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karla
10 years ago

hi cashy . thanks for sharing so much in your blog for letting us fall much more in love with our beautiful and fun subject.
Im about to start a new job where its going to be the first time they hire a Drama Teacher, I live in shenzhen china and i currently work in a kindergarten where Drama is the curriculum! its a bilingual kindergarten and im an english Teacher but every language content must be taught through role-plays, drama etc… so its very fun ! and suits my personality very much ! i’ve been here for 5 years already and i am the academic leader of the English Department and when applying for the new job i never thought they could ask me to come in as the Drama teacher, but it seems that based on my CV and experience they were motivated to give Drama Class a chance. so I’m in and very excited , however i feel nervous because of the lessons , im not teaching anymore English as a second language but Drama to L1 learners, so where do i start ?, is there any book that could give me an idea of where to start , my age group will be from 5 to 12 year old kids. thank you so much in advance and thank you again for making life easier !!! God Bless you !

krishna parash dulal
Reply to  Justin Cash
10 years ago

we r in Nepal N we are also trying to learn something about the theatre I hope this is good to know.

Neat
11 years ago

Hey Cashy,

This blog post is very timely for me. I have just started teaching Drama at a school in Canada and taken over from a teacher who let the kids run rampant and do whatever they wanted. A serious problem was she wasn’t held accountable for the subject and there are no provincial Drama exams here (like there are in Melbourne and Sydney) so she could do whatever she wanted. Oh my gosh. I have walked into this role and in the first few weeks the kids were very confused (and frustrated and so much more…) wondering why I was asking them to use a pen and paper in Drama and to actually do “work”. Most of them are completely rejecting the idea of doing a Drama journal let alone any of the other work I am setting. It is getting better, but I feel like I have a long slow slog, uphill, to bring the department back to where it should be. Anyway, I was going to email you about this exact issue and then in a stroke of kismet you have pretty much answered it on your blog TODAY. Weird…

I was googling “Drama Journal” today to see what other teachers do, thinking perhaps I was being a hard-arsed bitch making the kids do it. I wanted to see if everyone else did get their students to do Drama Journals (which it seems most do) and then I found this amazing quote which made me regain my strength and hope “If you cannot increase reflective power in people, you might as well NOT teach, because reflection is the only thing in the long run that teaches anybody. Reflection is what makes the knowing something that can be touched on and assimilated for further use”. ~Dorothy Heathcote

Anyway, thanks! Hope you are well, sounds like you are. You continue to inspire (remember you are the reason I became a Drama Teacher, after all!)

Anita H