Executive Case Study — Curriculum & Program Leadership
Drama as the vehicle for comprehension — not decoration.
For the South Carolina Governor's School, I designed a standards-aligned third-grade literacy unit that uses drama — tableau, readers theatre, role-play, and process drama — as the means of teaching comprehension, vocabulary, and close reading of picture books. The deliberate design choice: integrate the arts so the art form carries the academic objective, and package it so any classroom teacher could deliver it without a theatre background.
Initiative Snapshot
Single-phase curriculum design & facilitation engagement
The Most Significant Design Decision
Rather than use drama to decorate literacy lessons, I made it the vehicle that carries comprehension — so rigor and creativity became inseparable.
That single principle governed every lesson, rubric, and facilitation guide that followed. It turned comprehension into something students perform and make visible — and kept the unit accountable to ELA rigor instead of drifting into performance for its own sake.
The Business Case
Third-grade literacy is too often a solitary, worksheet-driven task — leaving striving readers disengaged and giving teachers few ways to see how students actually understand a text. Drama offered a way in, but integrating it carelessly creates its own risks.
A standards-aligned unit in which dramatic conventions become the means of teaching comprehension, vocabulary, and close reading — fully mapped to ELA standards and deliverable by any classroom teacher. Drama serves the comprehension goal through deliberate, repeatable routines:
What the Design Had to Serve
Make understanding observable through interpretive, embodied tasks.
Build academic vocabulary in context, not from isolated lists.
Re-engage striving readers through active, interpretive reading.
Hold every lesson accountable to ELA and theatre standards.
Deliverable by any teacher — no theatre background required.
Approach — OASIS™ Applied
Observe
Analyzed third-grade ELA standards alongside theatre standards and pinpointed where students disengaged from reading — mapping the comprehension skills drama is uniquely positioned to develop.
Align
Partnered with theatre educators and ELA teachers to agree on shared learning targets, so drama served the comprehension goals rather than competing with them for instructional time.
Strategize
Designed a gradual-release instructional sequence that embedded theatre vocabulary and dramatic conventions into close reading, each lesson building toward a culminating performance task.
Implement
Built the full unit — modeled routines (tableau, readers theatre, hot-seating), student activities, rubrics, extensions, and differentiation — packaged so any classroom teacher could deliver it.
Sustain
Produced reusable, standards-tagged curriculum resources and facilitation guides so the unit could be re-taught and adapted across classrooms and future cohorts.
Major Decisions Made
This section is not about activities — it is about judgment. Each decision is paired with the tradeoff it managed: what would have happened if I had chosen differently.
What I Produced
A complete, standards-tagged package designed so the unit outlives the engagement and travels to any third-grade classroom.
A full third-grade unit dual-mapped to ELA and theatre standards.
Gradual-release lessons embedding tableau, readers theatre, and process drama.
Texts selected for close reading and dramatic interpretation.
Modeled routines and scripts so non-theatre teachers can lead with confidence.
Rubrics that read comprehension from what students perform.
Repeatable routines that build academic vocabulary in context.
Outcomes & Impact
Success was measured not by how much drama filled the room, but by how clearly the design made comprehension visible — and how far the resources could travel.
Comprehension Made Visible
Reframed comprehension as something students perform and make visible, not just answer on a worksheet.
Engagement & Vocabulary
Deepened engagement and academic vocabulary through embodied, interpretive reading.
A Repeatable Model
Gave teachers a repeatable model for arts-integrated literacy they could adopt and adapt.
Scalable Resources
Created scalable, standards-tagged resources usable well beyond the original classroom.
Lessons Learned & Leadership Evolution
Designed well, the dramatic task is the comprehension work — engagement and academic rigor reinforce each other instead of competing.
The shift: from "add drama for engagement" to "design drama to carry the objective."
A unit that needs a specialist can't scale. Facilitation guides aren't an afterthought — they're part of the curriculum.
The shift: design for the ordinary classroom, not the confident few.
Performance surfaces understanding that worksheets hide — especially for the disengaged readers the unit was built to reach.
The shift: assess what students can show, not just what they can circle.
The one principle I would not change
Arts integration works only when the art form carries the academic objective rather than decorating it — the design has to make rigor and creativity inseparable.
The OASIS™ Mindset
"I solve systems, not symptoms."
A disengaged reader isn't a motivation problem to patch — it's a signal about the system producing the outcome. The OASIS™ Framework is how that instinct becomes repeatable: a way of thinking, leading, and solving that endures beyond any single project.
Understand before acting — current state, root causes, constraints.
Create shared understanding and genuine commitment.
Develop intentional solutions grounded in evidence.
Execute with transparency, adaptability, and accountability.
Build systems that endure beyond implementation.
What stakeholders can expect: I create clarity where there is uncertainty, alignment where priorities conflict, and structure where complexity grows. I communicate honestly, decide intentionally, and favor long-term value over short-term activity.
The most meaningful contributions I make are rarely individual deliverables. They are the systems, structures, and standards that keep creating value long after a project ends.
SPARK reflects how I lead: reframe the problem, align the people, and build governed systems that last. Let's turn your complexity into clarity.