Theatre Manager, Educator, and Artist
Director, Choreographer, and Composer
Taking the Leap
By Micah Hein
May 2, 2015
"Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down."
Before I started my Master of Arts in Education (MAED) at MSU, I was working at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Virginia. My position at the Barter was called a Barter Player. This apprentice company is known across the country because the group’s relentless devotion and passion for theater, particularly in education. This Player Company explores the entire East coast on a 4-month tour each year completely booked at school or communal venues. The Players lead a tough life during these tour days, with days typically stretching from 5am to 11pm. However, the theater produced is captivating. No matter how tired or stressed I may have been, the service to my audience through a great performance was always the best part of my day. Most importantly, this successful tour could easily fill the largest concert halls of the East Coast. However, we choose not to. We find the schools that need us more than anything else. A large portion of tour is spent in the coal countries of Virginia and West Virginia, a modern day District 12 of The Hunger Games. These students are seniors in high school that have never seen a play before. Afterward, they realize they can comprehend, laugh, and be inspired by a Shakespeare play – a difficult feat for any student nationwide. While I was at the Barter, the main philosophy of our acting instruction was to face the fear. I was unsure of what characters I would create, what their problems would be, and how to make them different with each performance, but running towards the fear of this unknown was the only way to create something truly unique.
At MSU, I learned of the important separation between professional and personal life, yet still making sure that both continuously move forward. As I move forward personally, I hope to live life with a positive energy that is contagious. I will seek a community of learners that loves learning as much as I do and discovers the join within it. In all of my future endeavors, I will add a level of service. Meeting and learning from others, assisting those in need, and never forgetting to say thank you.
One of my greatest fears in life was to go abroad. An uncertainty lingered over traveling to another country and being safe within it. As I began to face my fears on stage at Barter, I chose to transfer that bravery to all other areas of life. I found myself in Paju, South Korea at the Gyeonggi English Village (GEV) for my next job, an English-immersion theme park with immaculate architecture. Here I would create and perform ESL musicals to Koreans of all ages, coordinate park-wide events, and teach in a traditional classroom in the evenings.
I knew that this new employment in Korea was going to be more manageable for my schedule, so I applied for the MAED to work on in tandem with this new job. I had been scared of graduate studies as well. However I knew that with a unique job and Master’s program that I was genuinely excited about, it could lead to great learning. I was right.
As I began my studies as Michigan State, I was excited to learn more about creativity in the classroom (derived from my Barter experiences) but also about the administrative elements needed to run an educational organization. I sought to use my MAED as a stepping-stone to a future career as a manager in the field of education (with a concentration in P-12 School and Postsecondary Leadership), whether that be a department of teachers, a collegiate theater program, or an education department at a regional theater. I knew that the curriculum of MSU’s MAED would allow me to explore administrative elements of teaching, creativity, and also additional research on classroom management and methodology. I cannot forget to mention the opportunity to further my studies in the field of coaching. Though not directly utilized in the years before my graduate studies began, I coached a swim team throughout high school and college and it was one of the best experiences of my life. I enrolled in the Coaching and Sports Leadership Concentration to further my knowledge in this field.
“Creativity is an escape. It can save people. It is a way to process the bad and make more good:” my friend Eileen shared her thoughts about the power of creativity in an interview for CEP 818-Creativity in Teaching and Learning. This class that allowed to me to think critically about creativity and its necessity in the classroom. We went through the seven pillars of creativity as believed by Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein: perceiving, patterning, abstracting, embodied thinking, modeling, playing, and synthesizing. Each of these elements builds on the other until they can all be effectively synthesized into a meaningful product. Working in a highly creative job at GEV, I realized two things: 1) how much I take my opportunity to play and create every day for granted, and 2) the true definitions of creativity. The course text wonderfully lectured on creativity through using famous historical figures known for their originality and made them so accessible. Creativity can be used in any job, and I appreciate how important it is in the workplace. For this class, I was able to perceive a famous moment within my work in children’s musicals and present it in a completely different medium. Another project challenged me to choose a larger concept from my area of work, for which I chose storytelling, and abstract it into two different forms. Seemingly easy to read about these two projects on the page, I struggled at first to produce satisfactory results and learned to think back to the most imaginative days of my life: childhood. After all, “the only difficulty with playing – and it’s a big one – is being able to remain enough of a child to do it” (From Sparks of a Genius, Root-Bernstein). I posted all of these projects on the first website I ever created! I used Blogger, a simple and easy blogging site, and recognized how easy this would be to introduce to students as a classroom resource.
