The Playwright Within: Fun, Freedom, and Agency Through Playwriting for Urban Elementary Students

Abstract

The participants in this study are 9-year-olds who demonstrate signs of incipient alienation. Even with an experienced teacher who had a positive relationship with her students, some students describe school as boring. The arts may provide a path away from alienation when learning is embedded in the students' cultural knowledge and when the artistic process is primary. Our research question was, "What do students learn when engaged in a playwriting experience in school?" The evidence suggests that students discovered fun, freedom, and a sense of agency with language arts as a result of their participation in the program. Keywords arts integration, urban education, elementary schools, language artsOver 33% of students drop out of U.S. high schools (Wittenstein, 2010). In urban centers, more than 50% of students of color drop out (Dillon, 2009). With a plethora of urgent 21st-century problems that require solutions from imaginative and