This week we are excited to highlight Sarah Jane! For her Honors Distinction Project, she planned and facilitated a theatrical workshop aimed at middle school students with a focus on differentiation techniques for a variety of differently-abled students. She created a basic lesson plan that focused on several specific Virginia Standards of Learning for 6th-grade theatre students – many of these standards revolve around promoting positive self-image and confidence, skills that are vital to any young person’s life and education. Theatrical pedagogy is especially effective at instilling these values and she believes that this workshop not only fulfilled a learning requirement but also enriched the lives of these students. She differentiated this lesson to accommodate a variety of different students using vetted educational and theatrical research to determine the best technique to do so. This work also proves the validity and necessity of theatre education in schools and the fundamentality of arts programs for student success. She will be presenting her research at the Southeastern Theatre Conference in Memphis, TN on March 12th. Great work!
