INTERPLAY & SCIENCE COMMUNICATION AT THE COLLEGE LEVEL: Becoming the Animal through Use of Creative Forms

TRANSFORMATION OF A CLASSROOM--HOW? These first year college students are fully engaged in body and mind communication information they collected in a homework assignment about animals indigenous to the Emory University's campus. (photo by Ruth Schowalter, aka Hallelujah Truth)

Written by Ruth Schowalter, MS Applied Linguistics and Certified InterPlay Leader

InterPlay + Science Communication='s FUN--I'm repeating this mantra regularly, especially when I have the opportunity to teach college students in a science class how to express their data!

This October 2016 signals the third time that I have conducted a two-part storytelling workshop for my husband's first year seminar, "How to Interpret Behavior You Did Not See," using activities from the improvisational system of InterPlay. Each time, I have had the opportunity to refine my facilitation to provide clearer incremental steps to support the students' easeful stepping into the role of an embodied storyteller.

I envision every student finding storytelling "tools" in this workshop that they can adapt to their own personal communication style. My job is to offer ways for them to play around with expanding vocal and physical range as they express scientific information to an audience of one or many. 

In this blog post, I am offering my InterPlay facilitation experience in the form of photos and photo captions. At the end of this post are links to other blog posts I have written about this freshman seminar, as well as other science communication workshops. Enjoy! I appreciate any feedback in the form of comments here or on Facebook.

WHAT IS IMPROVISATION? WHAT IS INTERPLAY? Desks have already been rearranged from rows to a circle around the perimeter of the classroom when students arrive. After being introduced as a certified InterPlay leader, I invite students to define improvisation and how it could relate to science communication. InterPlay, I explain, is an improvisational system that fosters and supports authenticity. I invite the students to always make choices to participate in the InterPlay improvisational activities in a way that feels good to them. Soon they will be asked to use the available space to "create" or "improvise" ideas related to their seminar, "How to Interpret Behavior You Did Not Know." (photo by Tony Martin)

OUT OF THEIR DESKS AND INTO THEIR BODIES. What does the "whole" communicator  look like when fully engaged--physically, mentally, and emotionally? A simple invitation to stand up, warm up their bodies and then partner with another classmate for leading and following at first brings nervous laughter and then.... (photo by Ruth Schowalter, aka Hallelujah Truth)

THE CLASSROOM TRANSFORMED. Within moments the classroom is electrified as students step into the invitation to "play" with one another. Creative move after creative move appears as leadership alternates back-and-forth between the paired students. (photo by Ruth Schowalter, aka Hallelujah Truth)

THE ROLE OF THE PROFESSOR SHIFTS. When the professor participates in these InterPlay activities as Tony Martin (far right) does here, the classroom dynamic shifts with the students.  Students have an opportunity to interact creatively one-to-one with their professor in a give-and-take relationship. (photo by Ruth Schowalter, aka Hallelujah Truth)

EXPANDING THEIR METHOD OF EXPLANATION. After warming up physically and vocally "playing" around with telling short nonlinear descriptions, students return to their desks to take turns describing the nature observations they have recorded in their "sit spot journals," a class requirement. During the semester, they must make a minimum of thirty entries from the same "sit spot" on the Emory campus that they have chosen to observe. (photo by Ruth Schowalter, aka Hallelujah Truth)

BECOMING THE TREE. Following the activity of describing their "sit spot," students change partners and are asked to stand up in front of their listening partner (or witness). Choosing an animate or inanimate object from their "sit spot," they then "become" it and speak from its perspective. (photo by Ruth Schowalter, aka Hallelujah Truth)

DAY 2 OF THE STORYTELLING WORKSHOP--DEVELOPING RAPPORT. What is rapport and how is it created with the listener? We know that our audience is like a mirror reflecting back to us what we ourselves as speakers are creating. This group exercise of leading and following is an excellent way to "embody" that connect between what we "enact" and its impact on others. (photo by Ruth Schowalter, aka Hallelujah Truth)

