Episode 11: By the way…You’re Teaching Drama Now, feat. Educator Gordon Rees

Associate Professor Gordon Rees recounts the moment when he suddenly had to take over a drama class at his university after the teacher suddenly left their position. Uncertain how to teach such a course, he joined the PIE SIG to get some ideas. He never looked back and now regularly uses filmmaking, readers' theater and radio dramas to reach what he calls reluctant learners. 

Tune in to learn what he has learned about what works and why.

Gordon Rees, BA, MA

Associate Professor, Faculty of Policy Management, Yokkaichi University

Mr. Rees' Publications

Rees, G. (2013). Using drama to motivate “reluctant” EFL learners. Yokkaichi University Journal of Policy Management, 12(1–2), 49–64.

Rees, G. (2014). Content-based instruction (CBI): 文献レビューと導入事例 [Content-based instruction (CBI): Literature review and implementation cases]. Yokkaichi University Journal of Policy Management, 13(1–2), 27–50.

Rees, G. (2016a). Good morning world: Using drama to teach presentation skills, reduce anxiety and build confidence. Yokkaichi University Journal of Policy Management, 16(1), 21–32.

Rees, G. (2016b). Integrating drama into required English communication courses. Yokkaichi University Journal of Policy Management, 15(2), 73–96.

Rees, G. (2017). Using reader’s theater and drama to develop presentation skills and deepen understanding. Yokkaichi University Journal of Policy Management, 16(2).

Rees, G. (2025, August 1). Radio drama: A pal you can count on. MindBrainEd Think Tanks: Public Speaking in the Language Classroom, 11(8), 13–21. https://www.mindbrained.org/2025/08/radio-drama-a-pal-you-can-count-on/

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Intro & Outro song: Unlock Me (Royalty free)

Music by Kontraa Studio | UKA Music Publishing LLC

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 will bring it to life in their classrooms. Welcome to the PIE SIG Podcast with Darren. I think all of us have had students who are hesitant to speak and participate. Today's guest has developed practical ways to reach these learners he calls reluctant learners. And he will share these approaches with us today. Gordon Reese is a university lecturer at Yokkaichi University in Mie Prefecture, Japan. He earned his master's degree in Asian Studies from Cornell and has extensive teaching experience. He is particularly interested in how performance techniques increase student motivation and support language learning. In this episode, we will learn methods to unlock student motivation and create a classroom environment where students feel comfortable, interested, and engaged. Okay, Gordon, welcome to the podcast.

Gordon 0:59

Thank you, Darren, for inviting me. I'm really happy to be here today .It's an honor. Thank you

Darren 1:02

So, Gordon, where are you from originally?

Gordon 1:06

I'm originally from the west coast of the U.S., from he the state of Oregon, actually from central Oregon, a town called Bend, Bend, Oregon, where the river actually makes a big turn and that's why the call it Bend.

Darren 1:19

What were you like as a student?

Gordon 1:21

I was uh, you know, a I like to think I was a fairly good student. I was I was more involved with athletics uh in high school. I played played three sports, but I was, you know, I I was in the in most of the advanced classes and different subjects. So I was a you know, I guess you'd say I was a uh probably a little better than a B B student. Okay.

Darren 1:48

Did you enjoy school?

Gordon 1:50

Uh yes, I enjoyed, I enjoyed school. Went to a fairly not a real small high school, but about middle mid-size. And yeah, we we had a uh had a good time.

Darren 2:01

Were you doing any drama, debate, or speech contests at that time?

Gordon 2:05

No, I was always kind of a kind of shy, I guess. You know, in the in the background or in my mind, I, you know, I thought it was pretty what they were doing was pretty cool, but I never imagined myself having like the the confidence to get up in front of a big audience or something and doing like that, even though I did, you know, play sports in front of big crowds and things like that. But you know, speaking in front of a large audience always seemed kind of, I guess, scary to me. So I never stepped into that.

Darren 2:36

So, what did you study at Cornell?

Gordon 2:38

Actually, I did my undergraduate uh at the University of Oregon, where I studied business. And about that time, Japan was in the bubble economy. And so as a business major, there were a lot of Japanese enterprises there on the West Coast and in Portland. So I thought it might be behoove me to maybe we had to we had to take two years of a language, so I chose Japanese, and I really kind of struggled with it at the beginning, the first couple of years. I took ended up taking three years, but between my first and second year, I took, I had the summer, decided not to to go back home for the summer, and I did an intensive summer of Japanese, just Japanese, and that really helped helped uh pick it up a little bit better. Then after that, I was you know introduced to uh by my Japanese professors to the to the JET Program right before I graduated. And I graduated in 90 1991 when kind of the the bubble had burst, or it was a kind of recession, right? Uh US as well. So uh I decided to come to Japan on the JET P rogram originally for a year, but ended up staying for a a couple of years, three years actually.

