Collaborative Learning means that you seek out and actively take responsibility to work with others such

as community leaders, parents, administrators, other teachers, staff members, and ultimately students to create a learning experience greater that which can be created in alone. The two philosophies I see influencing Collaborative Learning are Humanism and Progressivism. Humanism works the collaborators up the steps of Maslows Hierarchy until they can get to the point of esteem where they can expose their creation, however flawed, to others. Progressivism concentrates on problem-solving abilities. Once the challenge is presented to the group, the individuals can The Bloomington Playwrights Project draw upon their own talents to create something that would What does it mean when the instructor for your Oral have been impossible without the contributions of the others. Interpretation breathlessly approaches you as you enter

the classroom and whispers that she has a marvelous opportunity for you? For me, the phrases Im flattered., A twenty-five year age difference may not seem like much now but will your friends really accept me?, and UhI thought I was passing the class. All came to mind. Fortunately, for once, my mouth didnt precede my mind before she had a chance to tell me about a group she had worked with that needed someone just like me. It was called The Bloomington Playwrights Project. The group was a collection of aspiring playwrights that met once a week to read through scenes they had written. The goal was to get feedback from the other playwrights and return a week later with a modified or expanded text and the cycle would be repeated until they had a completed work. It was apparently a rather prestigious group since, last year, one of the plays developed there, The Clerk, had been performed at the Kennedy Center. I thought my time had come. I thought Ms. Norris had seen potential greatness in the classwork I had done. And, for a brief moment, I thought perhaps twenty-five years wasnt such a difference after all. But I nose-dived back to reality when she continued to explain that they had more than enough playwrights. What they needed were actors who were quick on their feet, able to improvise, and willing to work for free. Her estimation of me was that I fit all these requirements. So, that next Tuesday, I hesitantly walked into the empty classroom loaned to The Project and took a desk in the back corner. Those already there and those who arrived later acknowledged me with obvious distain until the groups leader asked if I was the new actor. With a simple nod of my head went from being a competitor to their new best friend. That night I played five different roles in four different pieces that ranged from three pages of dialogue to three

Morrison, George S. (2009). Historical and Philosophical Influences on Teaching and Learning in America. In Stephen D. th Dragin (Ed.), Teaching in America - 5 ed. (pp.342-346). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

complete scenes. After each read-through, everyone, including he actors, would give their impressions. They would discuss staging, realistic dialogue, predictability of story lines and other such matters that the playwrights were not objective enough to see for themselves. I continued working with the group for another two years. I saw some scenes that died almost as soon as the ink had dried. I saw others that ended up becoming completely different plays because of an accidental misreading of a line in one of the workshop sessions. And I saw others that blossomed into full works begging to be performed. At least twice a year, The Bloomington Playwrights Project would present three or four of the best of these to the public in An Evening of One Acts. One evening, I played a homeless man nestled in the trash bags behind a McDonalds who may, or may not, have witnessed a secret nuclear experiment in the first One Act. Then I returned in the third as a Media Spokesperson for Universal Plastics Building a better tomorrowfor YOU! who suddenly finds himself trapped in his apartment with a fourteen year old girl and an old college roommate who regularly performs communion with Doritos and Dr. Pepper standing in for blessed sacraments, when every door in the world inexplicably disappears. Some of the plays were intentionally vague enough that the audience was left to interpret them as they pleased. Some of the comedies had dialogue so tight that it was a fight not to laugh along with the audiences each night. And some were just plain bad. But they all were original. And none of them could have been completed without collaboration.

The Art of Reproduction When I was a Junior in high school, my art class was given a unique task. We were broken up into teams of 2 each working at a separate table. Each table was given an envelope. We were told that, in the old days, the masters would determine the talent of their students by giving them a very small picture and, the task of reproducing it at twelve times the scale, paying special attention to detail. In each envelope was just such a picture. We were instructed to reproduce what we saw at twelve times the scale. We were told that many teams had the exact same picture so it would be best if we all kept to our individual groups or possibly risk having another group copy our work. We were to have our copy completed, using

tempura paint, in one week and no revisions could be made once the deadline was reached. My partner, Chuck, pulled open our envelope, marked 37 and out fluttered a glossy, one by one inch piece of paper with some purple and yellow, separated by a curved black line and what looked like a little black triangle formed in one corner. We thought this would be a snap. I grabbed a magnifying glass and started to work on the sketch. This was before the todays copy/scanners where you can slap a piece of paper on the copy machine, hit 12x and have an exact, traceable copy. I stuck the slip of paper next to a ruler and started noting where the pattern changed closest to what 1/8th inch mark and lightly began marking the changes along the side of a sheet of paper from my sketchpad. Chuck had a better idea. He had a Senior Scholastic magazine with him and, grabbing a pair of scissors, cut out another piece of glossy paper the exact same size as the one we were given. He put this into the envelope marked 37, folded it into fourths and shoved it into my art folder. He said This way, if anyone tries to copy off of us by looking through your folder, theyre going to be screwed. I marveled at his deviousness and finished the preliminary sketch. Chuck said, Thats pretty good but weve got some touching up to do. The rest of the week was a flurry of activity, analysis, revision, argument, and eventually the resignation we were in way over our heads. The more we looked at our product, the more we realized that the color shades were off, the lines werent proportioned correctly, and we couldnt decide if there was a slightly bluish tone to the black triangle in the corner or if it was just our imaginations. Worst of all, we had no idea which of the edges was the supposed to be the top. Eventually we decided to make it the corner black and turned in on time. Secretly I hoped for a C but knew that was doubtful. The next day we saw our grade, which turned out to be the same as every other group, an A. We also saw that she had given this assignment not only our class but to every one of her classes. There were no duplicate pictures. On the front wall of the classroom was a mural, ten feet wide by eight feet high mural of an insane cartoon of a campsite, complete with a tent, campfire, coffee pot, bear, trees, and too many other details to be remembered. The colors shifted, sometimes subtly but mostly wildly from one sheet to the next. Lines of the drawing jumped erratically from sheet to sheet and sometimes disappeared entirely on one sheet to begin again on the next sheet. We stared in awe at the monstrosity and I realized that, sure enough, the seventh picture in the third row was our

contribution, part of the yellow sleeve of a shirt, the purple tent behind it and little triangular corner of the night sky. On the blackboard next to it Mrs. Tuck had written, Imagine what this would have looked like if you had all worked together. We were sworn to secrecy for the rest of the day, as the classes before us had been. The mural stayed on the wall for the rest of the year, including Parent/Teacher conferences, until it was removed at years end. I always hoped the individual pictures had been carefully removed, stacked in order, and sealed in a fireproof safe somewhere as the real work of art it was, a lesson on the value of collaboration.