While there are many examples of teacher casebooks, Learning to Teach Drama is the first text written specifically for teachers of theatre/drama. Furthermore, these cases are written by novices, not experts, providing readers with authentic voices from the field. Eighteen case narratives are featured in all, representing the issues every beginning teacher faces: planning lessons, knowing students as individuals and as members of a group, establishing classroom climate, understanding the place of drama within the school community, and expecting the unexpected. These teachers also assist one another, comment on each other’s cases, and effectively create a learning community. In addition, special "Extensions" sections prepared by the editors encourage readers to go beyond each narrative and relate the situations to their own teaching.

2. Knowing the Students
Eliminating the Creature, Embracing the Creature
Trials and Tribulations of Guppies and Piranhas
Music to Tame the Savage Heart

3. Classroom Climate: Working with Groups
Finding a Focus Through Playbuilding
Silencing the Kettle Drums

4. Classroom Climate: Working with Individuals
Quite a Quiet Student
The Impossible, Unbearable Student
The Taming of the Shrew Student

5. Drama in the School Community
Welcome Back Mrs. C.—Dealing with "Sweat Hogs"
The Time Is Out of Joint: Play Production in the Secondary School
Some Very "Special" Learners

6. Expect the Unexpected
If I Had a Decent Assault Rifle: Boundaries in the Classroom
Real Life 101
The Places I Went

7. The Student Teaching Experience
Help, I'm Becoming a Teacher