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What is Edu-drama?
Drama for education British entrepreneur Julia Gabriel’s education-drama helps children across Asia learn while they act /Vimarsh Bajpai
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t is a Saturday forenoon and a boisterous bunch of children are ready to break into a drama session at Julia Gabriel Center for Learning in the southern part of Delhi. The children, in the age bracket of 6-7 years, will be both creative problem solvers and learners during the exercise that will be a mix of fun and education. For this, the barefooted participants have huddled into a colorful room that provides the perfect ambience for re-enactment of an age-old fable – The Ant and the Grasshopper. Two lively teachers – Jenny and Surbhi – share the responsibility of leading this animated bunch into a journey of discovery through the simple act of helping the ant teach the grasshopper a lesson in managing time and being prepared or organized for the challenges of facing winter. The lights are dimmed out, as Jenny stops the story at a point of conflict and asks the young participants if they can think of a way to approach this problem. The length and breadth of the stu-
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dio is transformed into a garden where the ant and the grasshopper live. The children take on the active role of discussing various options and engage in trying these out to see which one will convince the grasshopper to be more prepared and organized in future. It is remarkable how easily the children slip into their respective roles with gleeful enthusiasm. With each set of ideas being proposed, they begin to learn from each other’s perspectives and when they disagree it is interesting to note how they themselves negotiate and persuade each other to try out a certain idea and test its viability with the grasshopper. Time passes very quickly in the world of creative drama where the participants create their own learning through this dynamic medium of interaction and play. As the drama evolves, the tiny hearts take home the message that being lazy (like the grasshopper) is no good; that one should go out and help someone in need. The whole exercise packs in
Edu-drama is a process whereby students create and take part in impromptu drama together, drawing on their own interpretation of a poem or story and adding their own experiences to it. Such creative drama builds self-expression, confidence and problem-solving skills, besides promoting self-leadership. its theme a quick dose on organizing oneself, working together as a team, engaging the children in the physical role play of building a home for the grasshopper, and the basic manners of welcoming and expressing gratitude where it is due. Once over, the children are asked questions on what they discovered and what transpired when they met the grasshopper (sometimes the teacher takes on the active role of creating conflict as in this case playing the role of the grasshopper; while in many other classes one of the children may decide to play that role too!). This is generally followed by a writing exercise that is creative and helps children express through writing what they have discovered. Depending on the individual’s need for challenge some may be asked to write down what transpired in the drama, some may be asked to report as a news reporter on what happened in this world. Some may even want to
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society/education This is an enrichment program that children take up besides their normal studies at school. The India centre has 500 students from toddlers to teenagers, who benefit from this interactive education technique. The centre also works with schools covering around 400 more students. experiment with telling the story in the form of a poem. The purpose of an Edu-drama class is thus fulfilled. “Edu-drama is all about creating our own learning through engaging in the act of problem solving that may arise from a conflict in the story or a poem or any other text. With older children it can arise from any idea or a discussion or emerge from an experience at home, school or with friends” says Shalini Pattabiraman, senior teacher- Edu-drama (Level 1 to Level 6). “All of a sudden you have children coming up with quirky answers,” says Meenakshi Chibba, who runs the India centre, which is a joint venture with Julia Gabriel’s School of Learning in Singapore. Chibba’s centre has 500 students from toddlers to teenagers, who benefit from this interactive education technique. She works with schools such as Amity and Delhi Public School, where teachers hold speech and drama classes, covering around 400 more students. Asked about the fee structure, the centre’s marketing manager Seema Kumar said it is only given to the parents at the time of admission and refused to divulge the monetary arrangement with
the schools. This is an enrichment program that children take up besides their normal studies at school. This is not a substitute to the education that they get at school but a value-add to what they learn. On weekdays, children visit the center after school for a 90-minute session, and on Saturdays the exercise is done all through the day. The centre also offers the Julia Gabriel Foundation Teaching Certificate in Speech and Drama for teachers, parents and adults who want to use this methodology. This course further acts as a precursor to the Trinity Guildhall Foundation Teaching Certificate in Speech and Drama.
Bringing Edu-drama to India During her visit to Singapore around the year 2000, Chibba met Julia Gabriel, the British entrepreneur who conceived and evolved the idea of Edu-Play and Edu-drama, and ran her start-up in the city-state. Quite enchanted with the education that Julia was offering, Chibba got the idea of having such a centre in India too. It was most certainly a lucrative business opportunity, as more and more Indian parents were opening up to letting their children follow their creative instincts. “Because I wanted to know what exactly it is, I first put my children in the centre, and they loved it,” she says. The next step was the signing of the agreement and training for Chibba on how she would run the India centre in tandem with the parent organization. Soon Chibba felt that she wanted to grow in what she was doing. So from just managing the centre, she decided to upgrade her skills. “Today I am qualified to teach a class in speech and drama at the primary level. Some of my teachers including me went for a primary teaching certificate from Trinity-Guildhall (Speech Communication Arts Primary teaching Certificate or SCAPT) to evaluate our own learning and reflect over it as we set out to grow further in our journey as facilitators”. “During the early days, the whole concept of Edu-drama was very new. It was only associated with theatre and not education”, says Chibba, adding
“We started the program with EduPlay which is for 18-month year old babies and is a parent-interactive program. The challenge was in letting the parents know what this was all about and helping them accept that learning doesn’t start at a certain age and contrary to a wide perception, a child is at its most receptive stage of learning from an age as early as 0-six months.” The centre uses a wide range of literature as a spring board for story telling and introducing drama. Children and teachers engage in improvisation, mime, puppetry, role-play, masks, storytelling, problem solving, et al. The India centre is a 51:49 JV between Chibba and the Singapore centre. “Our agreement is for whole of India, not Delhi alone. So whoever is interested in opening such a centre here, we are responsible for helping out,” she adds. The Julia Gabriel Centre in India is now in an expansion mode. The Noida and Gurgaon centers will be up and running in the next six months. This would be followed by similar activities in Bangalore and Mumbai. Chibba stresses that it would be important for the person who wants to run such a centre to be absolutely passionate about the creative aspects of this business. It is about Julia Gabriel’s culture, she says.
The Early Days Armed with her qualifications from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, Julia Gabriel returned to Singapore in the early 1980s where she started teaching children at home. By 1990, the teaching methodology had gained enough momentum for her and her husband to set up Julia Gabriel Speech and Drama Centre. In 2004, her training programme was trademarked as Edu-drama. Today, she has a team of over 200 skilled professionals involved in education and communication: teachers of voice, speech, drama, literature, early childhood educators, musicians, linguists, speech and language therapists. Besides Singapore and India, the centers are also located in Indonesia, DAR E Malaysia and China. OCTOBER 2008 3