Improv as a classroom technique?
“Just say yes and you’ll figure it out afterwards.”
Tina Fey
In this musing, I’m riffing off a book chapter forwarded on by a colleague of mine - Jacob Eisenberg - in which he masterfully deconstructs and presents Improvisation in a number of forms - in music, martial arts and other genres.
Reading through Jacob’s chapter, it occurred to me that improv is a technique which might well have value in the business school classroom, but can be fraught with fear and uncertainty for both teacher and student, which perhaps militates against it’s more common usage.
Core skills we have in recent years begun to focus on more than specific, disciplinary related knowledge domains include creativity and the ability to connect seemingly unrelated fields to gain insights and open up paths of enquiry. Innovation is a buzzword which many companies and institutions are trying to inculcate into staff and graduates.
So how might improv add to the party?
“Yes, and…”
“Yes, and…” is a starting point on which improv comedy is often built, where performers follow each other starting with this phrase. It requires the use of active listening - listening to the words, intent and underlying messages communicated by the previous performer. Active listening is a highly sought after skill in management and leadership.
“Yes, and…” allows for tangential and unexpected changes in direction. The flow and form of the continued narrative has no or limited explicit rules, allowing for new and innovative paths to be followed, tried out, explored. Innovation - another demanded aspect of ability from our graduates in today’s competitive marketplace.
“Yes, and…” demands playing together, supporting and encouraging difference, trials, and sometimes failure in an open and blameless milieu focussed on generating novel experience. Teamwork, support, trust-building - all highly sought after in business today.
That’s not of course to say that improv is of itself a panacea. There is often a certain level of technical skill required to be able to improvise, be this in mastery of a musical instrument, drawing on a blank page, the ability to quickly create rap verses, or knowledge of balance and levers in martial arts. But given a certain level of ability, improv can then be a valuable environment in which to play, the experiment, to try stuff which might not be in “the rules”, especially if a relative novice is experimenting in the company of those with higher levels of technical mastery, who can “catch” or protect the novice before any harm or injury occurs.
FEAR
Fear though - what if it doesn’t work? What if I fall? What if… the list of such questions is endless. Did you read the quote from Tina Fey at the top? Improv requires a safe space in which to play. But even in a safe space, we remain to some extent fearful of failing, of looking silly, of appearing weak. As a teacher I’m supposed to have all the answers - aren’t I? As a student, I need to be as good if not better than the others around me - don’t I?
Do you? It really depends on the reality we want to shape in our classrooms - as teachers and students. Do we want our learning spaces to be just that - a space in which to try new things, to grow, experiment and sometimes fail - and yet learn as much from the failures as from the successes? Or do we want our learning spaces to be like battery farms - pack ‘em in, pump them full of facts they can regurgitate in an exam and take their money while waiting for the next tranche of punters to pay for a certificate?
Death by PowerPoint is a horrible fate, and yet, how many of us default to creating a slide deck when asked to deliver a new session or course? What if you had to deliver a session with no slides? How might that look? There’s a challenge for you. Deliver a session in your next teaching cycle with no slides...
Do we need to know the outcome of a session before we start it? Want - certainly. But need?. That puts us as teachers in a comfort zone, but is it giving our students the best chance of developing, of growing, or exploring the new world they are part of? We can only really be servants helping them figure out their new world - but if we don’t equip them with the resilience, adaptability and confidence to face and engage with unexpected situations, stuff that wasn’t in the textbook, are we not essentially failing or charges?
Framing a situation can have a huge effect on how that situation is perceived, approached and engaged with. Maybe we need to re-frame some of our learning spaces into play-zones, where it’s OK to improvise, where the “rules” are in part or whole, suspended, where different is OK.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) advocates providing learners multiple ways to express themselves, to complete assignments, to demonstrate mastery and understanding. These ideas are not new, but they still have to permeate many classrooms at all levels of education.
When will it be OK for teachers not to be the sage on stage, and instead be partners in a learning journey, co-creators of experience, facilitators of development, growth and new frontiers. If we want our students - in the words of one of my favourite ever TV shows - “...to boldly go where no-one has gone before” isn’t it time for us to bring improv to class?
“Just say yes and you’ll figure it out afterwards.”
Joe Houghton
July 2020
References
Book chapter - Encyclopedia of Creativity, Third Edition, 2020, 630–636 (chapter author Jacob Eisenberg) - https://www.elsevier.com/books/encyclopedia-of-creativity/runco/978-0-12-815614-8