Running a Drama Department

This resource has been produced due to an obvious need in our drama teaching community. 

In Aotearoa, we work in a varied national landscape comprising  numerous teaching positions from BT’s to TIC’s, HOD’s and HOLA’s. Some of us teach in medium size departments but for the majority, we are either sole-charge or  part of a small teaching team. Despite our diversity of teaching roles and contexts, one common theme we all share is the assumption, usually by senior management, that we already possess the skills and ‘know how’ to run a department. Based on the feedback we’ve received at conferences and workshops, Drama NZ realises that this supposition is deeply mistaken and due to a lack of formal training most teachers are simply left to their own devices to run a department. 

‘Learning by trial and error’ has often been the common denominator in terms of learning about middle management. Without question, ‘experience’ is a vastly superior teacher than a handbook.

The issue, however, is that until now drama teachers in NZ haven’t even had a handbook.
Drama NZ has therefore made this resource, to counter the isolation that a number of our colleagues experience, to lighten the workload and to stop the need for teachers to keep reinventing the wheel. Our subject association has also produced this resource because drama is one of those rare subjects where a beginning teacher can be expected to independently run a department. We therefore want this resource to also serve as an advocacy document by highlighting to senior management the specific requirements and work load of running a drama department. 

Courtesy of funding from the Ministry of Educations ‘Networks of Expertise’ Drama NZ was able to convene a team of 5 experienced drama teachers to produce this resource. The team, comprising Teresa Callaghan, Emma Bishop, Verity Davidson, Lisa Simpson and Kerry Lynch, have taught in a wide range of schools in terms of culture, demography and geographic location. With an accumulative total of 150 years of teaching, each team member has created their own individual teaching path and amassed their own unique set of experiences. One proud achievement they all share is that they are inducted Life Members to Drama New Zealand. 

It should be noted that this resource shouldn’t be seen as the definitive manual to running a department due to the diverse nature of our learning institutions and communities. When our team attended our one all-day planning meeting, we all became very aware that a strategy or recommendation that will work in one school may not necessarily be as effective or appropriate in another school. Following its initial online publishing, it is also expected that this resource will undergo further written additions and construction to reflect the growing depth and breadth of our subject area. 

Meet the team