Learning through Theater

I am a teacher who has worked in the field of theater-in-education for the past 48 years. Passionate about theater as a resource in the learning process, I have spoken at conferences throughout the country and am now developing lessons that will help more teachers to use theater as a vehicle through which they can reinforce curricular and humanistic objectives. I was a child who would have benefited from a weekly scheduled "theater time" in which we acted out a scene from a social studies lesson or dramatized a poem. My research and my practice over the decades have shown me that positive theater experiences can anchor in a deeper kind of learning in all students.

It might be easier for me to communicate my teaching style by asking you to watch me at work and to tell me what you think I believe about education. Throughout the decades as an educator and teaching artist in the field of theater arts, I have cared deeply about finding the different ways to engage students and to insure that they were learning. In graduate school, I cared about the essential question, “What is it that happens between a facilitator and students that engages those students and helps them to succeed as learners?” I believe that one of those important qualities on the part of the educator is to believe that the student can succeed and to communicate that belief to every individual.

Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting from The School of Fine and Applied Arts at Boston University. Master of Arts Degree in Theater Education from Norwich University in Vermont.

Please visit my website, www.carolmacy.com, to learn more about my background, to read what others have said about my work, and to enjoy photographs and video clips of me directing and leading workshops with students from Kindergarten thru high school in New York, Vermont, California, and Connecticut. As a traditional classroom teacher, I have taught Kindergarten for three years as well as high school students for 11 years in Connecticut. There I taught theater, social studies, English, Literature, American Sign Language, and Writing.