Character alignments: a geek teacher's guide

I love Eric Molinsky's podcast Imaginary Worlds, a show about 'imaginary worlds: how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief'. It's a curious geek's guide to a deeper side of pop culture and well worth a listen if that sounds like your thing.

I just listened to the episode titled Why They Fight and was fascinated to hear how a part of the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons has influenced a lot of pop culture since the game was released and I realised that this system for categorising characters would be a great drama activity, so don't switch off just yet!


A big part of DnD is building your character, giving them traits, personality, history, skills etc. Alignment is a categorization of the ethical and moral perspective of a character. There are 9 types of alignment, which can be explained in various nerdy diagrams available in a quick google search.

The alignments apply to so many well-known characters from Harry Potter to The Muppets, from Batman to Animal Farm.

    

Molinsky's personal pick of characters also make a lot of sense to me and he clearly describes how they fit their alignments in the episode:

As you can see from the diagrams, so many characters fit into these alignments and it is when two characters fall into different alignments that we get great stories; see Batman vs The Joker, Captain America vs Iron Man, Harry Potter vs Lord Voldermort, Aladdin vs Jafar. 

So I'm going to use this system with my students soon and ask them to create characters for improvisations which fit into the different alignments. Let's see what happens then...!

(See also Geek & Sundry for another simple breakdown)

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GCSE Bitesize: A Mantra (but that's probably all)

Today once again, British 16 year-old's received their GCSE exam results. I remember that time in my life and now as a teacher I find myself reflecting on the value of it. With exam changes, increases in difficulty and always a controversy never far from the news, I can't help but wonder why Britain persists in holding these exams.

Nobody should denigrate the achievements of those who received their results in the past few days. The problem lies with the exam, not them. GCSEs are obsolete and have been for several years. Exams at 16 were invented when the majority of children left full-time education at that age and moved directly into the labour market.
-Peter Wilby in the Guardian

The period of time before my own exams at 16, spent cramming, revising and worrying probably didn't do a great deal for any success in my life since. Most of the things I learnt in school and remember now were things taught to me by passionate teachers in learning situations that cannot be assessed in any sanitised, three-hour long exam.

However, there was one idea from this period that has stuck with me and defines much of how I approach challenges in my life to this day and it came from the unlikely place of the BBC's free online study resource- Bitesize.

The BBC's GCSE Bitesize resource

This scheme offers students study resources which are 'broken down into manageable chunks' to try to help with the stress of studying for all their exams. Now it wasn't the program itself which helped me very much but the principle it is built on, that of the idea to break down a large, seemingly overwhelming task into small, easy-to-achieve parts. 

Now I'm sure I had come across that idea many times before that, obviously, but something about the slogan and the advertising that the BBC used in their campaigns stuck with me as a teenager. Since then I've adopted that approach whenever I feel the pressure of a large scary task, be it writing a dissertation, starting a new job or buying a house. 

Take starting a new job for example. It can be very scary when you think of the whole picture- so much to learn, new people to make good impressions on, so much to get to grips with. But if you break it down into 'manageable chunks' then it's not so bad. First step is to get on the bus and show up- easy. Then you have to walk through the door- walking's easy. Shake a hand and smile- simple. Sit through a fire-safety video- breezy. And so on... So whenever I'm feeling the pressure I just recite that mantra: 'Break It Down Into Manageable Chunks'

Nothing revolutionary, and not worth all the revision just for that, but a positive outcome for me nonetheless. 

I'm thinking about those 16 year-old's who now have their GCSEs behind them and those 15 year-old's who have it to come and I wonder why we still put them through it all... Although the BBC's catchy slogan worked with me there are clearly better ways to teach task-management skills to students and as for the rest, it's high-time the British government found a new path for secondary education.

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What I'm watching

Some of the upcoming shows in Brussels that I will be going to see:

The Common People
Jan Martens -Grip
September 15-16
desingel.be

The Common People' is a participatory project, installation and performance by choreographer Jan Martens and film director Lukas Dhont. Twenty-four duos - ordinary people - meet for the first on the scene . How they react to each other and the audience looking on? You witness how they are seeking (intimate?) Personal contact.

-I've always been interested in untrained dancers dancing and pedestrian movement as dance. It's something I have focused on in my own artistic practice and I'm proud to have participated in some projects similar to this in the past. So I'm very looking forwards to seeing The Common People and I've been interested in seeing some of Jan Martens work too.

Rain (live)
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker/Roasa & Ictus
October 4-7
Kaaitheatre.be

Rain (2001) is one of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's most vibrant performances and is set to Steve Reichs Music for 18 Musicians. You are gripped by a kind of madness of movement. Like a spreading fire, it jumps from one body to another, without pausing at any one person. To the pulsing notes of Steve Reich’s minimalistic music – performed live by Ictus – ten dancers surrender themselves to an irrepressible collective energy. A bubbling network of breathing and speed connects them, as does that strange camaraderie that appears only beyond the limits of exhaustion.
-Seeing the work of Anne Teresa De Keesmaeker has been on my wishlist for a while. The choreographer's scores she creates, which you can find in various books of hers, are fascinating to me. Can't wait for this!

Meanwhile
Gaëtan Rusquet
November 9-10
Kaaitheatre.be

In this apocalyptic performance Rusquet has three performers build a construction. Is it a model or in fact an installation? The actors continually have to fight against the threatened destruction of what they are building up. By playing with the scale, the role of the body changes from pure power to helplessness. Its raw materiality, physical sound and inescapable language of movement make Meanwhile a penetrating performance. The passage of time and the relationship between humans and their environment become tangible: the history of a city unfolds before your eyes.

-One of the greatest performances I've ever seen involved the perpetual building and destruction of a wall, only that time the wall was made of old beer crates. That was from a theatre company Monster Truck from Essen, Germany, who I'm not sure are still making work. But if this is anything like that I'll be transfixed. No language in the show so I'm expecting it to be a piece of performance art that has power beyond words.

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Time Wise: the products of passion

In a previous post, Time Wise I described how a group of students here at ISB had set up their own youtube channel publishing short films. Well their passion has not faded and now they have created a short film which has shown they are still dedicated to teaching themselves about the film-making artform.

The piece, titled Fragmented, is the product of a year's hard work for the group. They conceived the idea, wrote the script, set up a filming schedule, sourced equipment, scouted for locations, directed, acted and filmed all on their own time and steam.

The film is an outstanding display of what students can achieve if they are passionate and committed and I couldn't be more proud of the students for sticking to their vision even when there were many times when they were faced with many challenges along their process and nothing but their own goals to keep them from quitting. And it can now be added to their digital portfolios as an example of what they are capable of.

In the Middle School here at ISB we are about to embark on a new part of our program- a daily Personal Learning block, in which students will have an opportunity to pursue passion projects such as this. For all of us, it's a very exciting prospect because we know that students are itching to create, commence and cultivate (see Tasneem Amijee who has already worked on a passion project at ISB and the group of grade 4's who ran their own theatre production here).

Once again, I'm proud of Sam Barnett, Ricky Maggioni and the other students involved in the film and I'm buzzing about seeing many more projects realised such as this from other ISB students in the future!

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