The following material is property of D. Rauschkolb and each host theatre.
If you would like to use any of the materials or Larger Images, Please request it through the contact link.

Teaching Philosophy

Teaching is a two part entity.  There is the often found passing on of knowledge from a trained individual to a new to the art student.  The second seems to me to be more profound for it is more of the atmosphere of the environment.  A teacher also has the ability to create a classroom environment or even simply a structure where a student must learn on their own based off of beginning knowledge and pursue more in depth learning through research, personal insight, and hands-on practical experiments.

          The greatest teachers that I have had teach me where those who could look into the eyes of a student, see their potential, and challenge that student to achieve said potential.  An advanced placement English teacher once took this task on with me.  To this day I don’t personally or emotionally “like” this teacher due to the tactics of the challenge, but as an adult and a educator I am able to look back and see that he was able to “motivate” me far beyond my abilities at that time. 

An older teacher friend once told me that if you can find a way to make the classroom, the knowledge, the right to be taught, etc…make it belong to the students; that you can teach them anything.  The classroom becomes their home, sanctuary, their “eureka.”  They will protect it, develop it, and most importantly remember it and take what have learned on with them.

          I have valued classes throughout my education that used fair systems of grading.  The idea of systematic grades with identified criteria and standards for each criteria is not unique to the arts.  I have found that it is difficult to grade students work in the arts due to our industries inherent objective nature.  As a theatre teacher, we are often in the role of director, project manager, stage manager etc.  These positions of authority have the direct responsibility to pick and choose the elite, the best for the production.  As an educator with a well established grading system, I am able to step back from the production or performances of the classroom and see not just the best performer, but more importantly I am able to see the hardest worker and the student with the most improvement.  A good grading scale will allow these students to be ranked accordingly.

          The teachers I have had who stand out in my memory have some attributes in common. They presented their subjects in a way that caught my interest, clarified difficult topics and led the class through complex areas, and put knowledge into context so that its relevance was apparent.  These role models have influenced my approach to teaching: I view myself primarily as a facilitator of learning ….Feedback from students has been vital to the process of growth…since I began teaching: I learned form them, for example, the pacing of lectures, and effective ways to help them learn in small group discussions.

References