EXPERIENCING NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION. Team "Red Sloth" prepares to move together for this nonverbal exercise. Teammates are asked to assume leadership as the group moves and shifts about the space like a flock of starlings in a murmuration. (photo by Tony Martin)

BODY TO BODY COMMUNICATION. Students experience first hand that communicating effectively without words is possible as each one creates unique movements and other group members follow. The leadership shifts effortlessly as long as a teammate is willing to accept his/her turn when the opportunity accuates. (photo by Tony Martin)

OBSERVATION IS PART OF LEARNING. Team "Red Sloth" observes team "Blue Whale." The process of "embodying" concepts occurs over time and through different practices. Observing others perform activities helps students to integrate their own experiences with the "new" ideas presented. (photo by Tony Martin)

PRESENTING RESEARCH? YES! Does this look like students are having fun? Is any learning going on here? Are both presenter and audience engaged? Is the transference of information occurring? Do you think students are having the opportunity to teach something they know with enthusiasm? The answer to all of these questions is a resounding YES! (photo by Tony Martin)

WHAT ANIMAL AM I? At the conclusion of our two-part storytelling InterPlay workshops, we gathered in a circle for a guessing game. Each student had researched a different animal indigenous to the Emory campus and had kept their animal "top secret." In this activity, students took turns presenting a behavior and one informational sentence (or hint) about their animal. Everyone repeated the animal behavior and tried to guess the animal. Often several other hints had to be provided before the animal could be identified. The students' enthusiasm, lack of self consciousness, and engaged presence was very rewarding to the professor (Tony Martin) and me, the facilitator.  (photo by Tony Martin)

THE EMORY CAMPUS. Here is the Math and Science Building, the site of our storytelling InterPlay workshops on this sunny fall week in October 2016 on the lovely Emory campus. (photo by Ruth Schowalter, aka Hallelujah Truth)

TELLING A STORY FROM A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE! I'm so grateful to these trusting students who allowed themselves to be engaged in improvisational exercises. Here we are embodying a squirrel. Students chose a living animal or inanimate object from their "sit spot" on the Emory University campus to embody in this freshman seminar, "How to Interpret Behavior You Did Not See." In the first workshop, I introduced InterPlay babbling and big body stories. I loved seeing the students' confidence grow as they had fun moving from partner to partner. At the end of the class, each student shared what he/she had chosen to embody from his/her sit spot and create a movement for us to repeat. Lots of deer appeared, a fish, two dead trees, a blade of grass, a clam, etc. The movements were inventive and fun to follow!(photo by Tony Martin)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Thanks to InterPlay co-founders, Cynthia Winton-Henry and Phil Porter for this sneaky deep improvisational system that fosters and supports authentic communication. Deep gratitude to my life partner, Tony Martin, who is an excellent science communicator. He has helped me grow in my communication skills and capacity as an instructor. Thank you for making education and science outreach fun! You inspire me!

Other blogposts about my work with InterPlay and “How to Interpret Behavior You Did Not See”

April 11, 2016

Shyness Evaporates: College Science Students Use InterPlay Storytelling Methods to Convey Their Nature Observations

November 6, 2014

Expressing Scientific Observation Passionately:  InterPlay Provides the Methodology

Other blogposts on how I use InterPlay for Science Communication and Outreach:

October 2016

InterPlay—A Way to Embody and Express Engineering Research Effectively and Easefully

March 2016

Improvising Trilobite Eyes: InterPlaying with Evolutionary Concepts at the Atlanta Science Festival

SHYNESS EVAPORATES: College Science Students Use InterPlay Storytelling Methods to Convey Their Nature Observations

BECOMING THE ANIMAL. Embodying the animals they study, observe, and track in their freshman seminar course, "How to Interpret Behavior You Did Not See," gives the students a new way of thinking about science. Here in this InterPlay following and leading activity, Emory students are experiencing "flocking behavior." (photo by Ruth Schowalter)

Written by Ruth Schowalter, Certified InterPlay Leader and InterPlay Art and Soul Creativity Coach

Bi-annually, my husband Tony Martin, an Emory University professor, teaches a freshman seminar titled “How to Interpret Behavior You Did Not See.” Enrollment is restricted to eighteen students, who during the semester will learn the art of nature observation and then how to make hypotheses using the evidence they have collected.  In March near the end of spring semester, Tony invited me to this class as a guest instructor to offer InterPlay improvisation storytelling activities. My facilitation was to provide his students with the tools to breathe life into their nature reports. I was to offer them the avenue of becoming impassioned storytellers, inspiring wonder both in themselves and their listeners!

