Pieces of Programming: Drama Club Spring Session Wrap-Up

Aside from my duties as a teen librarian, I keep my connection with the tweens by running our Youth Services Drama Club.  I think I inherited the club just by it being an open opportunity but now that I've had it for a while, and can see some of my tweens reaching the age that gets them into teen activities and the teen room, I can appreciate the bond it has helped me form with them so that it will continue once they are full-fledged teens.

The Spring Session was my best to date, I believe, and in it, I introduced three great things that helped me maintain my sanity:

Pieces of Programming: Making Puppets with Drama Club!

When I first started at my current library, drama club was thriving.  The kids had posed in front of our green screen, made great videos, and did a lot of reader's theater with the former librarian who served as their teacher.  One of my predecessor's last activities here was actually a drama club premiere party, where they got to watch themselves on the big screen (our projector screen), and see what they'd done all year.  I was impressed, and excited, but greatly intimidated.

I'd done drama club as a child myself, and I LOVE performance art, but teaching kids how to do it is not as simple a feat.  Kids are not only balls of energy, but tweens specifically are balls of emotions, and sometimes the drama part of the club is all I knew I could expect to see.  There were also the task of redefining what the club was for and how it ran for me, as opposed to what they were used to with the other librarian.  Her plans and outcomes were great, but I needed to determine my own goals.

Pieces of Programming: Zombie Week!

The idea for Zombie week started with the release of Dead Island, the ultra-horrific but greatly anticipated video game.  I knew my teens would love to get their hands on the game, and that it would have to be an after-hours event for them to really get the opportunity to play it in our teen room.  An exact week after I started working on their night, I got a visit from a dance instructor in the area who was trying to find ways to connect our library kids to her studio.  Her studio is actually a partner of our library, so I was more than happy to help in any way possible.  From chit-chatting with her, we finally decided to have one of her instructors visit the library during drama club and teach Thriller to my tweens!

Thus, Youth Services Zombie Week was born.

Though we called it a "week", the program really only consisted of two programs.  One for tweens and one for teens.  For the tweens, we had a very special Zombie edition of Drama Club, while my teens were treated to after-hours gaming that featured Dead Island{score}.

Our warm up games for Drama Club were Zombie based on this day and included a riveting round of "Don't Wake the Zombie"

Then came actually making our zombies.