In An Actor Prepares, Konstantin Stanislavski describes actors as having to earn the right to the stage. Because of the structure of the theater and the expectations of the genre, the audience will automatically give actors a grace period – in other words, they assume the actor knows what they’re doing because they are on the stage and not in the audience.  This right is forfeit, however, if the actor doesn’t demonstrate that they deserve the stage. At some point, an actor loses the authority that flows from structure and has to earn the right to be on stage.

Earning the right to be on stage is a useful metaphor for teaching. At first, the teacher assumes authority through structures already in place – they are standing in front of the classroom and not seated in the desks. It is my firm belief that any person could walk into any classroom on the first day and assume authority simply by standing at the front. That authority has a limited lifespan. Once students start to believe you’re faking it, like an actor forgetting their lines, that authority is lost, and once lost it is much more difficult to earn back because it is no longer given as a matter of course.

My mantra is that I must earn the right to be on stage every day, in every course I teach. Earning that right does not mean that I come into class and pounce on my students to force them to respect me as a strict disciplinarian, but instead it’s about preparation and practice. I must come to the classroom prepared to teach a lesson and I must teach that lesson to the best of my abilities regardless of my mood or health on a particular day.

As far as writing goes, I believe that students should be invested in their own improvement. My ability to get students to see the value of improvement comes down to how well I understand them as individuals and find ways to motivate them. Grades, I’ve known since my own school days, are a poor motivator. Is money the best way to make a person do a good job at work every day? Does money make that person want to come to work? Grades are the equivalent of money as a motivator – they work but they introduce a transactional quality to the student/teacher relationship that can be limiting. Many students end up working only as much as the grade requires and no more. By trying to learn about my students as individuals, I can find other ways to motivate them. After all, a student doing C- work won’t be motivated by the potential of doing C+ work, but they may be motivated by a teacher who can help them see how much they have improved their skills rather than their grade.

I could go on and on about this topic, but let me end here by reinforcing a core belief that any student can be motivated to learn more about their own talents or interests, and finding ways in which their talents or interests overlap with skills or content appropriate to English as a discipline will be the best form of motivation.