Walking the Table: Dramatic Teaching (2007) edited by Pam Patterson.

Toronto: York University &

the CWSE/OISE/UT (pp. 27-30)

Intersecting Sets: A Plant grown from seeds

Paula Schonberger

The term intersecting is defined in the dictionary as a place where two or more roads cross or as any
collection of distinct objects considered as a whole that share a common area. A singular point where
objects continuously meet is the threshold at which ordinary visibility ends and perception begins.

I like to use these various ideas in relation to the term intersecting sets, a metaphor used by arts
educator, Richard Courtney (1985) in describing childrens knowledge. He writes, [D]rama as [both]
internal and external action, as identification and impersonation is at the very heart of meaning,
learning and knowing... (p. 54). [T]hought and action centre on the dramatic metaphor... (p. 40). When
children fit these dramatic meanings into a pattern or structure we can say that they have knowledge (p.
41).

These common experiences are shared as a diverse group of students meet and learn in a school
classroom. Children, as separate beings, come together to create and share actions, ideas, images,
opinions and thoughts. The collective experience creates complex knowledge(s). And this knowing is
shaped and shifts through the changing relationships the children all have with each other, adults, the
community, the environment, materials and space which they inhabit. The play encounters of children
suggests dramatic possibilities.

Similar to the character, Atticus Finch, in the novel, To Kill a mockingbird (Lee, 2007c), I have an urge to
walk in the shoes of children for a while and understand how they play. I wonder how the different
voices of children interact and intersect to create a common experience.

My chance to view and take part in a childs world took place one morning in my grade 2/3 classroom as
I observed two girls standing in the corner of the room. The following play episode took place:

Fingertips are curving, swerving and sending out aromas. Her pencil-thin body begins to sway in line
with her arm, hand and fingertips. Her hips move from side to side as she hums in rhythm with the
movement. Another student joins her, overlapping into her hand. Spiraling, round and round until the
space is used up. The two girls gaze over at a vine that is clinging to the glass window.

(Anecdotal Observation, May 9, 2007).

Students were playing and creating an image from the vine crawling up the glass window. The girls were
revealing their embodied knowledge to me through acting out the movement of the plant. Their
intuitive knowledge of the plant's movements illustrated their familiarity with a previously studied
science topic. However, they demonstrated a sense of freedom to venture beyond the known
(Edwards, Gandini & Forman, 1998, p. 76). The children were expressing themselves through cognitive,
affective and imaginative processes and were able to interconnect ideas that were previously detached
in ways that became more meaningful for them.

I was curious about the girls impulsive plant-like movement and after discussing and reflecting with
both the students, another grade three student, who was listening to our dialogue commented, A plant
grows from seeds. We can all be a plant. This comment intrigued me. How could a group of sixteen
students be a plant? The question raised many possibilities. How was I to take up this dramatic process
with the students in the class? There would be no sense of decorum or structure (Thompson, 2003, p.
26), no control. However, I believed that the students would create an organizational structure, an
interpretative framework, in order to impose order on their experience of the world (Courtney, 1985,
p. 46).

Where morality and self-interest intersect, I, like Judith Thompson (2003), live in fear of being corrupted
by power, in believing too much in my own power and expertise. So, I throw the power to my students
and they take control. In their evolving play, they find and reveal themselves. The playful episode
becomes purposeful play as children shape their perceptions of a life cycle of a plant.

The students desires to become plants and the teachers passion to engage them in the learning
process through collective imaginative movement, was an opportunity to discover and construct a new
representation of plant. The combined improvisations, active participation, negotiations, conflicts,
expressions and interpretations, ideas and opinions of students and teacher together created a new
order, pattern, metaphor. The dramatization of a plant came into view after one week.

An image of a plant emerged like a petals of a rose unfolding. Plant poem by Anne Kelly (n.d.),
reminds me of students moving individually and in unison as they dramatize a plant developing from
seed to flower.

Plant poem

Aspidistra!

Deep roots probe moist soil

Through long unchartered seams

Down earths loam yeast

Towards life.

Above, tender shoots climb,

Bud, seed, stem, leaf, flower

Aspidistra comes into power.

As one, the students' bodies interacted, intersected and overlapped into a collective creation of a plant.
The children and I were intricately connected. Our realities intertwined like various plants growing in a
multi-coloured and fragrant garden.

As Heathcote (1976), [I]n reflective moments children find that they ... have something in common
with all that has gone before. They, too, belong to humanity (Wagner, 1976, p. 19).

References:

Courtney, R (1985). The Dramatic metaphor and learning. In J. Kase-Polisini (ed.) Creative drama in a
developmental context, pp. 39-54. New York/London: University Press of America.

Edwards, C.P., Gandini, L., & Forman G.E. (1998)(2nd ed.). The Hundred languages of children: The
Reggio Emilia approach -- advanced reflections. Greenwich, USA: Ablex.

Kelly, A. (n.d.). Plant poem (1st stanza). http://www.achill247.com/dailypoem/Plant_Poem.html

Lee, H. (2006 edition, originally published 1961). To kill a mockingbird. New York: Harper Collins.

Thompson, J. (2003). I will tear you to pieces: The classroom as theatre. In K. Gallagher & D. Booth
(eds.) How theatre educates: Convergences & counterpoints, pp. 25-34.Toronto/Buffalo/London:
University of Toronto Press.

Wagner, B. J. (ed.)(1976). Dorothy Heathcote: Drama as a learning medium. Washington: NAEA.