This exciting new book offers practical resources and lesson plans for exploring gender in the drama curriculum. It looks at how theatre performances throughout history have played with the concept of identity and gender and explains why drama lessons can provide a safe and considerate space for thinking about gender. Drawing on theatre history, world theatre, theatre forms and theatre theory, each chapter focuses on key topics that will challenge students to play and explore gender roles as they choose. Introducing a new drama vocabulary drawn from archaeology and cartography, this book includes a wide range of materials for excavation from traditional stories, contemporary children’s literature, Greek mythology, Elizabethan and Restoration theatre, Japanese and Chinese theatre, mask, and physical theatre. Providing new insight into how existing drama units can be redefined to create a space where the exploration of gender identity is not only allowed but something exciting and joyful to focus on, this is an essential resource for all drama teachers.

The retreat to single-sex classes in co-educational comprehensive schools in the UK reflects a long history where educational policy and practice has made explicit the belief that boys and girls are different in how they learn and what they should learn. However, there is also a common assumption that there is equality in what is made available to learn and, if there is not, then single-sex organisation achieves this. The authors challenge this opinion and offer a fresh and theoretically informed look at the debate about single-sex teaching, presenting insights from research about the intended and unintended consequences of gender division in schools. Drawing on classroom observations and in-depth interviews with teachers and students, the book illustrates the effect of single-sex classrooms on learners and on the versions of subject knowledge made available to them. In exploring the differences in teaching practices between boys’ and girls’ classrooms, in relation to subjects such as Science, English, Drama, and Design and Technology, the authors highlight how single-sex teaching can, inadvertently, create circumstances which limit rather than open up students’ access to subject knowledge. The authors offer conceptual tools for investigating the knowledge-gender dynamic, advocating that learning will expand if teachers work with gender to help students to cross boundaries into non-traditional gender territories within subject lessons. Rethinking Single-Sex Teaching is thought-provoking reading for teachers, head teachers, academics and policy makers.

When the Drama Club Is Not Enough presents the work of two young activists who have been at the forefront of the successful Safe Schools Program for Gay and Lesbian Students in Massachusetts, a model for states and school districts nationwide. They give concrete, hard-won, and often inspiring lessons on integrating gay and lesbian issues to create powerful change for school communities. The book discusses the previously undiscussable--gay and lesbian identity and self-esteem at the middle and elementary school level, and gay and lesbian issues in school sports. It tells the story of a high school junior who, at the end of one of Jeff Perrotti's workshops on school sports, raised his hand and said he was a football captain and wanted to come out and needed help, and uses this dramatic narrative of personal courage to show step-by-step how gay and lesbian issues can be a catalyst for transformation of schools. The authors speak directly to those who want to change school climate--parents, teachers, administrators, and students concerned about harassment and safety. They offer seasoned and often humorous advice on dealing with controversy--even if it occurs in the context of a school presentation on sexual orientation attended by angry and disruptive parents. When the Drama Club Is Not Enough includes chapters on 'Getting Started' and 'Race and Gender' and sections on school policies and students' legal rights in order to ensure safe schools.

In this two volume set, educators explore the intersection of gender and education. Their entries deal with educational theories, research, curricula, practices, personnel, and policies, but also with variations in the gendering of education across historical and cultural contexts. The various contributors discuss gender as a social construction. The latest research on boys and masculinities, as well as girls and feminism, is included. The entries in this work cover the breadth of topics related to gender and education. They provide reference information on the history and condition of gender and education from elementary to high school. Entries cover such topics as: alternative schools, historically black colleges and universities in the United States, military colleges and academies, private and public single-sex and co-educational schools, literacy, mathematics achievement, women's centers, teacher interactions with girls and boys, affirmative action in U.S. higher education, sororities and fraternities, educator sexual misconduct, expectations of teachers for boys and girls, heterosexism and homophobia, bullying, harassment, and violence among students, salaries of male and female educators, school choice and gender equity, disabled students and gender equity, Title IX and school sports, black feminism, womanism, and queer theory.

Teachers are expected to take responsibility for children's moral development, particularly in the primary years, but how best to go about approaching the issues? In this book, the author explores a classroom approach that uses both drama and narrative stories to explore moral issues: drama gives children an opportunity to work through moral problems, make decisions and take up moral positions; stories offer a resource for moral education whereby children can learn through the 'experiences' of those in the story. Through providing a number of case studies, the author shows how this may be done by practitioners in the lassroom.

This book could save you $1 million! OK, maybe not - but some school districts have spent that much defending themselves (and not always successfully) in First Amendment lawsuits brought by students and their parents. First Amendment litigation is on the rise across the nation, and as any principal who has sat through a deposition in one of those cases can tell you, the raw emotions and zealous anger that fuels such disputes can become a massive distraction from your real job of running a school. The Oldest Rule is a comprehensive examination of the different First Amendment issues involving students that public school administrators and attorneys are increasingly facing on daily basis. We will look at such topics as school prayer, dress codes, student threats and cyberbullying, the distribution of literature, the use of public facilities by outside groups, the celebration of religious holidays, and the rise of esoteric religions and their impact in the public schools. Written by Chris Gilbert, an attorney with over twenty-one years' experience advising and representing school districts - big and small, urban and rural -- this book combines discussions of the legal standards and key case decisions with practical advice and hypotheticals.

2nd ed. of title previously published by Blackwells