Teacher’s improv routine brings class back to life
NORWALK — Sometimes everything works out. A teacher wants to improve her skills. Quality professional development helps her do so.
The new learning energizes her. She’s happier, the kids are inspired, and the school community is enriched.
Kathy Milne, Norwalk High School English teacher, knows this can happen. After all, it happened to her.
In 2016, she knew Norwalk High School would soon have a block schedule — each period was going to be 90 minutes instead of 45. How would she change her teaching for these new long periods?
“What am I going to do that will spark me and then spark the kids?” she wondered. “What part of me am I not using that can
be used more?”
Turns out, she had a lifelong dream to write and perform standup comedy. When she learned about the Fund for Teachers, which offers grants to help teachers grow personally and professionally, she knew this was her moment. She was awarded a $5,000 grant to study at Second City in Chicago, the world's most famous school of improvisation.
For two weeks that summer, she took performance classes in the morning and writing classes in the afternoon.
“Improv is in the moment,” she said. “You’re trying to capture something funny or poignant. The boundary between writing and physicality goes away.”
From those two weeks, the Dramatic Experience was born. It’s among a series of core classes that seniors can choose to fulfill their senior English requirement.
And so, a teacher’s lifelong dream combined with a generous grant led to a recent class held on the Norwalk High School stage, with Milne acting as teacher and improv coach.
After a few warmup activities (“touch your toes, roll arms up, tilt your head”), the music started.
“It’s like musical chairs without the chairs,” Milne said. “When the music stops, say hello or wave or salute. Go with the pace and tone of the music.”
Some kids walked stiffly, some swung their hands, some bounced.
“You’re going in a circle. Switch it up! Go downstage or upstage! Utilize the space,” Milne called out.
The second time around, the kids got livelier. They had hands on their hips, some were snapping their fingers as they sauntered around the stage.
“You’re starting to look at each other,” Milne said. “This is becoming a neighborhood.”
By the third song, kids were dancing, pumping fists, singing along.
“We’re getting friends and groups,” Milne said.
Milne stopped the action. Improv is about being part of a group, she said. “You are never alone.”
Next, the class created a human machine.
“Come out and make a shape and a sound to go along with your movement, over and over.”
She curved her body, swung her arm, and said “Wooooo.” She called each student to join her. When the whole class was finally on the stage, kids were bending down low, raising their arms, kneeling on the floor, sitting on the stage and swaying; two kids looked like they were doing the backstroke, and three were jumping. Through it all, there was laughing, whooping, chirping, humming, and other assorted sounds.
“In the machine,” Milne said, “you start out with one motion and noise, but by the end, the entire group is part of the scene.”
Every student responded to this experience differently.
Although Shanti Ruffin likes to stand out, her first moments on the stage were “nervewracking.” But when the lights went on, it was different. “The lights make me feel, ‘oooooh.’ I feel beautiful.”
Autumn Joseph can relate. “When I’m on the stage, it feels like flying. It’s such a free feeling — there are no boundaries, no judgment. You get a chance to be someone else. I can be whatever I want to be.”
The following week, the class was writing. Using a monologue as a model, kids were either adapting lines from the model or writing their own — just six lines.
Although they all started with the same model, they wound up in different places. Two girls wrote about boyfriend troubles (control issues, you know). Another group created a kidnapping; a third focused on the irony of the character complaining about her curfew while driving recklessly. The choices were as varied as the students.
Dramatic Experience appeals to all kinds of kids — some who love acting and others who have never set foot on a stage. All, however, want to stretch themselves in new ways.
Leslie Henao never acted before but, she said, “there’s a beginning to everything. I grew up watching telenovelas, and I want to be one of those people.”
Jacqueline Ramirez wants to write film scripts. Acting on stage, she’s discovering, is different from making a film. “On the stage, you are out in the open and you’re more exposed.”
Emily Abuja has done theater her whole life. She signed up for the class because she wanted to dive into script writing. “Acting is my happy place,” she said. “I love the adrenaline rush, the heartthumping before you go on stage.”
And Kaylee Nowik is really into murder mysteries and all kinds of drama. “I get to write and act at the same time, so I thought this class was perfect.” But more than that, she said, the class is taking her out of her comfort zone. “If you are going to be in front of an audience,” she said, “you have to be willing to do anything.”