Darren 3:51

So were you renewing your jet contract or doing something else?

Gordon 3:55

Yeah, I was an AL, I was kind of in a lucky situation. I was ALT at kind of a special high school in Suzuka called Eno High School that had an English department and an art department. It was kind of a special school. And uh they allowed me actually not to just be an assistant, but I could teach my own classes for a year. And then because I did have just a little bit of language ability for the last two years of the program, I was what they call a coordinator for international relations. Uh, I worked at the the uh the capital, the prefecture capital and Tsu as in their office of international affairs. So worked for the Japanese government for a couple of years. And then I went back to the the US, did some work there, and then went to wanted to wanted to get into into teaching and thought originally that I might be interested in trying to teach Japanese, actually, in the US. So I went to Cornell and I I got an MA in Asian studies and concentrated kind of on Japanese literature. So that's what I studied at Cornell. That's the long the long answer to your question.

Darren 5:04

I see. So were you drawn to the PIE SIG because you were already doing these activities, or you were wanted to find out more about them?

Gordon 5:14

I got interested in PIE SIG because it was originally when I joined, you know, back in, I think it was like 2014 or so, it was used to be the Speech, Drama, and Debate SIG. And I was working uh in my university, uh, I was kind of a new university teacher, and one of the other my colleagues that I worked with who was actually teaching a drama class at the university, suddenly kind of quit and went back home. And the drama class ended up on my lap, and I had no idea what I was gonna do. So I decided to join the the Speech, Drama, and Debate SIG and try and find out some way to some way to teach the class. And I just became interested in what was going on in the in the SIG because yeah, I have some, I teach at a kind of a lower level academic uh university where we don't have a specific like English program. I teach the required English courses there. So it's not necessarily students that are, you know, really gung-ho about studying English. I kind of sometimes I have I have you know good students, but I have some reluctant learners as well who aren't really motivated. And I just I found I tried after teaching the drama class and I could see how the positive effect it was having, you know, I tried it with some of what I call these reluctant learners, and it kind of helped to motivate them, and I was surprised, presently surprised. And then I then I, you know, continued on with the Speech, Drama, and Debate SIG, and they changed into PIE and started finding out a little bit more about what we we called performance assisted learning or PAL and how you can learn how you can use different performance ac activities to help you with your teaching goals in your uh in your courses.

Darren 7:06

Okay, Gordon, what were some of the first performance-based activities that you used with your students?

Gordon 7:12

Scripted dramas in a couple textbooks that I had. I was using a textbook called Good Morning World by Susan Stempliski, I believe her name is. And I really liked it because it's got I like to use some video in my class, especially for the I guess for lower level learners. I think it helps just to be able to see see things and it helps with the learning process. So they have an in they had an interesting series of videos on that textbook called Good Morning World, where there was a it was kind of comedic, uh, it was quite humorous. They had a uh a host named Jay Jones and he had a co-host named Kim Kimal, and they're basically you know the TV hosts of this program, Good Morning World. And it's them talking and introducing, you know, different different things. And the first thing I tried was there's a there's a skit where there's three candidates who are trying to become the co-host of the prop of the program, and they have to do a self-introduction for Jay, the current host, and for the for the TV audience. And the TV audience then kind of votes by their applause who wins the who wins the contest. And I used it in that class as kind of a as a stepping stone to go from the first activity in the class, we usually did like uh introduction English, where we talk uh students have a conversation together and they talk about introduced things about themselves, personal information. And then the next activity is a self-introduction. But I found that when they did the when they did the self- introduction, it wasn't very expressive or tended to to speak softly, monotone voice. So I wanted to try and get them a little more energetic, I guess. So I thought by having them do this skit that they could it's really good because it shows the three candidates come on and they all do something that would be considered uh well, two of them do something that would be considered not right. They either speak in a slow voice or they're looking down, they've got bad posture, or the one or the other one is just really overzealous and looks completely at the host but forgets to look at the audience and and acknowledge the audience. So it's just a good way to point out good things and bad things.

Darren 9:24

So another thing that you wrote about is reader's theater. Can you tell everyone exactly what it is, just in case they don't know?

