3 specific guidelines I feel ethically obligated to communicate to those future teachers of my unit to ensure that every student who takes my “class/unit" has a learning experience that is safe and integral are:
- Instructor modeling of appropriate, safe and effective critiquing is critical to the success of this unit. If the students actively and genuinely feel unsafe and/or uncomfortable and/or disrespected, barriers will arise and they will either not engage or not participate at all, authentically. It is critical that very early in the rehearsal process the instructor circulates to all groups and make sure that this is happening. If your students haven’t had any experience peer critiquing then covering that prior to beginning this phase of the unit is super important.
- This unit doesn’t address how to be a good audience member because it comes midway though semester 1 and I cover audience ethics very early on. But if your students have not had some guidance about how to be good, respectful audience members I would absolutely recommend doing that prior to asking any students to share their work.
- It is imperative that the instructor make sure that themes/stories/subjects chosen by students to base their scripts upon are appropriate and will not offend anyone. That’s why I have students creating their scripts on a shared Google document so that the instructor has ample opportunity to make sure nothing goes awry in this way.
- I also recommend letting students know that if they are experiencing any disrespect or mistreatment of any kind to share it in the journal and that it will be dealt with quickly and aggressively. That’s a private setting that is totally safe because only you and the students see it, weekly. That gives them a safe way to share with you what they’re going through.
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