BIG BODY STORIES. Students took facts from their nature observation journals and had the experience of expanding their enthusiasm both vocally and physically by taking incremental steps with different partners, first in 30-second short "tellings," then a minute-long story, and finally a longer fuller bigger story. On the far right, standing, telling his "big body" story is Tony Martin, who paired up with a student. (photo by Ruth Schowalter)

Identifying tracks of deer, squirrel, raccoon, feral cat, coyotes, and other animals in the areas surrounding the Emory campus is just the beginning of what these first-year students learn. Tony teaches them how to look at gait patterns and determine if the animals were walking, trotting or galloping. In fact, he gets them out of their desks early on to “become” the animals and act out the gait patterns—a creative way to stimulate the students’ imaginations by getting them to think and move like the animals they are tracking in this Georgia Piedmont.

A regular part of this animal tracking class is venturing outdoors with Tony to nearby creeks and tree stands on campus so the students can examine tracks, discover other sign like scat, chew marks, and nests. They also listen to bird calls to discern together what these animals were or are doing. Traditionally, tracking animals has been a communal or shared endeavor by both women and men to hunt down their food source or to avoid predation—so its fitting that the elder—the professor—initiates the youth in ways of observing animal sign, its significance, and how to talk about it.

Apart from these class activities, students are given the assignment of choosing a semester-long “sit spot” on the Emory campus with its 154-acre nature preserve, Lullwater Park, and other creek-rich forested landscapes. On their own, they are to spend time in this designated spot twice a week for periods no shorter than 15 minutes, recording in journals what their senses reveal to them. In addition to verbal documentation, Tony encourages them to draw what they see, as well as writing down temperature, the direction the wind is blowing, and more. All great fodder for storytelling!

DESCRIBE YOUR "SIT SPOT." Students were directed to turn to the diagram in their journals that they had drawn of their designated "sit spot" on the Emory campus. Then with their partner "witnessing" or listening and not talking, they were to describe the diagram in detail speaking slowly, pausing, and then speaking normally again. Practicing playing with speed (regular, fast, stopping, and slow) provides students with new delivery skills. They can see for themselves what works to communicate the ideas they want to express. (photo by Ruth Schowalter)

Can you imagine what a treat it was for me to join this class mid-to-end of the semester and facilitate the sharing of their recorded journal experiences using InterPlay activities? Yippee! For those of you familiar with InterPlay, you know that one of the four components of this improvisational system is storytelling (the other three being movement, voice, and shape and stillness). InterPlay was a perfect fit with its improvisational toolkit for these students at this time in their animal-tracking curriculum and storytelling skills! The world becomes more alive when you share information through stories, especially when those stories can be stream of consciousness, free form, and impassioned.

Jon Young, one of two authors of Animal Tracking Basics, the textbook Tony uses for this course, says that we tell stories “to elucidate the edges of our experience.” We also use storytelling to propel us to perceive more deeply, discern what we are seeing, link disparate concepts, know our place, know ourselves, develop a passion for living, learn and laugh—to live more fully in the moment.

Both fifty-minute InterPlay classes included physical warm ups, introductions, playing around with expanding verbal range (volume, speed, and pitch) and physical range (face, hand gestures, moving off “the spot” and using available space), leading and following, and “embodying” the story.

