Process Drama and always, always, ALWAYS having a back-up plan

Last week in Young Adult Literature, Dr. Balok talked briefly about planning lessons, and one of her main points was to ALWAYS HAVE A BACK-UP PLAN, it is something that was discussed in our Kadjer textbook as well. Kadjer discussed having a back up plan because many times technology malfunctions and things don't go as planned. "...at some point in time in your teaching, this will happen- no matter how tightly planned or experienced you are. It won't happen each time, but knowing what to do when it does matters." We experienced a first hand example of this in Young Adult Literature today. We were supposed to Skype with Shari Maurer, the author of the book Change of Heart, but of course with the horrible internet connection we have on campus, the Skype conversation was a failure. Things don't always go as planned and in such cases sometimes you have to improvise. Instead of talking to the author, we had a class discussion about the book which turned out to be a very successful "Plan B." Many students voiced their opinions about the novel, and I feel almost as if I benefited more from our class discussion (don't get me wrong it would have been kind of cool to Skype with the author, but I can read her full bio HERE.) Going along with the idea of having a back-up plan, one of the ideas that Dr. Balok gave us to use in case of emergency when things don't go as planned was very similar to the first activity we did today dealing with process drama where each person tells a part of a story. She suggested doing it as an entire class but I think I liked the way we did it separated into groups better, but I guess either would work and it depends on the amount of time you have to do the activity.

So just remember, DON'T FULLY RELY ON TECHNOLOGY &
 always, always, ALWAYS have a back-up plan!

J.A.M.