Episode 5: The Path to Pro-c Creativity feat. Dr. Dawn Kobayashi

Episode 5: The Path to Pro-c Creativity feat. Dr. Dawn Kobayashi

Dr. Dawn Kobayashi (Onomichi City University) first encountered drama as a shy teenager on England’ssouth coast, when a high-school drama elective gave her a safe, structured way to explore perspective, emotion, and communication.

She later moved to Japan, taught kindergarten and primary classes, completed a PhD, and now works in higher education, where she also supports teachers who want to integrate performance into their practice. She has used drama, improvisation, and other performance activities at every level to build student confidence, self-efficacy, and personal expression in ways that traditional methods often cannot.

In this episode she discusses:

• how drama and improv create space for clearer thinking and stronger communication

• Various types of creativity and what needs to be in place to achieve Pro-c Creativity.

•  practical PIE-style activities that teachers can start using immediately

• how she uses AI sparingly and deliberately, only to support reflection and never at the expense of students’ own creative voices

This thoughtful conversation shows why drama remains one of the most effective tools we have for genuine learning and personal growth.

If you want to see how a few simple performance activities can change the way students learn and express themselves at every educational level, press play.

Links to Dr. Kobayashi's articles and YouTube videos:

https://researchmap.jp/dakob?lang=en

https://scholar.google.co.jp/citations?user=8hq9whgAAAAJ&hl=ja

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWCETpQjjAQ

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, please like and leave a review. To learn more about the Performance in Education SIG, check out our website. 

https://jaltpiesig.org/

Have questions or want to get involved? Reach out to us at:

pie.sig.podcast@gmail.com.

To access other high-quality JALT podcasts, go to JALT CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) Podcasts on Soundcloud!

https://soundcloud.com/jalt-call

For tips on how to cite these episodes using APA 7th edition, use the link below:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uLVARUdviigboSQXkJXfgNm0zNkMsal6brBvwpmTKWM/edit?usp=sharing

Transcript

Darren 0:01

Do you want to make your lessons more engaging and meaningful? Then join me on the PIE SIG Podcast with Darren as we explore performance in education with passionate teachers who bring it to life in their classrooms. So, welcome to the PIE SIG Podcast with Darren. Have you ever watched a quiet student, barely audible during class, suddenly take the stage and light up? That moment when someone finds their voice isn't just powerful, it's transformative. Today's guest, Dr. Don Kawaiashi, knows that moment very well. As an associate professor at Onomichi City University, she explores how creativity and drama can support learning. In this episode, we'll talk about how drama helps build expression, confidence, and connection in the classroom, and how small changes can leave a lasting impact on students. Don, welcome to the podcast.

Dawn 0:49

Hello, Darren. It's great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Darren 0:52

Well, thank you. So I was just thinking about the last time I saw you, was it in Lake Nojiri conference or was it in Seoul, Korea?

Dawn 0:59

Maybe in Seoul, yeah, maybe at the KOTESOL conference.

Darren 1:03

Well, thanks for coming to my presentation.

Dawn 1:06

Yeah, it was a great presentation. We had a good crowd there. It's great to be sharing drama activities.

Darren 1:13

Well, it's always good to see how technology can completely break down as well. The IT guy tried so hard, but he couldn't get me, couldn't get things worked out. But it worked out in the end. So that's just being patient, I guess, is the main point. So let's start with your story. Tell me about, you know, where did you grow up and what were you like as a student?

Dawn 1:34

So I'm from England. So growing up on the south coast of the UK, and I guess I was just like a pretty normal student, I suppose. Not one of the most outgoing students, but things I really enjoyed when I was younger was doing English, doing art. I enjoyed the drama classes and also PE classes. So I was quite quite active and into the more creative style of the lessons, I think.

Darren 2:04

Right. So you talked about the creative aspect. Were you a part of a drama club or anything like that?

Dawn 2:12

Not so much in the drama club at school, but we had the lessons that we could select at school. So from, I don't know if you're aware of the education system in the UK, but from 16, you choose what lessons you're going to take up to about, I think it's 10. So I took one of drama as one of my elective there and going on into my sixth form A levels from 16 as well, was doing theatre studies. So I selected drama as one of my elective courses at school and really enjoyed that.

Darren 2:45

How how did the teacher go about teaching drama?

