Adolescence is a tough time for secondary students as well as for you, their teachers and support professionals. Being no longer a child, but not quite an adult, teens need a safe, enjoyable outlet that engages them and gives them a chance to talk about their feelings. Drama can be that outlet, and in Drama and the Adolescent Journey, you'll find ways to use dramatic enactments to help adolescents make a successful transition to adulthood. In Drama and the Adolescent Journey you'll discover a variety of drama activities that start students on a journey toward greater self-esteem and maturity. Teens will learn to situate their experience within their own lives and within the world at large. With a strong research base beneath them, Linda Nelson and Lanell Finneran demonstrate both why and how drama can help students enjoy their journey, show them ways around the roadblocks they may meet, and offer them a sense of how far they've come and where they'd like to be going. In addition, they offer crucial strategies for success with: understanding the developmental and behavioral changes of adolescence selecting content that truly engages adolescents and addresses their needs structuring drama activities to give teens the best possible support managing the activities and attending to the practical concerns of teaching with drama. Give teenagers the gift of self-knowledge. Read Drama and the Adolescent Journey and find a great new way to guide them through one of life's toughest times.

Adolescence is a time of individuation--children are slowly finding their identity as adults, separate from their parents and other adult influences. Such a critical time of psychological development is complicated by cultural influences that shape their expectations of adulthood and color how they relate to other people and even God. The task of the youth pastor becomes to help adolescents navigate this often treacherous journey, helping young people reconcile their experience of childhood to the reality of their impending adulthood, and rooting and establishing them in a faith that can sustain them through their adult journey as well. Drawing on the insights of sociology and psychology, Jacober reveals youth ministry to be an act of practical theology, and helps youth pastors find their footing as they guide young people through adolescence.

Teen daughters are on an emotional rollercoaster, and responding in kind adds fuel to the fire. It’s important for moms to be a stable anchor during this stage in their life. Family therapist and mom Colleen O’Grady shares what she learned firsthand during her own daughter’s teenage years about how best to calmly de-escalate even the most stressful scenes and parent intentionally even when your teen is pushing you away. In Dial Down the Drama, O’Grady shows every mom how to learn to: Regain perspective Break the cycle of conflict Tune into her daughter without drowning in the drama Foster spontaneous conversations Replace worrying and overreacting with effective communication and action And much more! Moodiness, anger, and defiance can stress the best of us. This empowering guide gives you the tools you need to defuse the drama - and dial up the joy. As Colleen has said, you don’t dial down the drama in order to survive the teenage years; you do so because you actually can enjoy them! Dial Down the Drama provides the tools you need to do just that.

Dyan Sheldon's vain, melodramatic, and utterly lovable Lola will appeal to any young reader who has angled for acceptance. Mary Elizabeth Cep (or Lola, as she prefers to be called) longs to be in the spotlight. But when she moves to New Jersey with her family and becomes a student at Dellwood "Deadwood" High, Lola discovers that the role of resident drama queen is already filled--by the Born-to-Win, Born-to-Run-Everything Carla Santini. Carla has always gotten everything she wants-that is, until Lola comes along and snags the lead in the school play. Can Lola survive Carla's attempts at retaliation? Will Lola and her best friend, Ella, find a way to crash their favorite band's concert hall and farewell party in New York City--to which Carla has already gained entrance? And once the curtain goes up on the school play, which drama queen will take center stage?

This remarkable collection of resources shows teachers how to guide their students through the drama process. Drama Schemes, Themes & Dreams offers a comprehensive outline of improvisation and interpretation strategies that teachers can incorporate in classroom instruction. Organized around universal themes that invite students to make connections to texts and to each other, the book encourages students to consider their own identities and their place in the world. Each chapter is organized around a framework that will engage students as they experience a wealth of dramatic activity. This practical and useful book features a host of sources for improving classroom instruction, including scripts, monologues, poetry, novel excerpts, and visual images. Strategy Schemes provide a framework for structuring the learning. Pieces written expressly for inclusion in this book are contributed by experienced educators and artists. The selected strategies enrich the meaning-making, creative process, and critical skills that students need to succeed in school and in life. New and experienced teachers in all subject areas will find the help they need to create meaningful and innovative learning opportunities for all learners.

Are you a drama student looking for other ways to practice in your field? Perhaps you teach drama students or as a teacher want to enliven your lessons. Are you an actor who wants to diversify your role repertoire? Are you a therapist who uses active approaches to promote your clients' creative potentials? Maybe you want to be involved in a meaningful form of social action? This is the book for you Thirty-two innovators share their approaches to interactive and improvisational drama, applied theatre, and performance, for education, therapy, recreation, community-building, and personal empowerment.You are holding the only book that covers the full range of dynamic methods that expand the theatre arts into new settings. There are approaches that don't require memorizing scripts or mounting expensive productions. Dramatic engagement should be recognized as addressing a far broader purpose. There are ways that are playful, and types of non-scripted drama in which the audience become co-actors. This present book is unique in offering ways for participants to become more spontaneous and involved.

Digital Storytelling, Applied Theatre, & Youth argues that theatre artists must re-imagine how and why they facilitate performance practices with young people. Rapid globalization and advances in media and technology continue to change the ways that people engage with and understand the world around them. Drawing on pedagogical, aesthetic, and theoretical threads of applied theatre and media practices, this book presents practitioners, scholars, and educators with innovative approaches to devising and performing digital stories. This book offers the first comprehensive examination of digital storytelling as an applied theatre practice. Alrutz explores how participatory and mediated performance practices can engage the wisdom and experience of youth; build knowledge about self, others and society; and invite dialogue and deliberation with audiences. In doing so, she theorizes digital storytelling as a site of possibility for critical and relational practices, feminist performance pedagogies, and alliance building with young people.