Embodiment, Emotion, and Reflection: Resources for Learning through Drama

For the last several years, teacher-researchers Jessica Jasper, Laura Dvorak, Steven Athanases, and Sergio Sanchez have partnered with a program called Globe Education, Shakespeare's Globe London. Practitioners in the program use teaching practices that engage learners with Shakespeare's works and other complex texts through drama practices. Jess and Laura, whose 7th and 8th grade classrooms are profiled in this article, are teacher affiliates of the Center for Shakespeare in Diverse Classrooms, housed at the University of California, Davis, and Steven and Sergio are the Center's research director and senior graduate research fellow, respectively. In their work, they commit to innovative uses of classroom drama to support engagement and learning for culturally and linguistically diverse students across subjects and grades. Both classrooms featured in this article are heterogeneously grouped, in highly diverse middle schools. They offer vignettes from each setting to demonstrate how access to challenging texts and an arts-oriented approach to learning are fruitful for younger learners. They partnered to develop classroom practices and to conduct inquiry on impacts and challenges of the work.