Andy Vaught

Philosophy

Managing Instability since 2007

I began my teaching career as a Resident Artist for KID smART in New Orleans, 2007. My job was to incorporate theatre into the second-grade curriculum at Reed Elementary. At the time, Reed was a new public school in New Orleans East, a section of the city, largely African American, that had been decimated by Hurricane Katrina one year earlier. Located in the shadow of Mercy Hospital, across from the Waffle House, Reed’s tall fences and portable structures looked more like a prison than a school. While I hoped my past experiences running a small-town theatre camp would ground and inform my instruction, it became immediately apparent I was unprepared for the role I had been assigned. Within a week, every lesson plan I crafted failed. My intricately developed warm-ups were met with a chilly reception. My games, which were so fun on paper, failed to illicit any interest from my students. When they did stand up to perform, the indifference or derision of their classmates often forced the braver students to retire for the day. Chaos ensued. My most clear memory of that time was an incident in which I barely stopped one second grader from hitting another with a plastic chair. In that moment, I decided to completely redefine my approach to instruction. 

In seeking to create an environment to counter my early failures, I began to develop lesson plans in which allstudents were incorporated into instruction. Considering their skill and comprehension levels, their need for activity and recognition, and the natural showmanship they exhibited, often to my displeasure, I created an avenue for mass participation. Students embodied trees, periodic elements, and mathematical symbols. They used their bodies, their voices, and the classroom itself to craft a theatrical language that both entertained their comrades and achieved the benchmarks and standards that guided the class.  Every student was welcomed, even if they refused a hundred times. As they became more comfortable with performance, both as actors and generators, every student began to participate. It was a pleasure to create this kind of environment in schools across the city. Through my years at KID smART, I helped students stage original epic poems in various locations on their campus, perform on the stages of the Jazz and Heritage Festival, and create original internet content that merged their innate humor with the work of William Shakespeare. I also shared the concepts I was developing in the classroom with teachers across the state. Curating and nurturing delight remains essential to my instruction, as it is a gateway to ownership and agency. Through my teaching approach, I strive to bring order to disarray through joy, agency, and citizenship. 

I soon grew eager to learn new ways of engaging students in the creative process and I entered graduate school after nearly a decade of producing on the stages of New Orleans. I was surprised to discover how much I missed being a student. I was thrilled by the rigorous academic environment. Higher education is a product of what the student brings to the experience and my professors at the University of New Orleans helped me understand the freedom of action I had as a pupil. Through rigorous workshop classes, I came to appreciate the benefit of well-considered and thoughtfully-delivered criticism. While this process was vital for aesthetic and creative purposes, it also built a strong collective where the discussion and deliberation of others work became as important as the creation of my own. I became stronger as an artist and citizen by allowing for classmates and instructors with varied perspectives to react to my work, as well as by tailoring my criticisms to strengthen the intention of the author, not my own worldview. In the last year of my MFA, I taught a Beginning Playwriting class and applied the methods I had learned to the classroom for the first time. I was gripped by the imaginative and bold work my students produced and encouraged from each other. The content was made stronger by the culture of open and respectful feedback that we curated together.

 As an adjunct professor at Dillard University, I developed my fundamentals of collegiate instruction while collaborating with students and academics of color. My peers and pupils helped me build curriculum that enabled access to classic works for students of non-traditional backgrounds. At Dillard, I came to better understand and encourage the confidence and agency of my students. I taught a class on theatre management, guiding students through the process of creating their own non-profit theatre for which they crafted a mission and budget. This exercise, enabled students to develop a broader conception of the skills they could contribute and leverage as artists. I led massive public speaking classes with students from all majors and helped them to grow more comfortable in expressing their own ideas. I crafted curriculum that intentionally explored the historical relationship between theatre and societal transformation. I was fortunate to work with such a generous faculty of colleagues and mentor who encouraged and challenged me every day. The same confidence that I tried to channel into my students was communicated to me. In one year, I learned so much about necessity of sharing of space, the privilege that I bring into a classroom, and the need for diverse perspectives to bolster theatrical instruction and implementation.

My current work at Hendrix College is informed by my experiences in New Orleans. I push my students to create and critique with equal care and enthusiasm. Their dual growth as creators and critics helps them quickly understand the vitality with a community of well-rounded artists can foster. My students deliver pointed and clear feedback, objectively, and consider the success of their peers as important as their own. A classroom, like an ensemble, is an ecosystem that requires stewardship. I require my students to respect the work and the person who made it, recognizing their identity along with their intention. Many students at Hendrix can live openly in their understanding of themselves on campus, but cannot at home and it is vital that I create an environment where theses perspectives are explored, safely and enthusiastically. I do not prescribe methods of achievement, but rather look for my students’ interests and proclivities and encourage them. Their work has explored loss, guilt, and Greek myths in the ACANSA ten-minute play festival, provided a living chatroom for internet sub cultures at the Hendrix-Murphy Playwright’s Theatre, and been published in Spell’s for Trying Times, a book that employs sonnet structure to alleviate the anxieties of the past year by creating charms and incantations.

For most of my career, I have attempted to make the classroom a safe place for my scholars. The second graders at Reed Elementary had many other concerns besides learning how to be good audience members. Real problems of poverty and access that so often make happiness fleeting, so silliness and play became essential to my instruction. At Dillard, I worked to make the theatrical canon applicable to the very different reality of my pupils and helped them better visualize how they wished to artistically engage with that reality. At Hendrix I focus the creativity of my students, helping them produce new spectacle that explores the concerns of the present moment in a space that recognizes, affirms, and respects them. My students show vast resilience in the face of great challenges and by channeling their joy into my instruction, by encouraging their agency to create, and by fostering an egalitarian classroom setting, I craft a pedagogy that meets their needs.