Successes and Challenges in the Drama Classroom: Potpourri

Episode 138: Successes and Challenges: Potpourri We continue talking to teachers in our Successes and Challenges Series. In this episode we hear from a teacher using students as leaders, a successful fundraiser, and everyone’s favourite challenge turned success: Shakespeare. Listen in and learn how your fellow teachers have taken on challenges and dealt with them head on. Show Notes * Stand Alone: Monologues for Girls * Stand Alone: Monologues for Guys Episode Transcript Welcome to TFP – The Theatrefolk Podcast – the place to be for Drama teachers, Drama students, and theatre educators everywhere. I’m Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello! I hope you're well. Thanks for listening. Welcome to Episode 138! You can find any links to this episode in the show notes at theatrefolk.com/episode138. Today, we continue talking to teachers in our Successes and Challenges series. I love this! I love doing these interviews! It’s inspiring to me and I hope it’s inspiring to you too as the school year kicks into gear. In this episode, we hear from a teacher using students as leaders, a successful fundraiser – don’t we all want to know about that? – and everyone’s favorite challenge turned success: Shakespeare. Maybe you too – yes, you, I’m talking to you, you know who you are – hi, how are you? – maybe you too can take on a challenge that everyone is saying you can’t do. We are going to do it. Let’s do it. LINDSAY: All right. I am speaking to Kristi Jacobs. Hello Kristi! KRISTI: Hi! LINDSAY: How are you tonight? KRISTI: I’m doing wonderful. How about you? LINDSAY: I’m doing pretty good, doing pretty good. We are talking about successes and challenges. What has been your challenge this year? KRISTI: I would say my challenge this year has been getting parents involved in a way that is helpful and productive. I graduated not last year but the year before. I graduated a really group of seniors. I had parents that were taking care of a lot of things and then we didn’t really have the parents coming in underneath them so much to sort of be mentored by them. I had a year of real transition. And then, this year, there are some parents that are slowly starting to step up. It’s kind of overwhelming – you know, when you’re a one-woman show getting everything done – so you really have to rely on those parents and I think the kids too are just involved in so much so then the parents are involved in so much and it’s hard to really get them to dedicate a lot of time. LINDSAY: You realize how much of a one-man band you are when that parent support sort of disappears, doesn’t it? KRISTI: Oh, absolutely, absolutely, and I will say I do have some parents that are really wonderful and always asking what they can do. Sometimes, it’s really hard to tell them what they can do and, you know, I had those parents that have been around for five years. Our school’s at eighth grade through twelfth grade and so they could just do everything. You know, I didn’t have to think about telling them what to do. You know, they just did it. And so, it’s finding that way of communicating with them exactly what they can do to help and be helpful and sort of get what needs to be done done. LINDSAY: Well, sometimes, the worst thing that can be thrown your way is, “Oh, just let know if I can do anything to help.” It’s like, “Yes, but I don’t know what that is,” and you don’t want to lose them.