Teaching as a Performing Art

Teaching as a Performing Art is a teacher education program developed for the College of Education at the University of South Carolina. It is a methodology designed to elicit better teacher performance in order to produce more effective student performance. Designed for closed-circuit television or resource center access, the course consists of 52 half-hours of videotape, 26 half-hours of audio tapes, a student guidebook, and a textbook. The videotapes are divided equally into (1) theory and performance demonstration units, and (2) interviews and discussions with guest faculty from the arts and education. The theory-demonstration sessions consist of the principle philosophies and concepts with 80 performance illustrations. Performance demonstrations were created in ecology, language arts, geometry, history, chemistry, math, biology, media arts, music, and art to further illustrate modes and styles of performance, adaptivity, ensemble techniques, theatrical skills, the pedagogy of the arts, nonverbal communication, and the training-educative-and-celebrative teaching experience. The entire series was written and produced by students and staff at the University of South Carolina. (RC)