“Out of the box thinking” puts arts into classroom lessons

QUINCY — Jeff Fessler believes adding drama to the classroom helps students learn.

He showed Baldwin teachers how to do that — and got them into the act with eight drama-inspired activities.

In Party Talk, for example, the teachers “mingled” in an imaginary party setting while acting as a word like “lunatic” or “paradise.”

Another activity, Tableaux, had a group of teachers picking a vocabulary word to showcase in a frozen pose for five seconds in front of an audience.

“It’s so effective. Kids love doing it, and it works in any subject,” Fessler said. “This is where you can figure out if they understand the meaning of words.”

Two teachers posed standing back to back while ignoring a third sitting on the floor in front of them — a tableaux for the word indifference.

“It’s something we