InterPlay with Ruth Schowalter

Wait! What? Why am I teaching English language communication online? And, really, is it becoming the new normal? Yes! After teaching almost 200 hours online (150 academic & 50 InterPlay), I can proclaim a resounding Yessssssssssssssss.... It’s the 2020 Pandemic. I’m an educator. I teach international students advanced oral English communications at the Georgia Tech Language Institute (GTLI). Hop on the rollercoaster! Suddenly in the spring, I went from teaching students face-to-face sharing a physical classroom space together to conducting classes with them from my laptop, the etherspace whooshing around us. The New Normal. Seeing students in square tiles across my computer screen. I was teaching Advanced Academic Speaking to undergraduates at the GTLI. The students came from Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Yemen, and the Congo. That etherspace managed through Bluejeans (Georgia Tech’s online platform for classes) sometimes connected us beautifully. Other times, students...

What animal left those tracks in the mud outside your backdoor, or next to the stream where you walk your dog? Atlanta may be a large urban city, but more than just people and their pets live among us. What stories can we tell from animal tracks once we understand how to identify and interpret them? This fun interactive workshop teaches participants about some of Atlanta’s wild animals how to recognize and interpret their tracks and sign, while using improvisational movement and storytelling. (This was our ASF teaser) Dear Readers!   Forgive me for posting this announcement here of my CANCELLED (sigh) collaborative workshop with the Atlanta Festival and two Emory University professors - Tony Martin from the Department of Environmental Sciences and Lori Teague from the Emory Dance Department. Our dream workshop that we had been brewing up for the past several years was cancelled because of the 2020 Pandemic. However, I couldn't resist sharing our flyer, teaser and workshop ...

ONLINE CLASS PHOTO. For our final online Total Body Communication class, students were asked to wear hats and sunglasses for a class photo. Here we are! Like magic, we assemble for class, two-dimensional square after square, we build the class body. Students pop-up on screen as if they’ve traveled through a Harry Potter “portkey” or the “Floo Network.” And, they can “disapparate” just as easily either unexpectedly because of a bandwidth failure or purposefully by “cloaking” themselves when they turn off their video cameras. This class is “Better Speaking: Total Body Communication,” and I am the lecturer implementing Applied InterPlay to teach this class for internationals studying English at the Georgia Tech Language Institute. Total Body Communication is about teaching both the whole student body – the individual’s body (mind, heart, body and spirit), and the class community comprised of those student bodies. Can the student body(ies) be engaged online through the ethersphere...

In life, "we are not asked if we will play. That is not an option. Play we must. The option is how." -Anthony De Mello  How will we “play” the ins-and-outs of our lives? We have choices. Daily, I repeat this mantra – WE HAVE CHOICES –   to the international students in my class, "Speaking English Improvisationally," at the Georgia Tech Language Institute. During our 36 hours of class time over a two-month period, we explore how to communicate authentically through improvisation activities. We have within our reach at any moment a vast range of communication options available when speaking in English.  As literally and figuratively “players” on a world stage, I invite these international professionals and students to "play" around with both their physical and vocal range to see what they can discover about who they “might be” when they are speaking English while living and participating in American culture. As most of us know, each language an...

Using InterPlay in the English Language Classroom A license to play in the classroom! Imagine these teaching objectives for an elementary English as a Second Language class called “Talk More”: 1) Help students find more comfort and ease when speaking in English. 2) Increase students’ sense of English language efficacy and communication confidence. This past May, being given the permission to use “pure”  InterPlay  in a 3-week intensive English “Talk More 1” course consisting of 18 hours of instruction, thrilled me! I would engage the “whole student body” – body, mind, and heart! This kind of “whole body” engagement was going to be especially important in this unique class comprised of students from two distinctly different cultures – six Panamanians and six Japanese! I expected the students from Panama to have more expressive ease than students from Japan, but I didn’t know how this 50/50 combination would blend the differences, allowing the students a give-and-take ...

Creativity Flowed Like Georgia Streams! Written by Ruth Schowalter, Certified InterPlay Leader On the evening of Friday, March 24 th , 2017, after dinner and the poster session, InterPlay Atlanta’s Ruth Schowalter “broke the ice” for a community of volunteers and environmental researchers who had come together across the state of Georgia for the annual Georgia Confluence. In collaboration with her husband Tony Martin, an Emory professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Ruth offered gentle but energetic steps bringing these people together who monitor the health of the water in streams near where they live in Georgia.   The spacious community room at the Environmental & Heritage Center in Buford, Georgia, lent itself to expansive movement and storytelling that InterPlay provides. This almost 30-year-old improvisational system hailing from California is an active creative way to unlock the wisdom of the body. But how does the “science of monitoring str...