Dawn 2:49

Um in the UK, there's a lot of interest in process drama, especially for younger students in elementary and middle school. I think most students, when they have their drama lessons as part of their English lessons, it's more based on process drama. So they'll be working through different social issues and points in history that are like quite traumatic, I suppose, or quite difficult to really understand the deep emotions and the seriousness of the situation. Those things where you don't really feel it, don't really understand it unless you can feel it. So students are sort of put into those very dramatic situations and working through trying to find them.

Darren 3:30

Right. So Dorothy Heathcote, I'm I'm guessing, was a mentor.

Dawn 3:35

Yeah, but I mean, of course, at that time I I didn't know her name or or uh I didn't know there was a name for what we were doing. It was just like playing around, make make make-believe, pretending.

Darren 3:46

Right. And at university you studied ancient history and classical studies, is that right?

Dawn 3:52

Yeah, that's right. So part of that was doing into the ancient Greek theater as well, was part of my course as well. So from doing A levels into theater studies, doing Stanislavski and Brecht and all that kind of stuff. It went back sort of like right to the beginning, the origins of theater and doing the Greek Euripides and so on.

Darren 4:15

So, where do you think the main inflection points were? I mean, modern theater is quite different from what you know they were doing in the ancient Greek theaters and Roman theaters. So, what do you think are the main differences?

Dawn 4:28

Well, it's kind of interesting you say that because there's probably not so many differences that a lot of the from their outset plays were very political, trying to make um inform people about the way the world was at that time and the social issues that were affecting people and trying to uh call to action uh to get people to to change. So in many ways, there's lots of similarities, but um, I guess things like the the structure, the religious aspect, of course, is no longer uh present. And also, I guess the chorus, which arguably we still do have in musicals, but um the chorus that would have been there as well would be different. But there's a a lot more similarities than differences when you look into them.

Darren 5:13

What was the role of the chorus at that in like early Greek theater?

Dawn 5:18

Uh, in early Greek theater, it was kind of like a running narrator telling you exactly what was going on in the play and what's going to happen next and what the people are feeling. So it's kind of like your your friendly aunt telling you what's happening in the soap opera kind of thing. Mm-hmm.

Darren 5:35

So maybe in like a in a modern TV show, it would be like when they show the news anchor to explain what's going on in the TV program?

Dawn 5:43

Yeah, perhaps. Yeah, that kind of idea.

Darren 5:46

Okay. So how did you go from that into education?

Dawn 5:52

So um, and I came to Japan after graduating university, like a lot of people do, where I was a point in my life where I wasn't quite sure what route to take at that point. I was thinking of a few different courses because I studied classical civilization at university, but also very interested in theatre. I was thinking about whether to go into museum studies because I had a bit of a fantasy of becoming a bit of an Indie Jones kind of person, whether to go down that route or whether to go back and do uh a master's in theatre studies and to do that seriously. But during my time when I was here in my year in Japan, it kind of got longer, met some great people, decided to stay a bit longer, a bit longer, and here I am. So I started off doing ALT with kindergarten students and primary school students. Oh, and from there to do my own English school, teaching at junior high schools and so on.

Darren 6:53

How long did that last, the public school aspect?

Dawn 6:57

About 10 years, I think. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Yeah. And during during that time, just sort of the challenges of getting students to to be able to do the conversations in the textbooks, trying to do the role plays, trying to do more than just read the lines aloud. Encourage me to go back and think about my drama background.

Darren 7:18

So, right at the very beginning, you were trying to bring in these drama techniques.

Dawn 7:22

Yeah, trying to get a bit more life into some of the um read alouds of the conversations in the textbooks and so on.

Darren 7:31

What were some of the techniques you used to liven up the conversations?

Dawn 7:36

So a lot of it was thinking about the characters in the textbooks. When you look at textbooks, it's always, it's never the actual students themselves, it's never their names there, it's always somebody quite different to them. So we would sort of perhaps change the name, change it to themselves, change it so it's more relevant to themselves with their own information. And also thinking about a bit more in detail about who these people are. So perhaps it says John and Jenny or or whatever, but thinking about, well, who is John? What's he feeling here? What's his job? What about Jenny? What's their relationship? And thinking about things about tension. As you know, in drama, any kind of dialogue is a lot more exciting if there's some kind of tension or conflict between them. So thinking about what could be the trouble, what could be the problem between these two people, and to think about um how we could bring that into that quite stilted formal conversation that's there in the textbook.

