Acting Lessons for Teachers: Using Performance Skills in the Classroom

Teachers find themselves competing with high-powered media to win the attention and interest of students. Many are adopting a variety of performance skills to reach, hold, and convey information to a diverse and demanding audience. Tauber and Mester stress the essential qualities that make up a good teacher/actor: deep familiarity and understanding of the subject matter, use of a battery of communication skills, enthusiasm for the subject matter, and evidenced love of the art and craft of teaching/learning. Lessons taught involve the use of physical and vocal animation, classroom humor, space, teacher role-playing, props, suspense, and surprise. Each lesson contains actual examples and scripts with testimony as to their effectiveness by award-winning college faculty. An entertaining and effective manual for all levels of teachers, sure to inspire clever and effective new ways of teaching and learning.