Action methods enliven education

by Karen Carnabucci

artwork by Susan Aaron

Action methods can enliven learning at every level of the educational system, whether kindergarten or high school, youth groups or religious instruction, college and adult learning.

Psychodrama, often in the derivative of role play, and sociodrama can teach hotline operators how to respond to call-in emergencies and personal crises. Department store and hospitality employees can practice the best customer service responses. Children can learn to understand the Revolutionary War with a carefully directed sociodrama. Bibliodrama can help people feel “inside” the traditional stories of the Bible to understand their relevancy to today’s lives. The list goes on…

Even before enactment begins, sociometric activities help learners make positive connections, increasing openness to learning and discussion. Children make positive connections to one another and with authority figures. As Tian Dayton points out in her book The Drama Within: Psychodrama and Experiential Therapy, when children learn how to connect  they will be able to alter or accommodate their status in their classrooms and reach out for positive activities which will transform their concept of self and make constructive use of their relationships with authority figures in their lives.

On the grade school and high school level, young people can explore and confront the demands of their daily lives, such as dealing with peer pressure about using alcohol and other drugs, making friends and interacting with adults.

With a few variations, any subject can be effectively taught to variety of ages. Several psychodramatists have received recognition for their organization, business and law enforcement training, including David Swink and Barry Spodak, who use action methods in the Washington, D.C., area to train the agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Secret Service, as well as the Capital Police and the U.S. Marshals Service.

As reported in a recent article¹ in The Washington Post, they stage covert dramas in and around the Capitol, integrating the intellectual, physical and emotional aspects of classroom instruction. Most exercises are performed inside restricted compounds, but others unfold in public parks, suburban golf clubs and downtown transit stations as law enforcement agents learn to recognize schizophrenic, bipolar and paranoid characters to ssess threats on the lives of presidents, Supreme Court justices and other important persons.

Physicians and other health professionals at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center  and Cleveland Clinic are receiving training from Rebecca Walters and Walter Baile using psychodramatic techniques to learn how to give their patients uncomfortable news about their cancer diagnoses. Attorneys are learning psychodrama to deepen the telling of their clients’ stories in front of a jury and win their cases.

Herb Propper, for many years a college professor in the theater arts department at a Vermont college, used action methods, especially the empty chair technique, to help his students learn about prominent characters within dramatic literature. Empty chairs are set up; the students are to imagine their dress, attitude or another remarkable characteristic before speaking to them.

Other psychodramatists have employed various topics in action, including the teaching of professional ethics, marketing for their practices and leadership skills.

Karen Carnabucci, MSS, LCSW, TEP offers alternative psychotherapy, training & classes in Lancaster, PA, and is the author of “Show and Tell Psychodrama”, “Healing Eating Disorders with Psychodrama” and “Integrating Psychodrama and Systemic Constellation”.