Listening to the Silences: A Teacher’s First Year in Words and Music

Abstract

Listening to the Silences is an ethnodrama -an example of verbatim theatre that evokes a teacher's first year in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) based on the words voiced during a series of four interviews sessions conducted by the author. The protagonist, Indiana Ingelside, spent her first year in CPS in an African American school in one of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods. The show is intended to help the audience reflect on the beginning teacher's experiences of working in that setting. The script evokes the challenges of teaching within environments shaped by social policies that do not address, and frequently exacerbate, the poverty, racism, and other forms of injustice that shape the lives of children and families of color. The article begins with the complete playscript and then concludes with an afterword that describes what the author learned from developing and producing the show. Photos from the Philadelphia workshops are included. Mikhail Bakhtin (1981, p. 111) Notes on the Script and PerformanceThe playscript presented below was constructed from a verbatim transcription of an interview conducted by the author as part of a larger research study (see Vanover, 2016, in press). All names of people, schools, streets, and neighborhoods were changed to pseudonyms during the transcription process, and all pauses in the interview lasting longer than two seconds were timed and marked. Words have been cut from the transcript to dramatize these data (Saldaña, 2002), but no words have been added. Every word spoken in the script is presented in the ethnodrama in the original order it was voiced.Listening to the Silences is intended to support audience discussion about first year teachers' experiences in schools that serve low income and minority students; brief suggestions for guiding this dialogue may be found in the discussion which follows the script. Following the principles of inquiry theatre, future productions may cut words from the script and may make changes to the music and the staging, but no words may be added to such future works, nor may these performances change the order of the dialogue. THE FACILITATORS are the producers of the piece. At a university or school district performance, THE FACILITATORS might be faculty members with research interests in teacher induction and retention; at a performance put up by a community group, THE FACILITATORS might be neighborhood leaders with an interest in improving local schools. THE FACILITATORS hand out programs to audience members before the piece begins, and they guide the discussion that concludes the work 4 .THE MUSICIANS: Different arrangements of Arvo Pärt's Fratres are played throughout the show by local musicians. School of music students might play in a performance hosted by a university. High school students might play in a performance hosted by a school district. Performances without live musicians might use conductor Rudolf Werthen's Telarc recording of Pärt's Fratres.THE INTERVIEWER is a graduate student working on his/her disserta...

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“…From a formal perspective, “Listening to the Silences,” Vanover (2016b), is the most perfect play in the Inquiry Theatre series. The show evokes a White, female, beginning teacher’s first year in an African American elementary school in Chicago.…”

“…Kisha and Jenna glowed. After the session was over and the audience had left for the evening keynote, Kisha and Jenna and I created a set of photos I published with the playscript for “Listening to the Silences,” Vanover (2016b), including Photo 8.…”

“…Kisha Barr performing “Listening to the Silences”, Vanover (2016b), as part of the peer-reviewed program of the Ethnography in Education Forum at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, February 2015.…”

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