In addition to my normal job (which is going great by the way!), I have been doing some informal teaching as a lighting designer at a youth theater and a speech coach at my alma mater (yes, these are jobs). Now that my coaching and designing are over for the season, I've realized that I was indeed a teacher and that these students of mine have learned things from me and wow is that cool.
It really hit home for me at the last interactions I had with my students. For the speech team, that was an end of year dinner, and for the theater, it was when our last show closed on Sunday.
At the end of year dinner, the head coach spoke about every student on the team, but when he finished his acknowledgements, the team then spoke about each of their coaches. My senior original orators spoke about me as a coach, and one of them recounted the first day I came to practice. I was working with another student on her performance, and instead of taking notes and letting her run the piece once or twice, I kept stopping her and we went through the introduction in parts for an extended period of time. We worked on her intonation, her gestures, and getting her to stop using a "public speaking" voice in favor of a more natural tone. This was a normal practice for me because it is a truth universally acknowledged that we teach how we were taught. I pretty much forgot about it until she brought it up again, and it really made an impression on her! She had never seen coaching like that before. And later in the season she and I did the same thing for her speech. The other student talked about how I seemed to approach all of my work with the team with care and love. They also said that getting to know me gave them hope for their own futures, to know that it is possible to go to college, keep loving the things that they love, and come back as the cool alumna. It is no secret that I do not self identify as "cool." That evening, I felt like I was truly acknowledged and appreciated for the work that I had been doing throughout the speech season, that I wasn't just an extra person, and that I made a difference.
And the tangible results of my teaching? All of my orators made it to the state competition. So proud.
The show was a very different type of experience. There were four shows in the season: a teen play, two kids' musicals, and a teen musical. The kids' shows are for 2nd-9th graders, and they are two casts of nearly 100 kids each doing big ensemble musicals. The teen shows are a little more interesting. As lighting designer, I get to do more interesting work on the teen shows than on the kid shows because I can shape space more and use different angles and effects without compromising the product that they parents see. For the kids, my job is for every relative to see the face of their child on stage. I anticipated that this would be solitary work, that I would just do my programming and leave, but the teen run crew and cast needed some coaching from me. First of all, I had an amazing 14-year-old board op who really wanted to learn about lighting. I would narrate for her how I made the looks for the shows, what choices I was making about angle and shape and color and timing, and she really got it! By the end of the teen shows, she was running them on her own perfectly (on the Express and using the follow spot! By herself!). It was really impressive to me to see how much she had learned about running the shows over the course of the year.
I also worked out a system with the backstage run crew so they could work the house lights (it's a super old theater) and be able to do their set changes safely. With the actors, there were always those who would step out of their light. I would tell them that the light is there based on where they are supposed to stand, and if they are uncomfortable in the spot then they're probably in their light. Young performers invariably stand five feet to the left of their light. It just always happens. But in this last show, I saw a performer learn how to find her light during a show, and it was so gratifying to see that the notes were heard and the students learned something. It was also really great to see the design as it was originally conceptualized. Anyway, at the end of every show of the season, the cast gives gifts to the staff, and they always say a few words before presenting the gift. No matter how frustrated I was after sitting through the rehearsals and shows for two or three weeks, when they thanked me, it all felt worthwhile. I think some of the teens really came to appreciate me as a mentor and not just the designer.
These two jobs are my side gigs, the ones I do for fun, the ones that let me be artistic and creative. Well, sort of artistic and creative. There's only so much I can do with 100 small children on stage. But I digress.
The moral is that I watched young people transition from doing things that did not work to doing things that did work and they figured out what things work as the result of my coaching. And that is a crazy awesome thing to observe.
Today is awesome because I had some really good conversations with people and it was sunny and my workout was good and there are two people in my workout class who were at the same concert as me last week and we connected today through our love of the band.
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