ROBERT SEITELMAN BY: HIBA ABSAR
m m o C e Th
r o t a c i n u IT ADM E AD ONMIT ONE
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pening the doors of room 524, a burst of music and cool air hits you in the face. There is Rob Seitelman sitting at his desk, sipping his coffee, singing and dancing along to his Spotify playlist. The room is filled with the inviting aroma of fresh coffee. Students trickle in, twirling and prancing. An impromptu dance party starts. The coffee in the air seems to have an effect on everybody. The bell rings, Rob refills his coffee, and he asks the class to take their seats. Even though the dancing has stopped, everyone is engaged and happy to be in Rob’s class. Rob has a way of bringing the whole class together, “like this one big crazy happy incredibly dysfunctional family,” described Grace Nuckolls, one of Rob’s students. Rob Seitelman is the acting teacher at Mountain View High School. He makes it his job to be fully invested in his students. “He is always
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there if you need him” (Nuckolls). He wants his students to leave his class with passion for acting and “the ability to celebrate their successes, learn from their mistakes, and strive for perfection while knowing you’re never going to reach it” (Rob Seitelman). Abby Seitelman, Rob’s wife, explains that “he wants to send his students
out into the world with some knowledge to take it on.” Rob hopes to bring the importance of acting and other performing arts in schools to the masses through teaching drama. He has made it his mission to create a space where students can express themselves truthfully and without fear. Rob grew up in Long
Beach, California. In middle school, young Rob started taking an interest in theatre. Through high school, he participated in plays in the community theatre and at his school. He decided to attend Williams College for theatre, and went on to get his masters degree at American Conservatory Theatre. After graduating from ACT, he moved to New York to pursue acting. He did many various theatre productions but he felt like his career was in a slump. That is when he decided to move back to California and start teaching. Rob taught in a few different districts before he made the move to the MVLA district. Adolescent Rob enjoyed acting but never imagined making a career out of it. One day he went to visit his uncle in the hospital, who was fighting stomach cancer. His uncle wasn’t doing so well and was in agony. Once Rob arrived, his dad encouraged him to perform for his uncle. Eventually giving into his dad’s demands, Rob starts performing a song from a show he did earli-
er that summer. “And for a moment in the middle of the song, the pain lifted off his face and he smiled, and probably smiled for the last time” (Rob Seitelman). In that moment, he realized the power of theatre and how much of a difference he could make through performing. Since that day, Rob knew that he was meant to pursue acting. Like coffee, theatre picks you up when you are down but the high
abilities” (Walling). It is so important to have a place in school where you feel safe and accepted so you can become comfortable in your own skin. Art plays a significant role in where “ individuals realize their creative powers and that the promotion of aesthetic growth” (National Art Education Association). The word sorry has been banned from Rob’s class because he believes you should never be
felt that he was “working a really crummy day job in order to support an acting habit” (Rob Seitelman). Around this time Rob was in a play called Marat Sade, whose fighting director was moving to Tucson after the show ended. That fighting director made Rob realize that “they have plenty of theatre in New York” and that he, like the fighting director, wanted “to go where they need theatre” (Rob Seitelman).
“I WANT TO GO WHERE THEY NEED THEATRE” -ROBERT SEITELMAN
has more of a lasting effect. The theatre is “a place of no judgement” (Nuckolls). It is a space to explore and find yourself because “there isn’t that social pressure to act a certain way” (Rob Seitelman. “Expression is important” because it leads to “better school attendance, increased graduation rates, improved multicultural understanding, and the development of higher-order thinking skills, creativity, and problem-solving
apologizing for who you are. “I got into acting sort of as an outlet cause I got made fun of a lot in school” (Rob Seitelman). Rob has created a classroom environment he needed as a teenager, an environment he learn to create through theatre. In his class, “you are accepted and you are loved” (Nuckolls). Living in New York didn’t turn out to be quite as glamorous of a lifestyle that Rob had imagined. Rob was working pretty steadily but he
Rob decided to move back to California and try his hand at teaching drama. Theatre is the stimulant that keeps him running throughout the day. Many districts don’t value art education, even though it teaches skills that apply to any career and everyday life. STEAM (the integration of arts into the education standard of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) “is an innovation strategy for America”
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because art education “is the raison d’etre to be out of the box, to accept the chaos” (Robelen). More specifically theatre and other performing arts give us the ability to present and communicate successfully. Through performing monologues and scenes you practice presentation, articulation, and conveying a message. In Rob’s class, students write down feedback of what they felt was communicated through a student’s performance, so the performer(s) can see what worked and improve upon what didn’t. “Whether it’s making friends or trying to win
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a client… it’s the same thing, you are out in the spotlight and you are in a sense completely naked” and that is when knowing how to present yourself or an idea comes in handy (Abby Seitelman). Rob even brings in acting in his English classes by treating each class as a performance. “It has a three act structure. There is beginning, middle, and end. Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution” (Rob Seitelman). You can see the same three act structure outside of theatre: in the five paragraph essay, the scientific method, the legal brief, and etcetera.
Theatre is applicable to so many things outside of the arts. Rob hopes to continue working as an acting teacher and as a professional actor. He plans to expand the Mountain View High School Drama Department. For the most part, he hopes his life stays pretty steady because he now has two young daughters, a three-year-old and a nine-month- old. At the end of every class, Rob reminds his students to “have a good day, learn things!” IT ADM E A NMIT OD ONE
“HAVE A GOOD DAY LEARN THINGS!” -ROBERT SEITELMAN
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