Davisville, Dec. 23, 2024: A long-ago play and the empathetic power of teaching ‘or maybe’
Mon, 12/23/2024 - 5:30pm | Bill Buchanan
The December holidays are the weekend of the year, when normal routines loosen up. Today’s Davisville arrives in that spirit — no civic issues today. Instead I reconnect with a friend I hadn’t talked with in decades, Teresa Ozoa. She and I were two of the 13 cast members in our high school’s production of 12 Angry Jurors, a play where most of the 12 believe the accused is guilty, and one juror strongly dissents. Onstage, we were putting on a show. Offstage, many of us were facing big changes and trying to figure out where we were headed.
Teresa became a teacher, lawyer, and then teacher again. In the first half of today's show she talks about teaching empathy and how she adapted Google’s genius hour for her high school students; in the second half we remember the play, including the pre-rehearsal exercise when we all went to dinner in character -- a dozen teenagers, acting out conflict.
You’ll hear some background noises in this recording, plus an inquisitive cat. The music at the end comes from "Universal Mind Decoder," later part of the song "Change is Now," by the Byrds. I annoyed friends in high school by talking up the band as much as I did. I still love their music.