Darren 8:37

Right. So you're so you're trying to build a background for the characters and trying to build some tension.

Dawn 8:41

Right, trying, trying to get them a bit more 3D.

Darren 8:45

After you built the tension, did you have a kind of a release for that tension as well, or you just kind of left it at that?

Dawn 8:51

Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on the ability of the students. So I mean, at that time when I was doing ALT, that was probably a bit ambitious to get to that stage, but but sure, yeah, we just uh explored, explored the tension, as it were.

Darren 9:07

Okay. So tell me about your educational journey after that that 10-year period of doing the public schools.

Dawn 9:14

Yeah, so I mean, when I was out teaching in the public school, there's sort of the the realization that this is my life now, so I should get properly trained as a teacher. And it was at that point when I was doing the ALT that I did my MA because I wanted to have proper teaching qualifications and to know more about the background of how to be a good teacher and assessment and etc. And after that, I started working at the university, and of course, working at the university, I started doing my doctorate at about the same time, and that kind of tied in with when I had joined the PIE SIG, which was the speech, drama and debate SIG at that stage. So I was getting really back into thinking about drama and more about why drama works, what what's the mechanism that's making it effective for students, what's uh prompting the learning, what's the drive behind that? And thinking about those issues was what led me to do my my doctorate.

Darren 10:15

And if you had to sum that up, what is the answer?

Dawn 10:19

I would say it's confidence, isn't it? And that seems to be, I mean, there's all different theories that we can look at to explain it from um motivation and self-efficacy and uh flow and so on, but it all basically comes down to enlayment and to confidence and self-belief. And I think that goes back to my experience with drama when I was very little. I think I said I was quite a normal, quiet child. I didn't say much in classes, but drama lessons was the time when I really felt permission to come out of myself and to explore and creative and to just to expand my expression more.

Darren 10:59

That's interesting you should say permission because I I actually want to talk about that soon. You just brought it right up. It's great. So I was reading one of your articles about creativity. You're very welcome. About the creativity continuum, right? And how there are kind of basically three plots. There's like there's no creativity on the far left, and you have like the big C creativity on the right.

Dawn 11:20

Right.

Darren 11:20

And then you have the Small-C creativity and this kind of Pro-C creativity somewhere in the middle.

Dawn 11:25

Right. Yes.

Darren 11:26

Could you kind of like expand on what is this continuum and what is its purpose, or how does it help teachers visualize the process?

Dawn 11:35

Yeah, so I think the thing with creativity, it really comes in with drama, is that that the resistance we get from teachers and students sometimes is that I'm not creative. And there's the kind of the attitude that creativity is something that you either have or you don't have, it's kind of like a divine gift, you have it or you don't. So it's really useful to think of it as a continuum, and that's not just us saying that, that's kind of backed up by research. I think it's Beghetto really outlines that continuum of like four levels of creativity. And we can think about it like that, and then we can think about where we are on that scale. And of course, every anything you do is going to lift you up a little bit on that scale. I think Beghetto talks about three different uh four different levels of creativity, from like mini, which is where you're you're really just starting out and just playing around, to like little creativity where you are becoming a bit more confident, able to use it to professional, the pro-creativity, which is where you would most people would say you were accomplished. And then you get the the Big-C, which is that kind of elite level where not everybody is going to be able to get to that Big-C level, but we should all be able to approach like the Pro-C level, I think. So I think that's helpful for students to think about it in that way that I don't have to be the Big-C level. I don't have to be amazing the best ever, but I can build myself up uh through that continuum.

Darren 13:15

So I don't have to get 100% on the exam, just you know, I can just do well on the exam, that type of thinking.

Dawn 13:21

Right. And like I don't have to be the best performer ever. I don't have to say the most creative thing ever to be creative, just to play around a little bit and to have fun with it is a level of creativity you're getting up to your your pro level of creativity when you're able to play around and make jokes and experiment.

Darren 13:43

Right. So with the Big-C creativity on the far right, so I'm guessing you're saying that not everyone can, it's not a continuum in the sense that you can move along it as far as you want. There's a kind of certain type of person who's going to be in that Big-C creativity, that area, that continuum, and is really not reachable by by most of us.