Gordon 9:33

Reader's theater is basically group storytelling. Okay. In a regular play, your actors memorize their lines and they and they interact with and and look at other actors on the stage. In reader's theater, basically it's a reading play. The actors hold their script in one hand or two hands, and they're basically reading to the audience using their voice only, really. Maybe, maybe a few gestures to to tell the story. So it really forces the the actors to, I guess, to kind of like use voice expression to tell the story. There's not much you they don't actually look at the other actors in most readers' theaters. They don't they don't look at the other actors, they're just kind of either standing in a line and reading to the audience. The good thing about readers' theater is as opposed to a play, you know, it takes some time to memorize your lines, right? In a play. Uh in reader's theater, uh you're reading, so you it you don't have to spend that extra time trying to learn the line. So you can kind of something that may have taken make like four or five lessons, you can do it in in, you know, two or three. And so that's one of the reasons that I first that I was first kind of that caught my eye about doing reader's theater. Cause I had done some some a short play with some students before, but it took up a lot of time. They had to memorize their lines. Uh, and so I wanted to find a way to maybe shorten that down. And also it's, you know, some of the reluctant learners or some students that with lower level academic ability, it's difficult for them to memorize lines. And this way it's it makes it more participatory for them. They can do it in in little time.

Darren 11:24

So you don't have to worry about memorizing lines and costumes and things like that?

Gordon 11:28

Yes, you can, I mean, you can use some costumes if you like. In general, I think true readers' theaters, there's no props and no costumes. But you can, uh obviously you can uh whatever you would like to do, you could you could do that.

Darren 11:42

Let's say you have a story and you want to adapt it. Would you try to make more speaking parts?

Gordon 11:49

Yeah, that's that's the idea. So you maybe you read a story together, maybe you'd read a short story together with the class, and then there are readers' theater scripts of out there on the on the internet that you can that you can find, or you can make your own, right? So what you you're you're exactly right. What you try and do is take a script and minimize the narration as much as possible and make it in into as much dialogue as you can. It's too much narration, it's just uh the action kind of slows down, right? So you need to to have a a story that you that's got a lot of dialogue and not so much narration. So if you're looking for a script, that's that's kind of what you want to find.

Darren 12:29

So I see. So you're turning it into a play. Exactly. And have you ever had a situation where a student kind of surprised you? You know, they started doing the activity and you thought, wow, I I didn't realize they had that in them.

Gordon 12:43

Yeah. So I again again, I had that drama class where that I had to take over at my university. And then the following semester, I at that time I was teaching a seminar. Uh I was a Zemi at my at my university. And I had two, uh small Zemi, I had two Chinese foreign students that selected my class. But then uh, you know, you get these students that that don't sign up on the day they're supposed to sign up for the Zemi, right? And then they kind of get funneled into different classes. So I got two of probably probably the worst students in our department, kind of famous for being not good students and you know, not real motivated to do much. And with these kind of, they were together with these kind of, I would say pretty highly motivated foreign students from China. I went with uh uh using some drama. And I was really surprised with the uh effect it had on these two students that were very, very reluctant learners, and I had them for a couple years until they graduated.

Darren 13:54

So, Gordon, how were the students different in this context?

Gordon 13:58

Collaborating to do different different things, different skits and things like that. You know, you saw them taking an interest and actively participating, and oh, this is interesting, and then you know, oh, they're they're thinking, they're thinking about different ways they can they can do these things. And yeah, so I I guess that's a that's a how I can explain that. I think the collaboration part is big. I think you know, they getting a chance to experience the you know, English and and it's got a context to it, right? These dramas got context to it, they can then experience the the emotion, maybe a little bit that the characters are playing. Maybe they could really it maybe it re related a little bit to their personal life, rather than just these are these aren't the type of students that are good at sitting down and listening to a lecture and taking notes and staying focused, you're right, and then doing doing hours of homework or something like that. But with their, you know, participating and moving and and doing in a drama, it could have an effect on them.

Darren 15:06

So if you're thinking about a radio drama and reader's theater, for you, like what are the main differences between the two?

Gordon 15:15

The fun thing about radio drama is the you know, you have to come up with some sound effects as well, right? It's not just the it's just not it's not only just the speaking parts. So you can, you know, you can find students can find audio files on the internet or they can make natural sounds like knocking on a door.

Darren 15:34

Okay, so how many foley artists do you have in one class?

