HARLINGEN — Know your character.
Alessandra Almanza emphasizes this point with each of her students at Coakley Middle School, where she teaches theater.
“I love to encourage a lot of their own originality, so I have them do a lot of creating their own characters,” said Almanza, 22. “I like to have them work on writing out their emotions and expressing them on their face and how exactly they would portray that.”
Almanza has taught at Coakley for about three months — this is her first teaching job at a public school — and her students are already enjoying success.
Just last week, her student Devine Grace Galvan, 14, made semifinals in Dramatic Interpretation in the National Speech and Debate Association Tournament. She was ranked ninth in the nation for her event.
“I am so so incredibly proud of her,” Almanza said. “I wish I could take more credit for her but she’s just a natural actress. When I could refine I would, and I was just so proud of what she accomplished.”
Almanza, a 2018 graduate of Hannah High School in Brownsville, knew she wanted to teach children while still in high school. She was working at a summer camp at Camille Lightner Playhouse, and the experience gave her a purpose.
“It was then when I was working with the middle schoolers and elementary kids that I knew that I wanted to teach, especially theater,” she said.
She went on to earn her theater education degree from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She then served as an education intern in Beaumont and Midland.
She’s really enjoying her new life teaching theater at Coakley.
“I enjoy working with my students that want to be in my program,” she said. “I enjoy working with the kids that really want to achieve a lot in speech drama and debate.”
So, what is it about these kids that motivates her work with them?
“Their creativity and their willingness to just try anything,” she said. “Kids don’t have any shame when it comes to theater the way adults do. They’re willing to absolutely try anything and everything. They’re not afraid to look silly.”
The courage to look silly is an admirable trait that can take her students to fine and fabulous places. It shows the internal fortitude to take chances and the mettle to accept failure and try again. Such qualities build character and that brings respect.
She encourages her students to explore character development as young actors.
“We’ll look at a script, and we’ll really ask some questions that we don’t get from a character just based on looking at the script,” Almanza said. “We ask things like, ‘’What is their background? What is their favorite color?’ to get a full roundedness of a character.”
Perhaps young students exploring fictional characters can achieve awareness of their own sense of self and embolden them with traits of quality and integrity.