Dawn 14:04

Well, I think that goes for pretty much everything, isn't it? For the the novice and the expert. There's very a very tiny percentage of people who can get to the expert level. I mean, if you think about pianists, we're talking about the concert pianist level. There are a lot of things that that that get the person to that level, not only innate skill, but just having the time and the motivation and the support there, which not everybody has. But certainly if you practice hard and put the time in, you're going to get up to a professional level and that people are going to think, oh yeah, this person can do this, they're they're skilled.

Darren 14:50

In your opinion, do you think anybody can move from the Small-c to the the Pro-c?

Dawn 14:55

I think so, yeah. I I cannot see the reason why, given that if you had sufficient time, motivation, and support available to you, there's absolutely no reason why you people should not be able to get up to that level.

Darren 15:10

In in your own experience in your classes, have you seen your students move from the little-c to the close to the Pro-c, or how should I put it? Moving along that continuum more than you expected?

Dawn 15:23

Yes, absolutely. I used to do a course on that was purely presentations throughout the year, and throughout the year, students would do six different presentations, starting from very structured to very free role plays. And yes, there were several students that at the beginning were very, very shy, very, very unsure about speaking out loud, saying more than the bare minimum. And several of those students at the end were probably much like I was, came out of themselves and were able to play with English, enjoy using English, and enjoy people's responding to them using English as well.

Darren 16:10

So in a previous podcast, I was talking to Kevin Bergman, and we we brought up the idea of this the mask. Yeah, if you take on the persona of another person, that can really have an influence on your behavior and your skills and communication. So if you think about that, I mean, did you notice that students would be more transformed if they were if they had a mask rather than if they're just just themselves presenting?

Dawn 16:37

So is this a metaphorical mask or yeah, yeah, just like uh you know, they're taking on a role.

Darren 16:43

So you're kind of you don't have to worry about being judged by who you are because you're somebody else at this moment.

Dawn 16:49

Right. I mean, absolutely. And just from a language teacher position, just getting students to explore things like arguing, expressing anger, expressing love, to do that as yourself is incredibly confrontational and challenging in the classroom. But as soon as you change it to, okay, you're a policeman and you're fighting these zombies, right? So that naturally you're going to get anger, aggression, and things that students can play with and feel free to use that. Uh, you can also have them that they're saving somebody special to them there. And then they're going to be using that kind of language to express love and compassion and tenderness, which they would feel perhaps embarrassed to do. Well, uh, I I'm pretty sure they would feel embarrassed to do as themselves in the class.

Darren 17:41

Right. What when I used some drama activities with some of my classes, I noticed that some of the boys in particular would get out of hand. And so if they were a policeman role, you know, the roughing up the other person and they take it too far. And in your own experience, how can you because I think a lot of teachers are afraid that that's going to happen. It's because it's unstructured. You kind of lose control of the class, right? They're not in their seats anymore, they're not in a row anymore, they interact with each other sometimes physically. So, are there any ways of using drama to actually control the drama process?

Dawn 18:21

So I would come back to Dorothy Heathcote and side coaching and using that constant monitoring from the outside, telling them about what they should be doing to get them to focus on the issue. That really helps, I think, to get them on board. But it's also the basic element of respect for each other in the classroom, isn't it? That I think we should be uh instilling in students anyway. The importance of a safe space. The importance that the boundaries that we expect in the classroom are are important to establish from the outset, I would say. And that would be something that I would want to do as in my side coaching as well, is to remember to be safe, to remember to respect each other.

Darren 19:08

Could you expand on that? Like what activities would foster that what kind of activity?

Dawn 19:15

So when students are doing some kind of role play or or improvisation, you want to keep them focused uh on the actual role play itself and not to be expanding into fighting, as it were. So I mean, I think if we were doing the policeman and zombies thing, it's very easy to get for them to get out of hand and to start sort of like attacking each other, but to keep it focused on on that actual role play and that you're not we need to respect each other, we need to be safe, keep each other safe.

Darren 19:51

And how many students would you have in your classes normally?

Dawn 19:54

In my classes, now I'm very, very lucky because I had my classes cut to half the number. We used to deal with 40 to 50 students in the class. Uh, but now we're really lucky. We had a very supportive head of department who has split split them into a maximum of about 20-25, which makes management so much easier.

