I learned my most powerful lessons about learning that "sticks" not in the classrooms where I spent seven hours a day teaching, but in an extracurricular activity I led. For 15 years, I directed a full-length play every spring. My actors and actresses ranged from 12 to 15 years old.
The plays we worked on were a stretch for them: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Diary of Anne Frank, David and Lisa, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, Annie, and so on.
We worked on the productions almost daily for 12 weeks with a focus and a fervor that were consuming. If you signed on, you didn't miss rehearsals. You memorized lines, as there were no prompters; and if something went wrong for one actor, you helped fix the problem so no one in the audience had any idea there was a problem. Whether you were a lead, an actor with fewer lines, a lighting technician, or a prop setter, you "stayed in character" when rehearsals or performances were in progress. Both the adults and the students made it clear that they expected visible professionalism. Every year, their goal became to create an audience experience that was better than the year before.
I recognized many reasons why the plays were important. The challenge level was high—and there was a team that pulled together to ensure that everyone succeeded. Students felt part of something larger than themselves. We worked together to understand the play rather than just memorize it and repeat lines. There were roles for all sorts of people with all sorts of strengths. Every person was indispensable, and every incremental improvement—in projecting lines, moving sets silently in the dark, or applying makeup effectively—was celebrated by many people.
There was a very real audience. The students generally performed five or six times for about 2,500 to 3,000 people total. Students had to dig deep within themselves to find experiences, will, creativity, and skill to do jobs that some people thought early adolescents couldn't do.
Learning Why It Worked
During those years when I spent each spring directing plays and each school year translating what I learned from those plays into my classroom, I had no precise language for what made on-stage learning stick. I had no tidy categories for thinking about what I could do in my classroom to create the same sort of learning experiences. Only much later did I encounter the work of Edward Deci (1995, 2012) and Richard Ryan (Deci & Ryan, 1985), who have spent their careers studying human motivation.
I think if they'd observed our plays develop, Deci and Ryan would have said this work provided three key elements that led to self-motivation, excellence, and learning that sticks: autonomy, competence, and connectedness. Students were motivated and thus could work with a lot of autonomy. They also valued the content, process, and product involved. Kids understood that their growing competence was key to the success of something big. They were part of a connected team and felt the power of relationships.
As a director, I supported student autonomy, competence, and connectedness as well. I helped develop a meaningful rationale for the work we were doing. I treated that work as important and worthy. Trying to understand the student's perspective, I asked myself questions like, How can I help this young person connect with this role? How might it connect with his or her prior experiences or key strengths? I made time for students to explore such questions themselves and to develop deep understandings of the content of the play—and the role they assumed in making that content meaningful.
From the beginning, the students knew that my goal as director was to become increasingly superfluous. If the play worked, it would be because the students learned how to make it work. With each play, I gave the actors the reins of learning as soon and as often as possible.
Deci's work indicates that when teachers support independent learning, students will experience the three essentials of autonomy, competence, and connectedness, and learning will stick. Those years of experience directing young people on stage taught me a great deal about how to place them on center stage in classrooms as well. Good lessons with a long reach.
