Mental Health

Make no mistake: Drama class is not for the faint of heart. Creating theatre is physically and mentally strenuous and drama students need to be strong. Performing onstage and working backstage are demanding and require focus and endurance. In drama and theatre, your body is your instrument so you need to keep it “in tune.” For that, we’ve rounded up some great articles to help your students incorporate health and physical fitness into their routines. What are your best ways to help your students get strong and stay well? Note: When discussing health and physical fitness, students should not feel that they have to lose weight, get toned, or change their body type to get roles or otherwise succeed in theatre. Fitness comes in all shapes and sizes. Focus on choices that help students to feel healthy, strong, and well, rather than on outward appearance. • First and foremost, water. Most of us do not consume enough water despite having a multitude of fancy water bottles and mugs. Did you know that the average human body is 60% water? Water keeps our organs and cells healthy, and of course keeps us hydrated. Water keeps the vocal folds lubricated and helps them recover faster after heavy use. So when you need a pick-me-up, grab your water and take a big sip. • Why do we warm up before drama activities? Both to get us into the “drama mindset” and to ensure our bodies are in peak physical condition to leap, dance, twist, cavort, and every other wonderful and wacky movement that the director comes up with. Here are some physical warm-ups for you: 3 Fun and Physical Warm-Ups to Get Your Actors Moving: Doodles, Elephant Walk, and Puppet Dance Party. As well, here are some physical, vocal, and mental warm-ups and tips, all in one article! • Physical fitness is important for any drama student to work on their strength, flexibility, and endurance, which are necessary for both plays and musicals. Here are 3 Fitness Tips for Drama Students that are fun, or your students might enjoy dancing in the drama classroom, which is a great way to incorporate movement and physicality into the day. • Vocal health is imperative, regardless of whether you are performing a musical or a play. Here are three tips for keeping your voice healthy, three MORE tips for keeping your voice healthy, and advice from teachers about teaching vocal safety to students. • Here are some vocal exercises for your students: A Simple Breath Control Exercise for Actors & Singers, Projecting Your Voice Without Yelling, A Vocal Exercise for the Articulators, and Tips to Improve Enunciation. As well, here’s a troubleshooting guide for why your actor isn’t projecting their voice and tips for solving vocal projection issues. • We say this to our students all the time, but it bears repeating: When it comes to showtime, it’s important to make smart choices. Things like getting a proper amount of sleep, eating nourishing food, avoiding screaming and screeching, staying away from risky activities where students might get injured, and wearing warm clothing in cold weather may not be fun in the moment, but will keep students healthy in the long run. Even though show week might feel like it speeds by, students need to stay well all the way from opening to closing! • Mental health is just as important as physical health. If your students are feeling anxious or nervous, try some mindfulness techniques or establish some rituals like the show circle. Let your students know that your drama classroom is a safe space and encourage them to reach out if they need additional help.

Our world has become increasingly dependent on digital means to work, play, and learn, and school is no exception. More and more students are participating in distance learning for their classes. This comes not only with new ways of approaching teaching, testing, and creating experiences for students, but also with new safety concerns for students and teachers. Let’s look at three different safety concerns in distance learning. PrivacyA big safety concern in distance learning is privacy. When students attend school, there is a natural separation between school life and home life. Distance learning using video conferencing programs blurs those lines. Unless participants have a dedicated space for online learning or use a digital background, others are going to see some of their surroundings. It can feel awkward and invasive for both students and teachers to have part of their residence visible during class. It can be particularly difficult for students who are dealing with personal concerns such as an unstable family situation, poverty, or homelessness to have their living situations visible to others. It’s easy to say something like “pin up a sheet on the wall to cover your personal items!” when you have your own walls to pin things on, and an extra sheet that’s not being currently used. Students and teachers alike may worry that their home has distinguishing features that will allow people to find out where they live. They may worry about footage from class leaking and someone being able to find it online. They may also feel embarrassed about their living situation and worry that they are leaving themselves open to teasing, judgment, or bullying. Bullying BehaviourBullying behaviour unfortunately still exists, and this has not changed during the transition to online learning. There have been reports of students using a second device (usually their smartphone) to record videos or take photos of teachers and peers during virtual classes and posting the footage online, often freeze-framing unflattering images or adding negative comments. It can be hard to track down the original source of the recording (the bully might have had their video screen closed so others couldn’t see them recording, and then posted it with an anonymous social media account, like Snapchat, TikTok, or an Instagram “spam” account) and other students might feel scared to report the culprit. Students might worry that they will get teased or bullied for their living situation, embarrassing incidents that may occur in the background, or possessions or décor that may have been cool in younger grades but not in high school. They may also be afraid to participate in class projects for fear of saying something “wrong” or because they think someone will record them and post it online. In drama class, teachers give students the opportunity to let loose and be silly, experiment with different acting styles, voices, facial expressions, and body language, take risks, fail, and try again. However, there is a big difference between taking risks in the physical drama classroom, where everyone is visible and on equal footing, and taking risks during a virtual class, where you can’t immediately see what students are doing. Mental Health ConcernsA third safety concern in distance learning is dealing with mental health. Teachers and students alike are frequently feeling burnt out, stressed, overwhelmed, fatigued, foggy, or unable to focus. As mentioned above, they may be worried about privacy or bullying issues, or a myriad of other concerns (parental job loss, not being able to see their family or friends, getting sick, not knowing when the pandemic will be over, not being able to keep up with the pace of online learning, etc.). It’s a lot to deal with mentally, and it’s exhausting. These issues compound on each other. Students might worry about other students seeing their homes, so they keep their cameras off, which results in teachers trying to teach to a bunch of black screens, and having to work that much harder to ensure that their students are learning, participating, or even just attending (raise your hand if you’ve had a student simply vanish during a virtual class!). Then, since students don’t have the immediate pressure of someone having their eyes on them in class, they may goof off, get distracted, or leave the room, which results in the students missing out on information and falling behind. Then it takes more time and effort for the teacher to re-teach the material and deal with poor homework and projects, if they’re submitted at all. All of this can create a vicious circle of frustration and stress! Unfortunately there are no easy or one-size-fits-all solutions to any of these concerns. We are all doing the best we can with the information and technology available to us, with the best effort we can muster from day to day. When dealing with difficult situations that concern a student’s virtual safety, it’s necessary to approach each situation individually, while still protecting your own personal safety and mental health. Reach out to your school’s administration and your colleagues for assistance and support as needed. Included below is a reflection with various scenarios concerning student safety. Read them over and consider how you might respond to the different situations. As well, check out the following articles for some additional tips and ideas on the topic of virtual boundaries and self-care: • Separating School Life and Home Life • Coping with Social Distancing for Students and Teachers • Addressing Distance Learning Concerns • Drama Teacher Self-Care • For students who can’t/won’t turn on their cameras: No See Scenes