Darren 20:19

Why would the university do that at a time when there's like fiscal constraints?

Dawn 20:24

Well, because why would they do that? Well, because they're very keen on improving students' English language skills. So um that's that's very fortunate. One of one of one of the uh main things is ensuring that students have enough teacher time, enough uh enough chances to speak and communicate in the lesson. So I think having the smaller class really helps with that.

Darren 20:49

Do you think that would help attract more students? Because I'm wondering if if some universities can afford to do that.

Dawn 20:56

Yeah, and I mean I'm sure that would be if if the finances permit it, sure, that's going to be a great solution. It's something that I used to hear from students when we had the 40, 50 students in the class was that there's so many, and like I feel lost in the class, kind of so much smaller.

Darren 21:16

When you had those big classes of 50, I'm trying to figure out how the the drama activities would work.

Dawn 21:25

Well, I mean, it it's the same thing, isn't it? You're normally working in groups, so it's just whether you have 10 groups of four or five groups of four, it's just expanding the how many groups you've got. But as a teacher, it means monitoring becomes much harder. Uh giving feedback to everybody becomes much harder. But um, it it's just multiplying those those groups up or down.

Darren 21:48

And do you think there's any value in speaking in front of the whole class? Like having a student giving a presentation in front of everyone?

Dawn 21:55

Absolutely. I mean, it's something we have to do in our everyday lives in work. It's something That's expected to give, you know, if whatever job you're doing, you're going to have to be doing some kind of presentation for a product explanation or introducing whatever. It's something that it's a really useful skill to have, something that people don't like. But yes, it is something that I do as well.

Darren 22:23

So I met a teacher recently who said, you know, giving presentations in front of the whole class is a waste of time. And I I could see his point in the sense that if you have a huge number of students and they're sitting there listening for three weeks to other people speaking, other students speaking, it's probably not the best use of your time. So what's what do you think is a good balance? Like how can you get them speaking in front of the whole class and keep them engaged and make sure they're not just getting other students English constantly over and over again?

Dawn 22:55

Right. So I mean, I think whether it depends on how big your class is. So I mean, certainly if you've got 50 students, then that's pretty hard to expect everybody to listen to 50 presentations. I don't think there's any reason why it has to be the whole class. There's no reason you can't split that class into four different groups and to get them doing it uh simultaneously in in front of just say 12 students.

Darren 23:19

And that lowers the pressure a lot too, because you know other people are presenting.

Dawn 23:22

Right. And I mean, and that's something that we do as well when we build up to whole class presentations, we build up gradually from small group to half the class to the whole class. But certainly getting the class involved is important. And I'm I'm kind of interested about what kind of speech the person you were talking to was referring to. So we do drama presentations where students are doing their original skits that they've made. I often give students the beginning of a role play and it kind of finishes at the exciting point, that sort of tension point, and students have to resolve what happens next. So students are always really keen to see those presentations. They're really excited to see what other students have done. So I think you need to also question about the content of the presentation of whether it's actually interesting or not. If it's you want to do something that's original and that people are gonna enjoy watching, I mean I it's not that fun to watch 50 presentations about people's pet dog, perhaps, right?

Darren 24:36

What about group presentations? Do you think they have a place? Like I often have like groups of five. They work together on a script. I give them some structure. And then they'll get up and present for like one minute each for like a five or six minute presentation.

Dawn 24:56

Okay, so like with a small group of just five people.

Darren 24:59

Five people, but they're presenting in front of they're presenting in front of the whole class as a group.

Dawn 25:06

Okay, and each person's doing a small section.

Darren 25:08

That's right. And they all had a hand in designing, doing something, you know, perhaps being the the overseer, the other one's doing slides, the other one's responsible for making sure the script is okay, and then they haven't about an equal speaking time.

Dawn 25:21

Right. So, yeah, I mean that sounds like an excellent way of dividing up the the load of of the presentation and also to think about the different roles that are involved in in putting together a presentation, and you can students can choose the role that's gonna fit their skills best as well. I think that's a very good solution uh to use.

Darren 25:44

I was thinking a lot about presentations recently because I'll be speaking about it at the next conference in July. Uh well, it's gonna be very soon, actually. My, my, my. And sometimes it's tricky to think about how important it is for them to focus on the script and how important it is to focus on stage performance.

Dawn 26:07

Right.

