having fun
Clowning about
10
By Michael McGrath In my new capacity as a retired English teacher (“retired” not old!) and as a former member of the English department at the EOIP, I would like to talk about a new facet in my life outside the school. I have always been fond of the theatre and though I was involved with it through courses, performing and writing while I was still teaching at the School of Languages, I can now spend even more time in the theatre world, given that I’m free of work commitments. In fact, I’m particularly interested in the world of the clown. My eyes were first opened when I took part in a course several years ago in Girona, “How to be an imbecile” and lately I have been fortunate enough to participate in other clown courses. Sometimes I think I was a clown in the classroom and now that I have my red nose (plastic red nose, not red from drinking too much), I am a real clown. At the end of a session during one of these courses, a clown colleague told us that he was involved in an initiative visiting sick children at the hospital. Some were cancer patients while others had other complaints and diseases. He asked for collaboration. I thought “This is for me,” and I jumped at the opportunity.
I thought I could draw a parallel between my experience as a clown (with still a lot to learn, I suppose) and that of language teaching and learning. Well, here we go. For me, a clown is a human being who tries to do things with the best intention but, somehow, he fails, even though sometimes he thinks he has successfully done whatever. Those around him laugh at him and he really doesn’t understand why. Just before continuing, I would like to briefly refer to José Antonio Marina, the educational philosopher. He once asked what we can do to motivate a child so that they can take an interest in learning. He made three recommendations: a) Give them a desire to learn (or, in other words build up curiosity in each pupil), b) recognise and treat them as individuals and c) give them a sense of progress. I would add another; involve them. Now, Marina is talking about children bur, personally, I think all this could be easily applied to adults, too. What about the children at the hospital? (Sometimes we do a show for those children who can leave their rooms while those who can´t are entertained by magicians, kamishibai story-tellers and so on) Well, first and foremost, each child is a world in themselves.