During the first workshop, I asked the students to do short storytellings (in InterPlay we call these tellings “babbling”) at 30-second and 1-minute intervals about different native animals, weather observations, bird language and more. Students then had longer time periods to open their journals and describe their “sit spots” in detail playing around with speed by lengthening their words, pausing, and stopping. To shift students into using their imaginations even more, I asked them to pick something animate or inanimate from their sit spot and to tell a story from that perspective. Lots of energy erupted in the classroom for that activity.

In the second workshop, I built on the skills of expanding both verbal and physical range. After warming up with following and leading activities in pairs and groups of 7, I led them in the InterPlay form of the “big body” story, which has the storyteller move in ever increasing “body bubbles.” The workshop culminated in students “becoming” an animal they were curious about and had researched either folklore or scientific fact about. In groups of three, students spoke as the animal demonstrating its behavior and telling its story! I was so surprised when I said, “Begin!” and all of the storytelling students dropped to the floor on their hands and knees and crawled to their listeners. Wow! They were engaged, and so were their listeners.

BECOME THE ANIMAL. After investigating an animal they were curious about for homework, students were asked to be prepared to speak from that animal's perspective. (photo by Ruth Schowalter)

Tony and I left the classroom with one student participant who was dressed in a suit. He had informed me before the workshop started that he was giving a presentation in another class later in the afternoon. I asked him if he felt more prepared to present after my InterPlay workshops. He laughed and responded, “I’m ready for anything now.” Hurray for the empowering system of InterPlay!

Here’s some direct feedback from Tony about the effects of InterPlay on teaching storytelling skills to his students:

2016 Spring Semester Class, "How to Interpret Behavior You Did Not See." Professor Tony Martin leads the way for expressiveness as he stretches out in front of his first year Emory students enrolled in his animal tracking class. Some of the students grasp their observation journals in their hands. (photo by Ruth Schowalter)

“Storytelling is an important skill for my first-year students to learn in my animal-tracking class, "How to Interpret Behavior You Did Not See." In fact, the author of the textbook for this class (Animal Tracking, by Jon Young) devotes an entire chapter to this skill. As a way to introduce my students to storytelling methods, I invited Ruth Schowalter (my wife), a certified leader in the improvisational system of InterPlay, to conduct two 50-minute workshops.  My goal was for the students to bring their journals in which they had been recording observations from their designated "sit spots" around the Emory campus, and to use that content to tell stories.

Most traditional education systems involve reading, sitting, listening to a lecture, and reciting back facts, with students and instructors alike staying mostly in their heads. InterPlay's activities emphasize using the "whole" person--body, mind, and emotions, engaging  the students’ kinesthetic imaginations. I saw my students transformed by this full-body approach to learning.

As they shared their records of tracks and sign and created "animal stories," their shyness evaporated and they became involved in communicating their nature observations meaningfully. The dynamic InterPlay storytelling exercises enlivened the students as they worked with one another in pairs, small groups, and the entire class.

Based on what I observed, the combination of student-generated content and interactive InterPlay exercises in these workshops will be memorable to my students. What a wonderful opportunity to enjoy making meaning out of scientific fact, and crafting that content in a way to engage listeners!”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: First many thanks to Phil Porter and Cynthia Winton-Henry, to co-founders of InterPlay. Special thanks to Phil who mentored me during my InterPlay leadership training and made suggestions I implemented the first time I facilitated InterPlay in Tony’s freshman seminar (read about that workshop HERE). I’m appreciative to Tony and his interest in encouraging his students to have fun learning and gain presentation skills at the same time. I am grateful to those freshman who were courageous in moving outside their comfort zones to embody their stories. And, as Tony always does, I want to thank the tracemakers who inhabit the Earth and make our world a fuller richer place.

Integrating InterPlay with Science Communication. Thank you to my husband Tony Martin (his photo of me), who continues to enlarge my life-experiences through travel, geology, paleontology, modern and ancient ichnology. It is such a joy collaborating with you. Here are links to two other blog posts about our collaborations of merging InterPlay with science communication: 

ImprovisingTrilobite Eyes: InterPlaying with Evolutionary Concepts at the Atlanta ScienceFestival 2016 

Using InterPlay for Science Communication: Improv-ing Evolution