Darren 26:08

So I think they're two separate things. Obviously, there's overlap. If the script is not good, that's going to affect the performance. But if you help them and really scaffold what they're doing in terms of making their script, then they can focus on the stage performance, posture, voice projection, interacting with the audience, using gestures if possible, and so on. So, in your view, is there like an equal importance for script and stage performance, or is it more one or the other?

Dawn 26:39

I would say they're pretty much equal, aren't they? It's the message, or rather, both of them together create the message that you're trying to convey. So when we do students' original work, I really encourage them to think about the audience. Who are you going to be presenting this to? You're not presenting it to me as much as you're presenting it to your classmates. And when you think of it like that, you need to really adjust your language to make sure that you're using level appropriate vocabulary, that you're not using really, really long sentences that run on forever and we lose the sense of what the subject that you're talking about. So I think the uh sense of the audience is really important when we're doing the script. But the script together with with all that physicality, your gestures, your eye contact, variety of voice, changing the pitch at times, changing the speed, all of this comes together to create your message. So for me, I try and get students to think of the message together and that the script and everything else is contributing to that.

Darren 27:51

What what do you think the role of AI is in the script production?

Dawn 27:56

So I I I'm kind of on a swing with with AI about how useful, how good it is with students. I'm kind of on my moving away from kind of swing at the moment and trying to get students more back to basics. I like students to use it at the end of the process. I like that original creativity to come from the students themselves and to use AI as a brush-up, as it were. Having said that, it can also be very good to help stimulate ideas if you have no idea at all. But then we come on reliance and that it just sort of becomes a default for students. Um, see, okay, we'll see what ChatGPT says. So, in a way, it's something that I'm becoming more and more concerned and worried about, in that just any worksheet now that I give to students in English, the first thing students do is take out Google Translate and just read it through the camera, yeah, rather than even attempting to read it themselves. So I think the role of AI and technology has to be really monitored. We have to be aware of how students are using it, whether they're using it in a lazy way, whether the ways they're using it is actually productive. But I would certainly encourage students to get their own ideas out first, get something on the page first that you have produced. And when you're at that point, that's time to look to AI to help you brush it up or give you some extra ideas.

Darren 29:32

I'm glad you said that because that's how I've been using it. It's just basically just like get your ideas down, do a couple of drafts, and then by the third draft, you know, just have AI check it and I give them a prompt like please check the spelling, the grammar, the meaning, don't add any extra text, don't generate anything. And make sure you send me your original handwritten script and the AI version so I can compare. But there's nothing to stop them from doing the AI and just writing it by hand.

Dawn 30:00

Right. I mean, you know, I mean, let's be honest, students are two or three steps ahead of us on this. They're always gonna find a way around. And I think most teachers are playing catch-up now. Um, there was a there was a time when I felt that I was a little bit ahead of them with uh technology and everything, but um, I think the ship has gone now. Yeah.

Darren 30:20

I think, well, probably one of the only ways is say pen and paper and close your close your computer and put your phone away. I mean, still they can be tapping the side of their head and getting something from an earpiece, but but you never know.

Dawn 30:34

Yeah. But I mean, I think like because we're we're all involved in drama and everything. So I think that it's kind of something that that helps them to get back to think about their own thoughts and their own ideas, especially if you're doing improvisation. It's a way to step back from the tech, I think.

Darren 30:51

So one of the reasons I wanted to do this podcast is I want to help teachers who are really not doing any drama, who might be interested in it to actually start doing it, but they might be a bit intimidated because most of the guests I've had so far are deep into drama. They have a drama background, they've been involved in putting on plays and stage plays, and so they might think, Oh, I can't do that. But if we can bring that idea of a continuum back and say, as a teacher, you don't have to be doing, you know, stage plays at the Shakespeare Festival. You can just be doing jazzing up your role plays, like as you mentioned. So, are there any other activities or ways of thinking about drama that new teachers could actually use in their classrooms right after hearing this podcast?