These are uncertain times and it can feel like all of the “norms” we were used to have been thrown out the window. Maintaining a definitive line between work life and home life – when it’s all happening under the same roof – can be challenging. We’ve got ten tips to help you navigate the current situation to keep your focus as positive as possible. *Ten Quarantine Tips for Drama Teachers *1. Get dressed. If you have it, wear jewelry. Put on shoes. It will make the day feel different. It brings a sense of purpose to the day and keeps your body used to it’s old normal. And wear pants with buttons pretty regularly, twice a week. 2. On the weekends take naps, but don’t during the week. Keep a schedule. When you maintain a normal schedule, it helps break up the day. 3. Shake up your workspace. Put yourself in a different spot, and something beautiful in front of you to look at. Give yourself extra light. Sometimes you just need to be in a different space to give you the energy you need for the day. 4. Filter your own Facebook feed. You may be in a lot of different educator groups so that you get as much information as you can. But after a certain time of day, stop looking at anything work related. It becomes easy to work all the time when you’re online. It’s important to have clear boundaries. 5. Just because you’re quarantined, it doesn’t mean you need to stay on a screen or stay inside in your house. Go to wide open spaces, take a walk, go to a park, go out in your backyard, lay in the sun. The vitamin D does a lot. 6. Make yourself something really delicious. It’s not something you do all the time, but once in awhile, go over the top, step away from your screens and connect with whoever is around you. 7. Connect to a co-worker who you would normally see and talk to every day in school. Create connection. Quarantine doesn’t mean isolation. 8. Watch something funny. You may have noticed you haven’t had a good laugh in weeks. Maybe your students haven’t either. Watch something that not just makes you smile, but will make you laugh. Get some laughter into your day. 9. Don’t sit all the time. Spend part of your time on a task that is easy enough to do while standing. 10. Take a minute and celebrate. You are an awesome educator doing something really hard. You are doing a great job. Click here to view all of our Distance Learning resources, exercises and tips

