Low Resource Afterschool Activities

Alright. So, the next school year has begun. Unfortunately, due to an academic complication in my credential program, I cannot pursue almost any teaching positions. Most of them require that I have a credential.

That complication has led me to continue with my job from last year as an after school teacher. I want there to be a change between this and the last school year. In the last school year, for outdoor activities, I pursued pretty pointless and preparation free activities. That's great because its really easy to do that. It doesn't require me to do any thinking. I would just play hockey or two square everyday. However, I don't really teach the students in the program anything new.

So, this is what I decided to do. I decided that I would play improv games with the students in the after school program. This is the book that I'm using: "101 Improv Games." For example, today, I had one person temporarily leave the group, we chose an emotion, the group pretended to display that emotion, then the individual who had left the group would have to return and guess which emotion they were displaying. Essentially, I guess I'm also getting them to focus on aspects of drama and acting. In this case, the goal was to display and recognize the physical gestures associated with different emotions.

The great thing about playing improv games is that they require no resources. As corny as it sounds, all it requires is a willingness to play and preparation on my part. The reason why I say that it requires a willingness to play is because some students are less receptive than others to express emotion or pretend. For those individuals, it will be difficult to get them to play.

Anyway, in the future, if I have some of the same students playing these games, I will need to refer back to past improv games that we had played. I presume that future improv games will use some elements that were used in previous improv games. In which case, it will make their transition into pertinent improv games that much easier.

So, that's how I'm trying to get more teaching experience while working in the after school program that I'm a teacher in.