Dawn 31:38

Right. So, I mean, there are so many activities that are useful for teachers to use, just looking at things that I briefly mentioned, things like improvisation, something that I started getting into about 10 years ago. Um, not so much doing improvisation itself, but the rules behind improvisation that actors use to help them be better communicators. So it depends on where you look. There are there are different lists of rules, but I use rules by David Alger from I think it's the PanTheatre in Chicago. But he has about 10 to 20 kind of tips, hints to help you be a better communicator, things like saying yes and so if somebody says it's really hot today, say yes and yes, and I'm sweating so much, yes, and it's unusual. So a way to quickly respond to people, to listen well, to be positive, which is really the core of improvisation, I think, is to have a positive attitude and to help each other. Those kind of the rules of improvisation, if you just Google them, there's multiple sites that have them and they are very adaptable to the classroom. If you're teaching speaking tests, if you're trying to get students to be better uh communicators, they are things that you can teach students that are going to actually help them perform better. Which we need to do as teachers. We can't just tell them to be more confident, right? That that's not useful, right? Be more confident. We need to tell them how to be more confident. So if you can break it down to these sort of like specific things that they should be looking at, then you're really helping them, not just for English, but for for any kind of communication they're going to be doing in the future.

Darren 33:25

I'm guessing the cost sorry. Sorry, I was just gonna say, I'm guessing that confidence just comes basically from success.

Dawn 33:33

Yeah, and that there is also that kind of fake it till you make it kind of attitude as well, of just, you know, if you try and smile and be positive, then you do people respond better to you, and that makes you feel confident, and then you're smiling and feeling positive becomes not pretending to be, but you actually are feeling positive.

Darren 33:53

Some kind of virtuous cycle.

Dawn 33:55

Yeah.

Darren 33:56

Okay. So teachers might be wondering about okay, this all sounds well and good, but how do I make an assessment of my students? So, do you have any advice for them? Like, how do you decide how to say your students are more creative? Is there kind of a rubric or a thought process?

Dawn 34:16

So, for creativity, there is like an actual psychology test, the torrents test, which I guess you could look at and try and uh develop into a rubric. But I think it's thinking about the creative use of language, is is it original? Is it playful? Is it informative? Is it entertaining? If you're thinking about all those kinds of things as you're creating your rubric, then you are assessing their creativity as well. So I think when when we're assessing rubrics are always the way to go, but there are many different tests available if you look into educational psychology and so on, but they're going to be very research-based and not perhaps based useful for teachers as they are, but we can develop them.

Darren 35:10

And if you're in a school that's really focused on test taking and doing well on exams and entrance exams, depends on, I guess, whether you're in a high school or university or not, but how can you justify focusing on creativity when they want you to be focusing on tests?

Dawn 35:30

So I think we're really lucky recently that the CEFR, the Common European Framework Reference of Languages, if I've got that right, is recently becoming very popular in Japan. And a lot of universities are keen to use that to grade students' language levels. So within that, I think the speaking uh skill is divided into performance and uh communication, and uh it's already split up into those different levels which are just uh ripe, ready for us to put into a rubric to use. So I I would really recommend people to to link to the to CEFR in their assessments and their rubrics, and it's a way to say to people above that look, this isn't just a rubric that I've made up, it's it's based on this international standard of language communication, and that we can use it to say students are at B1 or B2 or whatever.

Darren 36:34

Right. Yeah, that's interesting you should say that because a few years ago I never heard CEFR ever used in Japan, ever. And now it's kind of commonplace.

Dawn 36:42

Yeah, yeah. In within like the last three or four years, I mean, I I've heard people who are not involved so much with languages referring to CEFR. So it I think it's really exciting for us as language teachers because it's a lot more holistic. It's moving away from that. What score out of 1,000 does this student have, and thinking about what level are they at within those six levels, and that's that's much more useful for us.

Darren 37:11

So, of course, one other purpose of the podcast is to get people interested in the PIE SIG. And so if we could just kind of backtrack a little bit, you you mentioned you were doing a whole different bunch of things in your life all at the same time, and one of them was the PIE SIG. So, when did you join? Who was in it? What was the vibe like at that time?

