Jacob Hauser

Teaching Philosophy

Important skills I want to teach my students

The most important lessons for students to takeaway from Middle School theater are adaptability, teamwork, problem solving, and empathy.

Teaching methods to reach these goals

All of our classes are interactive and hands-on. Adaptability and teamwork are essential to good improvisation, which is our focus in sixth grade. Being able to add to and enhance someone else’s ideas and adjust your own to fit within a given context are essential to innovation. During seventh grade, while we are working on text and character analysis, the ability to put oneself into another’s situation and see the world from their vantage point is key. Our eighth-grade classes focus on creating fully realized short productions. Creating the design concept for a play and connecting it to all elements in the production requires students to examine the work critically and problem solve.

My favorite projects

My favorite activity of the year is watching the seventh-grade students develop ideas for their open scenes. These are short, intentionally vague dialogues that allow students to apply them to a variety of different situations. Young actors often sit back and let the script do the work for them. By forcing the students to develop their own plots, they are forced to put meaning into their acting to communicate what is happening in the scene.

What I like best about teaching at Seven Hills

My favorite things about teaching at Seven Hills are the closeness of our community and the communication among faculty. The teachers really get to know their students and that allows us to share information so we can be as effective as possible.