The Theatre Classroom — Another Theatrical Year Has Begun!

September 3rd, 2013

It’s time to start the 2013-14 school year, with all the excitement and anticipation of another, or your first, wonderful year of theatre.

Please allow me to become a bit nostalgic, giving away my age in the process. I began teaching 50 years ago! Yes, I’m that old! I thought I was in heaven and couldn’t wait to start. Remember, that was the time for bouffant hairdos, spike heels, and short skirts? The base pay was about $4,400 a year, no husband and/or wives could teach in the same school/district, women students and teachers did not wear pants, no one wore jeans, hats, or T-shirts, there were no locks on lockers, and of course no cell phones, computers, Xerox (we used dittos or mimeograph machines), or phones/TVs in the classrooms. We did have a bomb shelter in the basement of the school full of empty cardboard water cans and stale biscuits.

Little did we know that on November 22^nd 1963, the world would stop and never be the same again. Of course, that was the second night of my first play, The Night of January 16^th. Yes, we performed to a meager audience and also the following night to a full house.

Though this was not the most auspicious beginning, I wouldn’t have traded my teaching career for anything. It was the best 37 years I could have asked for. I have been fortunate to have some very remarkable students who have continued in the theatre world but most importantly, it is all the students we all work with who go on to discover their life’s work that has nothing to do with theatre. We can only hope they are happy, good parents and citizens, and might see a play or two!

So where did this come from? Well, about a month ago in our local paper on the Sports Page, I saw a story about the coach of the Cayman Islands national swim team. Low and behold, it was one of my students I had taught in my last two years before retiring. He had gone on to major in Theatre at the University of Montana and moved to Los Angeles. Several years ago, he wrote me when he was thinking of getting a teaching degree and shared a great story about my teaching style. He graciously allowed me to share it in The Drama Teacher’s Survival Guide #2: Activities, exercises and techniques for the theatre classroom. I used it in my introduction under the heading, "High Expectations." The language has been cleaned up for public consumption!

Did my students think I didn’t like them? Did I frustrate them? Did I yell at them? Yes, of course. Below is a true experience of a sophomore my final year of teaching that illustrates this perfectly.

I remember the bone chilling fear I had of going on tasks for Mrs. J …

MRS. J: Andy, would you go upstairs and get the extension cord out of my classroom? It's in the corner by the scripts. Please do this very simple task for me.

ANDY: Okay. (Starts upstairs.) Shoot! The extension cord isn't there … There must be another corner where the scripts are … SHOOT SHOOT! There's no other corner! Oh my god, I can't go back empty handed, the life of this very production is teetering on my ability to locate a stupid cord so that we can plug in a dang stereo two feet further away from the wall … (Breaking into a cold sweat) … dang it! … I've got it! I'll unplug everything off Mrs. Johnson's desk and bring down her surge protector with multiple outlets. Maybe that will stretch long enough. PERFECT!

MRS. J: (From below) AAAANNNNDDDDYYYYYY!!!

So what has this to do with the newspaper article about a swim coach? I have included the article just below, so please take time to read it all the way through. The very end is what I want to share with you.

Little do any of us know how much we influence our students; so as you begin the new year, remember, you are a very big and important part of your students' lives, sometimes in ways that you may never know. We do make a difference.

Article from the Missoulian:

Finding his lead role in a faraway land

By Bill Speltz

Andy Copley went to Los Angeles to be an actor.

That's right, La-La Land. The City of Angels. A Missoula man intent on making it big.

Then a funny thing happened while he was there. Not funny ha-ha or even mildly amusing as it pertains to the smoggy land that is La La.

While Copley's acting career sputtered, he made ends meet coaching kids' swimming. In doing so he learned something about himself.

"I'm working in a little YMCA program and what I decided is that acting is a selfish profession and you're just doing it for yourself," said the 29-year-old, who spent a year touring with the Missoula Community Theater before graduating from UM in 2007. "Even though it was such a low-level coaching job, at the time I felt I was doing things for other people and it was so much more fulfilling.

He remained low-level for years, then opportunity came knocking in 2012. Turns out the man he was working for was the former national swim team coach for this tiny nation south of Cuba.

"The Cayman Swimming Association called upon this guy I worked for to see if he could help them out with coaching changes," Copley said. "He sent me down here to help out temporarily and after three months or so I just kind of fell in love with it. I told them I wasn't coming back and they hired me here."

For a guy who mostly lived in David Cromwell's shadow as a member of the Missoula Aquatic Club, things have turned out unbelievably well, swimming wise, for Andy. Or should we say Mr. Copley, head coach of the Cayman Islands national swim team and the Stingray Swim Club.

"It was a huge culture shock at first," he confided. "It's such a small place and you get island fever real fast. You drive 15 or 20 minutes and you're on one end of the island. You drive another half an hour and you're completely on the other end and there's nowhere else to go.

"But after six months it started to feel like I was living back in Missoula again. It's that same small-town environment, very friendly."

To put in nicely, the Stingray Swim Club Copley inherited was in need to help. So too was the Cayman Islands national swim program.

Back in the late 1990s the program was something inhabitants of the Cayman Islands could be proud of. One year it produced four legitimate Olympic swimmers.

After that it took a nosedive.

"For me personally, when I got here the Stingray Swim Club was at an all-time low," Copley related. "I walked on deck and I felt like I was coaching the Bad News Bears.

"The first three months last summer I thought about walking and going back to L.A. every day after training. By the end of the three months things started to shape up. I finally felt comfortable with what was going on."

With some priceless mentoring from Ian Armiger, who for many years was part of the UK Olympic staff, Copley has become a bona fide coaching presence in the Caymans. Last month he took a group of six swimmers to Bermuda for the Island Games - the equivalent of the Olympics for smaller island countries - and came away with six golds and eight silvers.

The team did so well it was featured on swimswam.com, which is one of the largest swimming publications worldwide.

And here's the real kicker: Of all the people Copley has come in contact with in his life, all the coaches and role models who have impacted his attitude about swimming, it is his old high school theater teacher whom he credits with making him the leader he is today.

"Her name is Margaret Johnson," he says proudly. "She was a disciplinarian but she just loved what she did and loved all her students. I try to model myself after her."

In the end we're all actors, trying hard to fill roles without letting our flop sweat show in this great comedy/drama called life. Fortunately for Copley he's working with a rock-solid script, forged 3,300 miles away and co-written by a theater teacher who really knows how to make a splash.