Dawn 37:31

So I think I joined pretty much right at the beginning when I think basically it was David Kluge and maybe Aya Kawakami and maybe a couple of others, and they were trying to get together the officers. They were just forming the SIG and they needed their role of officers to actually formally start it. And I started as member SIG, membership chair. I think I had literally just joined Jalt and was looking at the SIGs, and I saw the speech drama and debate and thought, oh, I'm kind of really interested in drama, and got in touch and started off as membership chair. And it was such an exciting time. We were just starting out, we had basically hardly any members and just going around different conferences trying to get the message out to people. And we got members, I think, just because we were so positive and friendly, and I think that has like stayed with the SIG as the core of the SIG, I think, is that it's very friendly and positive and welcoming. As you said, we have a lot of people who are amazingly talented actors and performers, and people who aren't. I mean, I I'm not at all. I'm very, very interested in drama, but I've never done anything more than minor student productions where I was sort of in the background, but always just sort of loved being involved in it and involved in the freedom that it's given me. But my main role has always been about how can it help me as a language teacher. And I think in the early days of the SIG, we were probably more into the performance style. And recently, perhaps in the last five years or so, I think there's been a lot more interest, a lot more activity in in the research side of looking at how drama is actually uh promoting learning, really exploring students' experiences in the classroom. So I think we've moved away from how to to the research, the the the nitty-gritty of what's going on.

Darren 39:41

Right. So, where do you think, or where do you hope the PIE SIG goes from here?

Dawn 39:47

So, I mean, I hope that we keep this this lovely balance that we have between doing workshops and telling people how to use drama and speech and performance and film in their classes, but also giving an outlet for researchers to um to share and to uh publish their work as well. So I think it's a two-strand thing that we need to do.

Darren 40:12

Great. Okay, so just to wrap up, it seems that every generation since the Industrial Revolution has felt like they're living through the most monumental changes that's ever happened in the world, right? So I think we're no exception. We're in this AI universe and people are saying the same thing. Everything's going to change, jobs are going to disappear. And I've often been left wondering what I should be teaching the students in terms of content and skills. And I've asked other teachers about it, and I've never really been satisfied with their answers, but I couldn't really say much because I wasn't offering much either. But I'm guessing from my point of view, and you can tell me what you think, if if the students are learning, if they're engaged in drama in an educational environment, they're going to be getting things like empathy, uh, collaboration, adaptability. And it seems to me that those skills, if they're truly taken on board, can help them at least navigate the unknown.

Dawn 41:13

Right.

Darren 41:13

I was just wondering your opinion on that.

Dawn 41:16

I I would absolutely agree. And I would say, why, why, why are we teaching students now rather than just using AI? I think we're teaching them to be better people, to be better communicators, to get on with each other better, to be positive, uh, to be a positive force in the world. And I think these are all things that drama really encourage. They help us to look at ourselves, at our motivations, at our thoughts, uh, our ideas. What is our message? What do we want to tell people? What do we want them to understand about us? And what's the best way for us to communicate that? These are all things that we do through drama, we can do through drama. And that's why I'm a teacher. That's what I want students to do is to be better communicators, to be more aware of who they are, and to be better able to communicate that to people around them.

Darren 42:05

So at the end of the day, you know, what we can offer is what AI can't.

Dawn 42:12

Hopefully. I mean, hopefully it's I I think it's very hard for AI to completely mimic the human experience and to understand all that that entails.

Darren 42:24

Right. I mean, one of the things I heard recently is that who would be interested in watching AI robots play football?

Dawn 42:32

Hmm. I mean, I I heard that China did that last week, right? It was in the newspapers the first. So perhaps there are people who are interested.

Darren 42:41

There might be, but it I think that would be more of a novelty.

Dawn 42:44

Right. And I I don't think I would watch it more than once.

Darren 42:48

That's right, yeah. All right. Is there is there anything else you wanted to mention before we wrap up?

Dawn 42:55

I would just say give drama, drama techniques a go in the classroom. You're probably already doing a lot of them already with with role plays and so on. But just have a have a look, get on the PIE website, look at Mask and Gavel and the resource book. There's they're a wonderful starting point. Uh starting point. They're they're pretty much all you need to know. There's everything's there that you need to do uh to get started, from even if it's just something small to just uh give a little boost to your classes, or if you're wanting to do a proper performance with your students, everything's there whether the PIE SIG to go and have a look at our work uh and get involved.

Darren 43:39

That's a great advertisement. So, Don, thank you so much. Not just for sharing your expertise, but your thoughtful way and the way you connect research and real classroom practice. Thank you very much for joining us.

Dawn 43:51

Well, thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Darren 43:54

Okay, take care.

Dawn 43:55

Okay, bye bye.

Darren 44:00

Thank you for listening. Until next time, stay focused and keep performing.