lifelong devotees and so cement the future of Helen O’Grady Drama Academy whether online or face to face.

                                          

The Show must go onLINE!

What an exciting few week this has been. Our online lessons have been running virtually flawlessly (see what I did there? 😉) and we are all getting into the rhythm of this new reality we are living. Our students have had an absolute ball doing online drama classes, those who were not able to join our live Zoom lessons have sent us videos of themselves following our online content posted on various platforms. It is quite amazing how good humans are at adapting to new circumstances!

And I have to say our students have been just amazing! They just took to this “new normal” like ducks to water. They are happy to go online to do their schoolwork, extra-mural activities and to see their friends. For the first time ever, they are not getting into trouble for the amount of “screen-time” they are having, and parents are encouraging them to go online! And surprisingly what I have witnessed at home and heard from friends is that children are choosing to spend time away from their screens playing outside, getting fresh air and exercise. Before this we couldn’t pry them away from their cell phones and iPads!

Of course, we can’t wait for children to go back to school and back to doing face to face Drama classes, but until then, we will harness the full power of the online world and enjoy every minute of it!