Taking Steps: Day 27 – Teaching Others

Tonight was my first night co-teaching a workshop for Actors InC.  Generally I run the online portion of Actors InC, making sure the videos were edited and posted, making sure articles were up, and adding stuff like a live google calendar, live streaming, and YouTube functionality for the site.  Basically, I generally run tech.  Tonight was the first time I got to run a workshop.

Several years back I took some acting classes in stage work.  By that point, I had done some major films and television work.  To be honest, I didn’t expect I’d ever be on the teaching end of this, but here I was, co-teaching a monologue class.

Some things came back to me in respect to being a teacher, about engagement and about patience.  Some things were new for me, such as being the backseat driver, and actually teaching a form of acting.  Teaching just reminded me of my days teaching folks how to play card games like Magic: The Gathering, and in a way, poker, roulette, and blackjack these days, since I find myself at the dealing end of a casino game more often than not.  I think it’s true what they say though, the best way to learn something is to teach it.  Funny, because one of my 5 year goals was to become a better actor.

I guess God is at work and did hear my prayers.