Superstars Present: The Benefits of Term-End Performance

                   

     The usual last meeting of a college class looks like a torture chamber: Students sit, as if trapped in the clutches of desk seats; they are forbidden, as prisoners are, to contact each other, or to touch; they hover over blue books, moiling away at tests; only when they are finished are they granted parole. Most look miserable, some panicky, others resigned.  A-students might be the most desperate of all, on a rescue mission for their perfect GPA. Some students are devising escape plans, finding ways to access answers through cleverly disguised hard-copy or digital cheat sheets.  One by one, students hand in their tests to the teacher enthroned at the front of the room—a teacher who is dreading the process of grading. Once surrendering their tests, the students hook in their earbuds, pull out their phones, and either bolt or slink away. After a whole semester of meeting the same teacher and students, this is indeed a sad way to cap what is supposed to be an educational adventure. It’s symptomatic of assessment-focused courses where passing the test— and not learning something memorable and enriching—is the point.  No wonder students rarely remember so much as the name of their instructors, once the ordeal of the final exam is over.

           About 30 years ago, I started to produce term-end opportunities for students to showcase their semester’s work for an audience limited to their classmates. In those first performances, students would sidle up to the front of the room, read off the page, and scurry back to seats—still the final exam get-it-over-with mode.  But they weren’t trapped in pockets of misery, as they would be with tests.  Everyone applauded appreciatively, and there was a mood of celebration.

            When retailers can’t sell an item at a certain price, they raise the price. So I ramped up the scope of these performances.  I found a public space, sometimes off campus, where students would be performing for family, friends, and the public.  Now the stakes were higher—and illustrated that what they learned and accomplished in class was part of the larger world; that, in short, it mattered.  We rehearsed in class, students memorized their work, some surprised us with antics to enhance their work.  One student jumped up on a desk and rode it like a surfboard while he recited his poem about ocean adventures.  Some students employed friends not in the class to perform with them—playing a guitar or, really, a tuba; enacting a night scene from The Great Gatsby with flashlights; dancing an interpretation of an Emily Dickinson poem, while another played the flute. Four women dressed up as witches to interview Macbeth on The View.

            We all need to be seen.  We all need some public project to realize ourselves.  We all need to be creative and to show off.  We all need a sense of ritual and closure to mark literally, stages in our lives—such as the end of a semester’s work. Somehow that’s supposed to stop in a “serious college class.”  But, as physician and writer Alfred Mercier once said, “What we learn with pleasure, we never forget.”

            Over the years, I have expanded the scope of these performances.  Now, all of my classes for the semester meet in a school auditorium to regale each other.  “They’re your cousins,” I tell them, “through me.  They’re looking forward to meeting you.” I limit each student to two minutes of performance time, which accumulates if they present with others—six minutes, say, for three students.  I ask only that they stay for about twenty minutes to support each other—although many students come early and stay to enjoy the last student up. Each class devises a special cheer for itself, which the whole audience learns and delivers with each new performer from that class (often with hand motions): “Land the Helicopter,” “Not now: I’m meditating,” “Quack! Quack! Take me back!”  All in-groupy kinds of phrases that capture something essential and intimate about a family of students in a class. And the main objective of the performance, I tell them, is to show others how valuable/fun/enriching their learning experience has and continues to be.  “Inspire others to read Shakespeare,” I say, “Inspire others to write their own poetry.”

In our most recent Superstar Performance, Mali and Matt, reinterpreted the roles of Helena and Demetrius from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  In a memorable performance, Mali and Matthew re-enacted a memorized scene in which, despite Demetrius’s repeated verbal abuse of her, Helena persists in pursuing him. Mali wore a dog’s collar, gave Matt a whip and paddle to use on her, and then handcuffs.  No one of us will ever forget their interpretation, nor the fun we had laughing through their antics.  Nor will they forget Willy’s stunning dance interpretation of Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy (while Lisa from another class held up a phone to the microphone, so we could hear Michael York’s recitation of the speech.

Term-end performances or presentations can be produced for all disciplines and departments. We learn best what we teach, and preparing for a performance helps students to better learn subject matter.  They won’t forget the opportunity to acknowledge their courage and creativity in putting themselves forth.  Nor will they forget the crucial message that these performances embody—that the word “education” derives from the Latin for ‘being lead out of darkness.’  That education should move us forward and out of our Platonic caves.   If you’re going to be a Superstar, you’ve got to show up and show off to others.  Tell us about your Superstars Present experience!