New Year

The break is over. The decorations are packed away, your coffee mug has been upgraded to “extra large,” and it’s time to head back to the classroom. The post-holiday return can feel like a tough act to follow, both for teachers and students, but it’s also the perfect opportunity for a creative reset. Here’s how to start your new semester with renewed energy, enthusiasm, and inspiration. 1. Reflect before you reboot.Before diving into lesson plans, take a moment to look back. What went well last semester? What challenges popped up? Jot down some quick notes for yourself. If you can, remember to ask students to reflect at the end of each semester on what stood out, what confused them, what they would love to learn more about, and what unit they never want to repeat! All of this can help you refocus your goals and move forward. Try this: For a start-of-the-semester reflection, have students write one “Act I highlight” (something they loved or learned in a previous semester or drama class) and one “Act II goal” (something they want to achieve this semester). Additional Reading: The Reflection Collection: A Round-Up 2. Lead with a low-stress, high-fun activity.Ease everyone back in with an activity that sparks energy without overwhelming anyone’s post-break brain. Think short, creative, and collaborative. For example: * Big Tiny Twisted: A collaboration game. * Prompt Improvs: Put together a list of unique prompts and have students improv scenes. * Holiday Highlight Improv: Students act out exaggerated (and likely hilarious) versions of their holiday experiences. Additional Reading: 10 Low- or No-Prep Theatre Exercises 3. Reconnect the ensemble.After a few weeks apart, it’s natural for your ensemble dynamic to need a tune-up. Spend the first few classes rebuilding trust, laughter, and connection. Try this Ensemble exercise: The Ensemble Monologue. Additional Reading: 5 Tongue Twister Exercises for Ensemble-Building 4. Set new (attainable) goals.New Year, new semester, new opportunities! Invite your students to set personal and class-wide goals for the coming months. These could be performance-based (“I want to project better”) or teamwork-focused (“I want to help my classmates more”). Set your own teacher goals too. Maybe it’s integrating more student-led activities, exploring a new script, or simply remembering to breathe during tech week. Additional Reading: Student Goal Setting Exercise: The Wish Jar Drama Teachers: What’s Your Goal? 5. Try something new.Add a spark by introducing something fresh into your curriculum. It could be a new warm-up, a short play, a themed mini-unit, or a creative classroom project. Need inspiration? Search our Theatrefolk Learning Centre for ready-to-use ideas, activities, and classroom resources to make planning easy. Additional Reading: Drama Class Projects Using Plays for Classroom Study 6. Pace yourself (and your students).The temptation to jump right back into full gear is real, but remember: Students (and teachers!) are still adjusting after the break. Keep the first week light, reestablish routines, and let creativity grow naturally. A calm, confident approach sets the tone for the entire semester. Additional Reading: How do I Determine the Right Pacing for Units? Developing Classroom Routines and Systems Final BowThe start of a new year isn’t about reinventing everything; it’s about rekindling the spark that makes your classroom come alive. With a few intentional choices, you can turn that post-break slump into a standing ovation. Here’s to a semester full of laughter, learning, and theatre magic. You’ve got this! Looking for fresh classroom ideas? Explore our free resources, activities, and play recommendations at theatrefolk.com, and be sure to sign up for our drama teacher resource newsletter - everything you need to start your drama year strong!

Starting a new term with a new group of students can be concerning for even the most experienced drama teachers. Will you like them? Will they like you? Will they understand or connect with the material you’re presenting? Will there be behavioural issues or attendance concerns? It’s easy to become jaded, so let’s work on letting that go or avoiding it altogether. Let’s look at our new students with a sense of curiosity and excitement — because beginning drama students are awesome, and here are a few reasons why! 1. They start as a mystery — but a good one. At the start of a new school year or a new term, you don’t know who you’ll get in your class. Do your best to go into it with a positive outlook. It’s fun to get to know new students, observe new connections being made between students and with you, and experience new talents emerging. It’s nerve-wracking but exciting, and remember that your students are likely nervous too. So on those first few days you’ll all already have something in common: you can all be nervous together! 2. They’re blank slates. These students are ready to learn and open to new ideas. You get to impart new and exciting information to them, and teach them the techniques, skills, and etiquette that you want to see in your students. You can observe and help students develop admirable qualities and good backstage habits. 3. They’re often eager to please — particularly younger drama students in middle school. They want to be in your class and they want to do well. Praising students is often the most effective way to give notes, and new drama students thrive on it. Telling them what they’re doing well and what they can do more of will yield much better results than always telling them what they’re doing wrong. Yes, you do have to give constructive feedback, but as the saying goes, “you attract more bees with honey than with vinegar.” 4. New students come in with fresh perspectives. They have different experiences and ways of thinking. They provide insights you may not have considered before. You will likely learn as much from them as they do from you! Beginning drama students may have different learning styles and will connect differently with the material you present than previous classes did. Something that you’ve taught in previous years may not resonate the same way with these students, or conversely, you may bring back something that didn’t work with previous students and find that it works really well for your current students! This is one of the reasons why it’s important not to get too locked in to doing the same curriculum and lessons over and over, the same way each time. On that note… 5. They keep you on your toes. It’s important not to get stuck into a rut. How do you keep your old lesson plans from getting stale, or worse, turning into “obviously you should know this.” What is simple and old hat to you is new, exciting, and potentially a little scary for beginning drama students. Look back over your curriculum and use your new students’ experiences and feedback (which might come to you as “I don’t get it” or “this sucks” unfortunately, but it’s feedback nonetheless) as opportunities to review and refresh your lessons. For example, if your students are all selecting the same boring Google-searched monologues for your audition preparation assignment, you might want to start a monologue binder with a fresh variety of pieces for students to use. If students are struggling to come up with ideas for playwriting assignments or improv scenes, grab some different prompts for them to use. Review your lesson instructions and ensure that your requirements are clear. Could you present the lessons in a different way, adjust the wording, or offer different options for students to present their work? This has the added benefit of not only helping your students succeed, but getting you out of the lesson rut. 6. The wins are big wins. When everything is new and there is so much to learn, practice, and review, there is potential for students to feel unsure, overwhelmed, or frustrated. But the moments of success are everything. It’s exciting to witness “lightbulb moments” — when students really “get” a new concept and apply it, or make a connection between something they’ve learned and something they already know. There are also the triumphs, like when students take a bow after knowing that they nailed a scene or exercise and hear their peers applaud their work. Those moments are so fun to experience, and should be celebrated! But don’t overlook the so-called smaller wins. Seeing students really engaging in a lesson, having them ask to do a game or exercise again, and reading thoughtful exit slips and reflections are all wins. Overhearing a student say something at the end of class like, “I wasn’t sure about today’s lesson but it ended up being pretty ok” is definitely a win. All those moments add up. Keep looking for the wins and celebrating your students’ (and your) successes as much as possible.