As I discovered and learned more about creativity, I began to apply it to other classes that were not focused on this element. In my EAD 863-Training and Professional Development course, the final project was to create an outline for a program that could be orchestrated at my current place of work (which was the Gyeonggi English Village). I outlined a session of professional development for these teachers from all around the globe that encouraged creativity in a more reserved culture. Especially in a country like South Korea, the tone of education is formal, strict, and traditional. With this cultural aspect of my working environment, it was difficult to plan this session of professional development and keep it universal and accessible to all. I learned about the importance of political, economical, and social aspects of a working environment, the importance of communication between echelons of an organization, and the planning and evaluation needed for an effective session of professional development. Especially in the field of education, many teachers dread these seminars. This class helped me feel prepared and excited to design and implement a session in the future.
In the field of coaching, KIN 856 – The Physical Basis of Coaching introduced numerous resources that I was unfamiliar with before my studies. This course was about the physical demands of training and athletic performance. It challenged me to create resources that would be useful immediately, including the creation of a professional coaching network, a nutrition handout, a presentation on recovery solutions, and assessments on musculoskeletal anatomy and physiology. However, the two most memorable projects were: 1) the exposure and experience with video analysis software and 2) the drafting of a strength and conditioning manual for my swimmers. The software used for video analysis was Dartfish, which is what the US Olympic Swim Team also uses to break down and analyze the biomechanics of strokes. I filmed and narrated a critique of a fellow swimmer’s freestyle stroke for this project. For the strength and conditioning manual, I identified common sports injuries in the field of swimming and elaborated on the definition of the injury, how to recognize it, how to avoid it, and how to treat it. I then created a 10‐exercise strength and conditioning circuit with a focus on injury prevention specific to the sport of swimming. The purpose of each exercise is explained, and then broken down into an easy, step-by-step description.
These four courses and my others at MSU were all sewn together through my ED 870 – Capstone Portfolio course. This class provided an opportunity to reflect on the projects and classes that I have completed in my MAED and how they have prepared me for the future. I was able to re-visit my initial goals of becoming a stronger coach, an informed administrator, and a more creative teacher and then write about how I have changed and will move forward from this positive educational experience. This portfolio has been my first experience independently building a website that effectively shows off my work at MSU and also increasing my comfort with technology. While at MSU, I experienced resources such as Etherpad, Mediaspace, Jing, a variety of Google Apps (Sites, Drive, Docs, Presentation), Angel, D2L, and individual course websites – all of which have helped me become more confident with technology in a progressive world.
As I look back on MSU, I find myself thinking mostly about the classes and their contents. I have learned a great deal about program planning and the ability to engage all learners, whether in a classroom lesson, a workshop for adult learners, or a session of training or professional development. Through each and every course, I was able to collaborate with professionals in other fields and discover similarities in our places of work from an administrative and educational standpoint. I cannot forget, however, the importance of online learning. Online learning is especially relevant in our future. More and more classes are being offered online because of their easy accessibility and incorporation of appealing technology and other resources. This experience at MSU was good practice to learn how to maintain and engage the focus of my future students who will become more and more skilled and reliant on technology. Online learning and resources are important because they allow an ease of communication on a global level. Sharing and collaborating with classmates, teachers, and scholars is only a click away. An understanding and background in technology is now a requirement and expectation in the modern work environment. This degree has helped enlighten me to the age of technology as it becomes a budding part of our educational domain.
So what’s next? Though my time in Korea was cut short by the MERS outbreak, I will stay positive as I look for another adventure that will challenge me to blend both my passion for education with my diverse theatrical experiences. I was lucky that my experiences at the Gyeonggi English Village and PMC Productions allowed me fulfill these passions each and every day. I now hope to work for an education or community outreach department at a regional venue and change as many lives as possible through the power of theater.
I will continue to seek self-actualization. Two recent assignments solidified my confidence and passion as a humanistic teacher. For EAD 877 – Program Planning and Evaluation, I took the Philosophies of Adult Education Inventory (PAEI) and the Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI). For the PAEI, I was placed highest (by a landslide) in the Humanistic philosophy of learning, which promotes the “well being of the learner.” For the TPI, my highest ranking teaching perspective was nurturing, believing that “effective teaching assumes that long-term, hard, persistent effort to achieve comes from the heart, not the head” (Understanding How Your TPI Influences Your Work, Mahan). These inventories stated I would seek authenticity, individuality, openness, and freedom. I could not agree more.
The Cat in the Hat at Barter Theater
The Concert Hall at Gyeonggi English Village
Directing The Wizard of Oz at GEV
Taken on Jeju Island, South Korea
Some of my swimmers on the Clinton County Barracudas Swim Team (2011)
Bridge on the path up to Bukhansan Mountain
Outside of the Music Show Wedding venue in Seoul