Earlier this month, I embarked on a great beginning – the first night of my Speech Communication course this semester – a class that I’ve been teaching at this college since the fall of 2013 (and also for a year stint as an adjunct in the 2011-2012 academic year). It’s the kind of course I enjoy teaching, but tremendously more when I bring in fresh and new activities for the year. I keep some of my standard assignments and activities for semester to semester and year to year – but I like to mix things up. Modify what worked well (or sometimes didn’t work well), find a new way to resonate relevance to my students, and keep it interesting for me (#sorrynotsorry). I also like finding activities that draw students out of their metaphorical comfort zones. That’s why I use improv in my speech comm classes – improv does that. Improv seems to level the playing field – everyone adapts as thy go along, and some of the best improv experiences come out of groups building trust and being vulnerable. Two actions important for any community, but especially for a speech communication class (in my humble opinion).
For our first week of class, we jumped right into ice-breaking and embracing awkwardness with an improv. activity – one that I learned while attending the Storyline Conference last year at Willow Creek Community Church. One of the speakers, author/comedian Tripp Crosby, assigned sections to the large auditorium (mixed with introverts and extroverts – much like my classroom), each given a musical task (lyrics/vocals, percussion, guitar, bass, etc) to work, concertedly, toward writing and performing a hit song. Through a mad-gab-like-process they also select a band name. My class, for one night, became “The 5 Blue Corndogs.”
Here’s my class …. Ahem… The 5 Blue Corndogs, in their one-night only performance of their hit song “Eat More Pizza”:
During our second week I showed part of the viral video of the cat wearing a costume lion’s mane, attacking toy dinosaurs, and self-selected students (my 3 bravest, so far), narrated the video as a newscast. As with our last improv exercise, it was silly and slightly uncomfortable, but I think my students are finding the freedom of bravely embracing that awkwardness, learning to improvise and laugh as they go along.
I didn’t capture any video of their endeavor – but you can also enjoy the video, and perhaps try to give it your own improvisational newscast narration. Enjoy!
ofmatterandmeaning 