An Introduction to Tess and Sit Down Drama


Hi I'm Tess: Mum, wife, now part time drama teacher, and creator of awesome drama teaching resources. It is my mission to share teaching resources with Drama teachers to make their lives easier.

I started teaching in 2005 alongside the best, most amazing Drama teacher you could have ever have had the pleasure of working with (well apart from that she pretty much worked 24/7 and it was hard to keep up with her that is). She had been teaching at the start of Drama as a subject in New Zealand and played some part in the curriculum and in pushing for the acceptance of Drama as an important subject in schools. She had a wealth of knowledge, understanding and the best classroom manner. It was a privilege to work with Catherine Ryan and I must acknowledge her place in my teaching career, especially since the world has lost this amazing person in the last year. RIP Cathy.

I quickly came to realise in my career that I LOVE making resources; coming up with easy ways to approach students with information and terminology and getting them to think more deeply about their characters, scripts and performance work. I love it. Back when I started word processing was very simple and the bits and pieces I pulled together were helpful, but not the prettiest. 

After teaching in New Zealand and then at an International School in Indonesia. on my return to New Zealand I met my husband Simon, and we soon had three lovely girls in very quick succession, leading me to step away form the classroom for a time.

BUT I couldn't be stopped. I started to pull together all of my old resources to make a handbook of sorts: Drama Language, Theatre terminology, Script Analysis, Acting Skills, Performance Processes, Drama creation conventions, Technology, Reflection Questions. I wanted other teachers to have all of this in one place, so they could guide their students with ways to talk about drama, and methods to improve their performances. 

And then again, I was blessed with another amazing woman of skill, my sister Kat is a skilled graphic designer and she was able to meet the next part of my dream resource; making it really visually appealing for young people in a very visual world.

And so Sit Down Drama was born

The book you need when your students need to SIT DOWN and write about or think about theatre.


The book was specifically written for the New Zealand and Australian Drama Curriculum terms, but don't let that put you off because there is SOOOO much in this book, all of it still applies to anyone doing theatre studies.


  
Here is a sneak peak at what some of the book looks like on a tablet.


Once I'd sold out the hard copies we had printed, I began looking for somewhere to sell it and stumbled on TeachersPayTeachers where you can now buy a digital copy of Sit Down Drama here.

Since then I've continued to create. Probably my favourite book I've written is my Character Development Book. Its just got so much in there, activities, lessons, worksheets, ways of approaching rehearsal, some of which I really wish I'd had in the classroom right from the start. I've also written two texts on Elizabethan Theatre and Greek Theatre which guide students through the analysis of a script, understanding the times it was written in, the play structure and devices it uses and how it was performed way back when it was written. The end product being a performance in the style of the original Elizabethan or Greek Theatre performance.

Anyhow, this is likely enough of an introduction for now. I'm writing this as I begin launching more and more resources onto the TeachersPayTeachers platform and hope to help more and teachers have an easier life, plus make a little bit of money on the side for our little family. 

I'm hoping that people will start to follow me on this journey. If this is the case for you, please follow the links below, or subscribe to my email list for future updates on this blog which should hopefully share some interesting tips and tricks of the drama classroom, and some resources (sometimes free). 

At the time of writing this, these profiles will be limited, but just watch me grow!!!

Find my store at teacherspayteachers.com

 
Follow me on Instagram
 
Follow me on Facebook 

Check out my pins on Pinterest


<script async data-uid="5e00915c85" src="https://sit-down-drama.ck.page/5e00915c85/index.js"></script> 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How I Sell Drama as a Subject in my School

Image
How to Justify Drama Class   Or  How to talk parents into letting their talented student do Theatre Studies Not long ago an ex-student of mine got in touch. She'd seen herself as I'd made a Facebook REEL where I'd flicked through Sit Down Drama which she had featured in. It was lovely to hear from her, what she’d done with her life, where she was, what she’s doing next. During the conversation she reflected on her time in drama and she said “You know, what you said is true. You always used to say”  ‘Drama might not get you the job, but it will get you the promotion.'" She went on to say that although people, bosses, universities might see that she took Drama in school and just gloss over it, that later all of the skills she’d learnt in Drama really helped her stand out as a student or employee. She wouldn’t be phased by doing a presentation, she’d improvise quickly in any situation, she could find an interesting way to tell a story or get a point across and ...
Read more

I Used to Hate Teaching Theatre Sports, but now I love it

Image
I think because as a student of drama myself I had always felt terrible doing improvisation in class or Speech exams, I approached Theatre Sports as a teacher with heaps of trepidation. As a new fledgling drama teacher at a girl’s college, I was surprised to find a group of very enthusiastic Theatre Sports competitors who I was supposed to coach toward the local competitions. They LOVED it, and I hated it. They were fabulous at it and I knew I was hopeless at it (or I thought I was). For those first few years I battled through. Thankfully these four girls had been well trained by the previous teacher and basically looked after themselves. They had also been set up as the leaders of the junior teams in the school. Awesome student-lead work going on. A little lesson there in cutting teacher workload, by the way. So, for a while, though I didn’t like it, I could get away with it being a part of my life because it was all sorted for me. The seniors trained the juniors and the I gave a few ...
Read more