Robin Lithgow was in charge of arts in the public schools of Los Angeles. She writes frequently about the arts in schools.
She writes:
Pleased to announce!
Now that the pandemic is subsiding and schools are reopening, I’m moving forward with the publication of my book. The working title now is Learning the Way Shakespeare Learned: Classroom Dramatics, Physical Rhetoric, and a Generation of Genius. I’m working with Susan Shankin, the publisher of Precocity Press, and the book will be illustrated by my brother. We hope to have it out by the fall.
In the meantime, I’d like to feature some of the truly amazing drama teachers I’ve worked with over the course of my career. I have a deep and abiding love for them all. They teach so much more than drama. Just as drama is an art form that incorporates all other art forms, teachers of drama incorporate everything that every student brings to the class.
To get us going, here is “Jenny, Drama Teacher” from Zadie Smith’s Intimations. The book is her profound and insightful reflection on the pandemic, definitely worth the read in its entirety, but what I want to share here is from her appendix: “Debts and Lessons.” There she credits 26 individuals with escorting her on her voyage into wisdom, with a brief and lovely homage to each one.
(I’ve loved reading Zadie Smith ever since my mom handed me a copy of White Teeth some twenty-five years ago and I read a book that exploded in my mind. I couldn’t fathom that an author so young could produce such an epic! Presumably her experience with Jenny was a spark for her genius.)
13. Jenny, Drama Teacher
A task is in front of you. It is not as glorious as you had imagined or hoped. (In this case, it is not the West End, it is not Broadway, it is a small black box stapled to an ugly comprehensive school.) But it is a task in front of you. Delight in it. The more absurd and tiny it is, the more care and dedication it deserves. Large, sensible projects require far less belief. People who dedicate themselves to unimportant things will sometimes be blind to the formal borders that are placed around the important world. They might see teenagers as people. They will make themselves absurd to the important world. Mistakes will be made. Appropriate measures will be pursued. The border between the important and the unimportant will be painfully reestablished. But the magic to be found in the black box will never be forgotten by any who entered it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Can’t wait to read this brilliant, caring, witty, scholarly woman’s book!!!
Improve yourself!
Oops. Improv yourself!
Long, long, long after students in the school where I most recently taught have forgotten most of what happened in that school, they will remember IMPROV-ing themselves in Mr. Shepherd’s Theatre and Film classes.
Rule No. 1 for improv: say, “Yes, and. . . .”
The arts provide a place for creative young people where they can explore their interests and talents. They are just as important as other academic subjects. I was fortunate to have taught in a diverse district with a legendary arts program. Some of the district’s parents were Broadway and “soap opera” performers, writers and producers. While few school districts have these resources available to them, with adequate funding, any district can have a quality arts program. Unfortunately, the arts are often the first casualty of budget constraints.
When I first taught in the district’s high school, Flo Greenberg, music and Broadway producer, was the drama teacher. People came from all over the NYC area to see the high school productions. Flo is long gone, but the school district continues a strong tradition in the visual and performing arts in the elementary, middle and high schools.
My partner’s high school in Brooklyn (Edward R. Murrow) was (and is) renowned for its arts programs. People in the local community buy tickets for their productions. Marisa Tomei is a recent graduate. And then there is Madison High School in Brooklyn, attended by Bernie Sanders and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (and our regular reader and commenter teacher-artist Susan Schwartz, who was in the same class with Sen. Sanders). Barbra Streisand graduated from Boys and Girls HS in Brooklyn, which has gone through tough times; although she is fabulously wealthy, she never gave anything back to the school. By contrast, Tony Bennett launched the Frank Sinatra School for the Arts in the NYC public school system to honor his dear friend, not himself.
xoxoxox!
If Tea Party and/or MAGA Republicans knew that Bernie Sanders and Ruth Bader Ginsburg attended Madison High school in Brooklyn, the principal and teachers would be getting death threats and the maggots would be working overtime to turn that high school into a dead corpse and replace the cadaver with a brutish, concentrate camp called Success Academy.
John Lithgow’s sister.
Incredibly talented people, both. Smart, funny, engaging, learned.
And.. descendants of William Bradford. John Lithgow was on PBS’ Finding Your Roots where they traced the family tree back to the Mayflower.https://famouskin.com/famous-kin-chart.php?name=9243+william+bradford&kin=55487+john+lithgow
Yeah, but here’s the thing: go back enough generations, and just about everyone’s related.
2 , 4 , 8 , 16 , 32 , 64 , 128 , 256 , 512 , 1024, 2048 , 4096, . . .
Go back 20 generations and you have over a million direct ancestors. Add to those all your cousins, aunts, uncles, etc., and it gets to be a really big number.
The “over a million direct ancestors” is the number in that 20th generation. The cumulative number,over 20 generations, is 2,097,150, though one has to subtract some due to consanguineous marriages (to cousins or other relatives).
“The more absurd and tiny it is, the more care and dedication it deserves.” Yes! It is so important for all of us, especially for young people, to put our efforts into art, drama, music, poetry, fiction, and all things that do not result in higher salaries, ratings, grades, or test scores. It relieves anxiety and stress, and motivates us to enjoy doing things that do result in rewards (and punishments), and to therefore do them better. It was the lord of the fools who turned education into a competition. Competition is too often a developing brain’s worst enemy.
It was the lord of the fools who turned education into a competition.
Amen to that, LeftCoastTeacher!