My CFE took place at Templeton Secondary school in the theatre department. While my major in my bachelor’s degree and my primary teachable subject is math, I have about ten years’ experience performing in improv comedy shows. This was an opportunity to teach from that base of knowledge.
The experience of teaching improv to high school drama students was different from teaching improv to people who had signed up for an improv workshop. In a professional improv workshop, like a weekend drop-in class, the students are people who have chosen to attend because they want to give it a try. This was certainly not the case for the drama students in high school, who have varied reasons for being in class. Not only do many of them not wish to participate, but they have an intense fear of being in front of people and doing something embarrassing (which is arguably the whole joy of doing this type of performance at all).
What I no longer know is that there is an inherent joy in performing improv that only needs to be experienced to be unlocked. While this is certainly true for myself, and for many people I have taught (including some of the students I worked with on the CFE), for some people, the anxiety of performing without a script trumps the joy of living as another character for a few moments. This affects not just how I look at teaching improv, but how I see assessment in math class. Understanding students’ social bearing and possible anxiety could help to understand whether they truly do not understand the material we are studying or they are too afraid of being wrong to allow themselves to be right.