Gordon 15:37

It depends on how you want to do it, but I usually have the because there's so many effects that happen during the play, it's kind of and you want everybody to have a speaking part. So I mean, you could have just one person doing the special effects, but then they're not speaking and participating. So I kind of divided it up among members of the group. Basically, what you do is uh and we were recording this, so you'd have one person recording the recording the the drama on their smartphone, and then you've got all the other students were sitting in a circle and you've got their phones placed around that one phone, and when it's time for their effect to come on, you know, they're they're tapping on their tapping on their phone or they're making again, they can make you can use natural sounds to to make some of these effects too. But yeah, that's that's basically the the main difference. There's no, you know, there's no audience, it's a recording. The thing is, radio drama, I think, is in a way it's better because you're not again, you're not performing for an audience, so there's not that you don't get students don't get as nervous, right? You you you're if you're if you're performing for an audience, you're a little bit, it can be kind of nerve-wracking, right? So with this, it gives them a small group situation where they can, you know, they're not, it's non-threatening and they can maybe feel a little freer to be a little more expressive. Radio drama is more like a is more like a play than than the reader's theater.

Darren 17:04

Okay, Gordon. So if I were to go into my class on Monday and say, okay, everybody, we're going to do a radio drama today, what would I need to do to prepare?

Gordon 17:12

Uh so the first thing you would probably want to do is go through a group reading of the drama. And maybe depending on obviously you want you want them to learn if it's depending on the level, you want to learn, have them learn some vocabulary, that kind of thing. You know, I would do a group reading, maybe give them some vocabulary type of quiz for, you know, for the next the next week or whatever. And then I guess you would what divide up, you know, you you divide it and get people into roles, that kind of thing. I've been using, I was using like Flipgrid or uh these days I'm using Padlet to give students to have students make recordings outside of class to practice their lines as a way to ensure that they're getting prepared for these. So uh these are just Flipgrid no longer around, but they're able to make either audio or video recordings on Padlet uh in between classes. I found that's really helpful.

Darren 18:11

So is that another option to have each of the students record individually and then stitch it together, or is it better to do it live?

Gordon 18:18

It's definitely uh better to have a a live performance. I tried some of the these things on Zoom, these performances on Zoom, uh like during COVID, which is okay. You know, everybody's in the Zoom meeting and you know, you can see everybody on the screen, that kind of thing. But no, definitely. This is just I was just using Padlet Flipgrid just to ensure that they were practicing. And it's just all it's just another way, too, that you can actually, you know, you could actually uh film or record the final performance and put that up on Padlet so that everyone could, you know, they've got that, they can hear it or they can they can watch it, something like that.

Darren 18:55

Okay, so obviously they need a text, it has to be interesting, it has to be at their level, they have to understand the meaning, they have to practice, and they have to have the performance. And the good thing is that if they make a mistake, they get to re-record it, right?

Gordon 19:11

Right, right. And so, and maybe teach a little bit of voice inflection, do a little script marking, kind of marking words that get stressed or inflected. I I also have them generally at the end of a sentence or at the end of a line in parentheses, have them put a emotion that that that character is supposedly feeling when they're reading that line. So they maybe if they can do if they can, you know, express that emotion in any way with that line. I've also had in the past for like had them for gestures, think about a gesture you can use. If you're if it's not radio drama, if it's reader's theater or something, they could draw a picture of of something, of the gesture they might use or something like that. It might be easier to start with reader's theater and then go to the radio drama. It might be that the radio drama has a little more, you need to have a little better understanding of the story. Depending, depending, because you're just using your voice, right? You're just using your voice, no one's moving around, you're not looking at anything. So that's why I uh and and I've done the radio drama before, and I wanted to try it with again a group of reluctant learners this last semester, but I thought that a radio drama might they would be it would help them to we if we made a film and we could actually they could actually, you know, they're acting it out and visualizing what's happening too rather than having to have the knowledge in their mind. Uh and yeah, so that was interesting to me. I did a I did the not the radio drama with these with this group, but we made we actually made a film. So that took that took quite a bit more time than the like the reader's theater, but it was interesting. We started off again with a a scripted drama, and then we did a reader's theater. Uh we did we were gonna do the short radio drama, but we didn't have time, and then the last five classes was trying we we read the story and then we kind of made a film, and I was kind of interested in especially in the PIE SIG. Uh, some people have been doing doing a lot of work with student films. So I was just curious to as to what would happen. It was it's kind of a little bit different in this situation because it's a it's kind of a scripted film, it's not students going out and creating a movie, but you know, I wanted to see how it would work. It was a lot of work on my part, actually, to try and put it together during the the class time that I had, but I thought it was well worth the effort. I surveyed the students at the end of the class, and you know, I wanted to see how it affected maybe their motivation, their confidence. And those kind of things. And I got some good results. It was a simple survey, but you know, just showed that, you know, it helped motivate them a little more to study English. They felt more confident trying to speak expressively. All of them at least wanted, thought they might want to take another performance-related course again.