It’s a new year and a fresh start! If you’ve been teaching the same classes for a long time, your curriculum might be feeling a bit stale. Yes, it’s always going to be different when you teach it to new students, but it’s always good to mix things up and add to your repertoire. You’re always encouraging your students to reach out and learn more about their interests, right? Well, take a page out of your own book and learn something new too! You’ll feel refreshed and rejuvenated, and you’ll have something new and exciting to share with your students. Below are eight different theatrical New Year’s resolutions for you to explore. Look them over to see which ones appeal to you, then get out there and complete them. Notice which ones don’t immediately appeal to you, or make you pause and consider. Push yourself out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself to do those resolutions too! Reading & Research1. Read five new plays. It’s always good to expand your repertoire of plays and musicals. You may find great pieces to use for your upcoming class or school production. Also, consider individual scenes and monologues that your students could use in classroom exercises or for audition purposes. (While you’re at it, why not start a binder full of monologues that students could peruse? You can start here! 2. Read three new theatre-related books. There are tons out there, from biographies to non-fiction and everything in between. Two books I recently enjoyed were Theater Geek: The Real Life Drama of a Summer at Stagedoor Manor by Mickey Rapkin and Drama High by Michael Sokolove. 3. Learn five new theatrical techniques/games. Tired of playing Park Bench over and over? Me too. Here are a whole bunch of fun games to try. And why not explore new theatrical topics to add to your teaching repertoire? For example, this year I taught mask work for the first time in my class. Although I was really nervous about it, my students really enjoyed learning something new and exploring it with me. It might inspire some new work or start some interesting discussions. 4. See five new shows for inspiration. I frequently tell my students to see as many shows as possible, to open their minds to new and varied interpretations of various works, and to learn more about different shows. As the teacher, that is doubly true for us! Get out and see some shows, whether they’re at other schools (maybe you can plan a field trip for your students), in the community, at professional theatres, or in cities you visit while traveling! On a recent trip to Pittsburgh, I saw The Toxic Avenger musical while my husband caught a Steelers game. It was such a fun show, and inspired my stage combat choreography for a production of She Kills Monsters with my students! Reaching Out & Getting Involved5. Reach out to three colleagues in your city or district. Are you connected with other drama teachers in your area? Send them an email and get together with them! Other teachers can be great resources for sharing lesson plans and classroom management tips, creating connections for sharing production resources (props, costumes, set pieces), and fostering friendships! 6. Reach out to three theatre people from your social media community. Get on Facebook and Twitter, use those #theatrehashtags, and see what interesting people you find! Reach out and send them a message, ask a question, form a friendship! Who knows what fun connections are out there for you! 7. Attend a conference or festival. Get your travel on and meet with drama educators and theatre professionals in one fell swoop! There are lots of conferences and festivals available, like the World Festival of Children’s Theatre, iTheatrics’ Junior Theater Festival, and many state/province festivals. Search for conferences with workshops specifically for teachers. 8. Get involved in a community theatre show. When was the last time you worked on a show that wasn’t related to school–purely for your own enjoyment? Get out and audition for a show or volunteer backstage! Share your experiences with your students, and invite them to come see your work outside of the classroom!

The start of a new year holds many promises. I will make a resolution! I will change my life! I will….do something for two weeks and then go back to my old way of doing things. Because there’s so much emotion behind resolutions – both positive and negative – they are excellent prompts: Journal Prompts• Will you make a resolution this year? Why or why not? • How do New Year’s resolutions make you feel? • What’s the last resolution you made? Did it stick? Why or why not? • Why do people make resolutions? • Why do people break them? Improv Prompts• Write the most bizarre resolutions on slips of paper (keeping it school friendly of course) and everyone has to put a slip in their pocket without reading it. The scene is a New Years Eve Party. On a signal from you, one of the participants has to bring out their slip of paper and incorporate their resolution into the conversation. • A conversation between a pro-resolution person and an anti-resolution person. Character Development Prompts• Is your main character for or against resolutions? Why? • What resolution would your main character make? Why? • Would they stick to the resolution they made? Why or why not? Writing Prompts• Write a monologue in which a very straight laced person shares an out of character resolution. • Write a scene between a character and their will power. Will power is waning as January marches on. • Write a scene between a boyfriend and girlfriend who have opposing resolutions. What will to do to the relationship? • Write a scene between someone who is trying to stay strong and something tempting – personify a piece of cake.