Rehearsing for your school production is hard work. There is an abundance of decisions to be made, students to manage, and schedules to maintain. It can be overwhelming to even the most organized teachers. It can lead to burnout with feelings of frustration, resentment, and exhaustion. If it’s not dealt with in a timely manner, it can even make you sick. Students get burnt out too, which will manifest as a lack of energy or reduced focus in rehearsals, and a general feeling of dissatisfaction. If you or your students (or both) are dealing with rehearsal burnout, try the following four tips to help ease these feelings: 1. Mix it up. You’ve been hard at work blocking, running and reviewing, but things are getting stagnant. Your students look like they’d rather be anywhere but in the rehearsal space. If rehearsals are dragging or blending together, try doing something different for one rehearsal. Try rehearsing “backwards”or go back to basics and work on volume, diction, enunciation, and posture. You could have your students do different character analysis work, such as figuring out what their character wants or thinking of their characters as animals. You won’t do this at every rehearsal, but running a rehearsal or two a little differently than usual can help break up the monotony. You can get back to your usual methods later. 2. Switch leaders. If possible, get someone else to lead a rehearsal for you. Your students will benefit from the new perspective, and you will get a break. If you are directing a musical, have your choreographer or musical director lead rehearsal. Perhaps you can have a vocal or dance bootcamp day on which students review and polish songs and dances. Getting rehearsal coverage can be a bit more difficult if you are directing a play by yourself, but there are still some possibilities. If you have a student director, let them lead rehearsal (you still will need to be in the room for supervision if the student director is underage, but let the student director be in charge). Perhaps you could get a drama teacher friend or theatrical colleague to come in and act as a play polisher. Or perhaps a local theatrical professional could come in and teach a masterclass to your students. On that note… 3. Create a connection. If your play has a theme, perhaps you can arrange for an expert in that area to come in and speak to your students about it, or lead a related workshop. For example, a colleague of mine who directed Sunday in the Park with George had a professional artist come in and teach the students about pointillism, the technique used by the artist Georges Seurat. The students also got to create a small painting using that technique. For a production of Chariots of Fire at the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario, the actors received training from professional running coaches at Western University. How can you create a similar connection for your show? 4. Take a break. This may sound crazy, but if you are burnt out, sometimes the best thing you can do is take a true break and cancel a rehearsal. It can be beneficial to everyone involved in the show to take some time away, reset themselves, and come back refreshed. This is one reason why it’s a good idea to include a few TBA/TBD rehearsals in your schedule. Most of the time you’ll use those rehearsals to work on something that needs extra time or review, but if what everyone needs is a break, then cancelling a rehearsal is not wasted time.

As theatre educators and do-it-all directors, we frequently feel the tell-tale signs of burnout. There is so much that must be done – lesson planning and preparation, marking, staff meetings, administrative updates, professional development days, classroom management. And then there are also the feelings that arise while working on a production: the “I can’t, I have rehearsal” replies to invitations, the frequent coffee refills, the never-ending to-do list, the growing piles of laundry and dishes at home, the “I just have one little question” statement that turns into many questions – it’s enough to drive a teacher mad. Sometimes it feels like there are not enough hours in the day to get everything done. If you feel like you are headed towards burnout (or are already in the throes of it), read the following four tips. And know that you aren’t alone – check out the Theatrefolk Facebook page to chat with a community full of teachers who will know just how you are feeling right now. 1. Stop. Assess. Prioritize.Look over your to-do list and make some decisions. What is the most important thing you need to get done today? This week? This month? What tasks can be put on hold? What could be delegated to someone else? Use your planner and schedule your day accordingly. Be sure to account for “extra” time requirements outside of regular class time or rehearsals, such as travel time and preparation (for example, the time spent pre-planning your blocking or choreographing a dance). At the end of the day, look back and compare how you actually spent your time with the schedule you set. Be honest with yourself about how you used your time. Did you procrastinate on a task you really don’t want to do? Have you been scrolling through Facebook and Twitter when you were supposed to be working on your props list? Did you get sidetracked looking through old cast photos? 2. Delegate.This is a difficult one for those of us who think it’s easier to simply “do it ourselves” – but trying to do everything without assistance is the quickest road to burnout. Reach out and ask for help. Delegate tasks to others. When you’re working on a show, look for student assistants, parent/community volunteers, other classes, and colleagues to help out. This way you can free up your time for tasks that only you can do. Also, you are providing wonderful learning and leadership opportunities for others. For your actual drama classes, why not reach out and collaborate with other drama teachers in your school district for different lessons and materials. They might have an interesting or unique approach to a unit that you hadn’t thought of. Looking for resources, right now? Why not check out our Drama Teacher Academy! DTA is full of individual lesson plans, units, curriculum, and more. 3. Set boundaries.If you are glued to your phone and have a 24/7 open-access policy, you are going to eventually start to feel smothered and resentful. Set teaching drama office hours and stick to them. Further to that, don’t answer emails or texts after a certain time. Put your phone away and close your laptop. Students and parents may inadvertently be taking advantage of you if you are always available, and you will start to feel like you are constantly on call. You should also sit down and reflect upon how many projects you take on during the school year. Honestly determine how many projects you can take on without making yourself ill. If you can’t do the annual haunted Halloween event plus a fall play plus the February coffeehouse fundraiser plus a spring musical (plus, plus, plus…) then SAY NO and stick to it! You are only one person and there are only so many hours in the day. It is also good and healthy for your students to see you modeling positive boundary behaviours. 4. Take care of your health.If you constantly push yourself to the limit, you will get sick. If you get sick, you will be no good to anyone – let alone yourself. The standard rules apply here: eat healthfully, bring snacks so you don’t get hangry, drink lots of water throughout the day, exercise as often as you can, get outside and breathe some fresh air, and get adequate sleep. And don’t forget to focus on your mental health. If you are frequently stressed out and anxious, those feelings will trickle down to your students. And that does not create a very positive learning environment. Take advantage of any mental health services that are available to you, reach out to colleagues to chat (and/or vent), and try to carve out a little bit of time that is not theatre-related. Read a book, go to a movie or concert, or take a class. Spend time with family and friends who don’t do theatre. Remember, there is a whole world out there beyond the auditorium, and the drama classroom will be waiting patiently for you when you’re ready to come back.