Inside the University of Florida’s New Initiative to Bring Creative Theater Arts Training Into Every College of Education Course

At the University of Florida, something small and important is happening inside the College of Education. It doesn’t come with a splashy announcement or a headline-ready name. But anyone paying attention to how teachers are trained in this country might want to take notice.

The university has been quietly expanding its commitment to creative theater arts training within its education programs — weaving performance-based methods, creative engagement, and arts integration into courses that prepare the next generation of classroom teachers. It’s not a radical departure from tradition so much as a deliberate, thoughtful correction. The kind of change that takes years to develop and seldom receives the recognition it merits.

At the center of this story is P. K. Yonge Developmental Research School, a component school tied directly to UF’s College of Education. It has long functioned as a living laboratory for cutting-edge instructional strategies. Additionally, a fund was created there in 2005 to honor Chris Morris, a professor who taught creative writing and theater arts for 33 years at the College of Education and P. K. Yonge. Morris also served as the school’s principal for 22 years before retiring as professor emeritus. The purpose of the fund is to provide creative teaching, research, and academic support for the school’s fine arts and performing arts programs. It’s the kind of subtle institutional legacy that sheds light on a university’s true values in contrast to its declared values.

Morris herself earned a degree in education from UF in 1969. There’s something almost circular about that — a teacher trained at the institution, who then spent her career reshaping how that same institution thinks about teaching. The fund in her name is a combination of an ongoing investment and a tribute. It’s also important to consider the implications of her decision to use creative writing and theater as her mediums.

It’s easy to undervalue theater as a teaching tool. It may sound like enrichment, the kind of thing that administrators covertly reduce when budgets aren’t doing well. However, there is a growing body of research and some solid evidence that performance-based approaches assist teachers in developing abilities that traditional coursework doesn’t always reach, such as reading a room, changing tone in the middle of a sentence, and making abstract concepts seem immediate. After attending a performance discussion or master class, aspiring educators frequently report a change in their perspective on being present in front of students.

This goes beyond theory thanks in large part to the University of Florida Performing Arts. The program connects working artists with students throughout the region through master classes, classroom visits, school-day performances, and pre- and post-performance conversations. Thanks to grants and private donations, K–12 students can attend performances at the Phillips Center for free. Classrooms are visited by artists. Students collaborate one-on-one with experts. It’s not just philosophy, it’s real-world experience.

It seems like UF is attempting to address a question that most education programs haven’t fully addressed: Is it sufficient to teach a future teacher what to teach without also teaching them how to hold a room? How to make someone lean forward in their seat? How to turn a difficult concept into something a student actually remembers?

It’s still unclear how far this integration will go or how it will be measured. But watching this unfold from the outside, it’s hard not to think that what UF is building here — slowly, without much fanfare — might be closer to what teacher training actually needs than most of what gets celebrated loudly elsewhere.