Darren 22:19

So that's good. So when you think about film, what are the advantages and disadvantages when you compare it to readers' theater and radio drama?

Gordon 22:30

It takes time for students to memorize their lines. And I know in the I knew in the short time that we were going to do this that it was going to be impossible at their level of English. And it's actually kind of a reading, reading performance. You know, we're actually we were actually acting, but a lot of the time they were they had their scripts in their hands and they were, you know, we were reading it.

Darren 22:55

And you get the benefit of stitching all these small scenes together, right?

Gordon 22:59

Yes, that's what I ended up doing too. Thing about a film is I kind of had to find a different place that wasn't our regular classroom. There's also just a few parts in the play. I had like 15 students, and there was only five parts in the play. So I did three groups and do everything three times. That was a challenge. And then trying to figure out things for students to do while one group was filming, what are the other students going to be doing? But you know, I made some activities for them to do, and it was a lot of work. So, as opposed to maybe a project where you're having students on their own time going out and, you know, they're creating a film or something like that. I think it's a little bit different.

Darren 23:43

So a little earlier you spoke about PAL. Can you tell people what the difference is between PAL and PIE?

Gordon 23:51

Performance-assisted learning is just using any kind of, I guess you'd call it a performance or performance activity to help you meet the teaching goals that you have for your course. There's something called performance-based learning. Your whole class is focused on performing a play. Throughout the whole semester, you're going to work on getting ready. And then the last class is you're going to perform the play. You're all working for this one final performance. So performance-assisted learning is more or less using these kind of performance activities to try and assist you in whatever your goals might be for your course. For example, uh, you want students to speak more expressively. I was trying to work on presentation skills. The idea of the performance course that I made was to get these students to be able to communicate more expressively. Hopefully, I'm teaching them skills that are, you know, maybe transferable to the workplace, right? And hopefully through these activities, they're gaining more confidence to if they're gonna have it, you know, if they're gonna speak English, they're gonna have more confidence to to not give up and to to try and express themselves.

Darren 25:16

I see. So as we wrap up the podcast, I'd like to switch gears a little bit. I often think about AI. And I think if you're teaching content-based lessons and you're not teaching students any life skills or the ability to communicate, then they're gonna be at a huge disadvantage if this kind of AI takeover happens and there's not many jobs left. So I'm wondering what you think about that. I mean, is it beneficial, do you think, for teachers like us and even people who are not language teachers to use these kinds of performance-based activities? Because, you know, in such an uncertain world, at least they'll have the life skills to navigate this kind of reality. I mean, what do you think about that?

Gordon 26:03

I think it's gonna be even more important to have those kind of skills. Maybe it'll be the people that do have those kind of skills are the ones that are gonna be able to get to keep jobs or to get to get jobs in that new AI environment. And I don't know if this is right or not, but you know, we've seen what's happened to to kids that went through COVID. They were sitting in front of computer screen zooming most of the time, and now they're they don't have a lot of those skills. But I still think it's uh it's really important. Hopefully it'll it would, you know, it's gonna make would make life more interesting, you know, if they uh can learn those kind of skills, I think, and get people keep people more connected. But uh on the other hand, I think as teachers, we need to I think we need to embrace it and I think there's different ways that we can use it to actually do the kind of things that we've been talking about today. I mean, I've seen some interesting presentations on you know, using AI to make these kind of skits and dramas. They can make them for you, and there's creative ways that we can use it to to our advantage. Right now, I'm just having a problem with how do we get students not to cheat, basically. That's my that's my biggest issue with AI. So I've I've been going, I think like a lot of lot of people have gone more back to more analog type stuff, right? We're we're actually writing things in the classroom, no devices, that kind of thing to to get away from that.

Darren 27:30

I've heard it said that once AI becomes really powerful, that humans will become a niche product.

Gordon 27:35

Oh wow.

Darren 27:37

So maybe we can get them ready for the niche?

Gordon 27:40

Oh, geez.

Darren 27:42

Be cause they won't be ready for the niche if they can't communicate and cooperate and work with each other.

Gordon 27:49

That's an interesting point, Darren. Thanks. Yeah, it's not something I think about, but I think what we're doing is valuable.

Darren 27:56

Okay, if people want to read your articles or get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that?

Gordon 28:02

Send me an email and I'd be glad to try and provide some information or you know, send them in in the right direction.

Darren 28:08

Okay, Gordon, it's been a great talk. Thank you very much for being with us today and sharing your ideas.

Gordon 28:15

Thank you for having me, Darren. Thanks. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Darren 28:18

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