For my self study, I’ve chosen to refocus on my own creative practice. During the self-discovery phase, I explored my passion for endurance sports — swimming, running and cycling — specifically. What I’ve learned, and what I teach my students, is that writing and producing films requires the same training, diligence and most of all, persistence as running a marathon, or finishing a hundred mile bike race. In my self-study, I plan to complete a re-write on a feature screenplay and work on production on a short personal documentary film. I hope to complete both projects, but will, at the very least, complete one of them.
I have chosen to undertake this project to challenge myself and, in a sense, become a student by giving myself an assignment. In my filmmaking classes, I ask students to write short screenplays that they will produce in class. I also mentor students who are writing feature length screenplays as honors projects. While my project will not be a finished narrative film, I will at least complete the written portion of the process.
For the short documentary, I will begin the interview process and begin researching b-roll associated with my subject.
The key questions that drive this project are related to balancing a creative practice with teaching. How does a full time teacher continue to produce his own work in order to maintain a close link to the student experience?
I hope to learn more about the stamina needed to produce my own work. While producing work myself I will better understand what my students are going through.
Stephen, there is certainly something exciting about committing (even recommitting) to engage in the work that we ask of our students. This was the essence of Sherezada’s inquiry last year (http://blog.lrei.org/progressive-practice/2019/09/10/finding-the-process-and-project/). It may be worth considering how you can share this process with your students especially in those places where you find that the work may not come so easily. These are the places where I think our most profound learning takes place and discovering ways to bring these insights about practice and process to students may be of significant value. It will also be interesting to explore engaging in the personal work might open up new possibilities for teaching and your own sense of yourself as a teacher/practitioner/learner. Worth also checking in with James as his inquiry is headed down a similar path.
“How does a full time teacher continue to produce his own work in order to maintain a close link to the student experience?”
Yes! That is a question I’m grappling with as well.