Last night during my break from teaching class, I locked eyes with a fellow instructor in the teacher's lounge. She looked like she wanted to connect so I introduced myself and she said, "Oh my God! YOU'RE Nelson!" I was taken a little bit by surprise but kept my cool. She then said, "I have a lot of your former students in your class and they say 'Oh Nelson taught this' and 'Oh, Nelson has taught us that' and I could tell that they really did learn things from you. I know you really know what you're doing."That felt absolutely awesome.
I did my best to stay humble and accept those comments without losing my cot damn mind and thinking I was awesome. I think I did a good job by just smiling even harder and maintaining eye contact during our conversation. We talked a bit about our respective histories at the training center and what our approaches were for teaching improv to our students were.
My approach to teaching improvisation is to not only expose my students to new, exciting ideas, games, and connections, but also explain the theatrical philosophy behind the usage of those items and give them consistent, practical real-time tools that they can use for themselves to explore the artform while trying to develop their own artistic voices. Some tools may work for them while other may not, but at least they understand the theory behind the tools. The other teacher and I resonated on this and that felt ultra-cool!
It was nice to know that I had made a large impact on my students; so much so that my name is being spoken in high regard to other teachers and piquing their interest in finding who I am. I must be doing something right.
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