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For Immediate Release Contact: Monique Derenia 408-286-8505

SAN JOSE, Calif., March 1, 2002-- How do you get young people to talk about their problems with caring adults? One way, used increasingly in educational and counseling settings, involves short dramatic sketches.

“Normally, teens don’t feel safe talking over their problems with adults,” says Doris Anita Anderson, author of Tackling Tough Choices: Discussion-Starting Skits for Teens. “But they will act out sketches that reflect their real-life problems and begin to talk about issues they wouldn’t talk about head-on.”

Anderson's collection uses drama to open communication between adults and young people and provides teens with a safe, blame-free environment for discussing problems and issues in their lives. The skits cover issues including suicide, alcoholic parents, sexually transmitted diseases, and shoplifting and are written specifically with teenagers in mind using the language and settings familiar to them.

Each short drama is followed by sample questions to help adults facilitate discussions.  The guided discussions that follow from the skits focus on having the teens find alternate endings, solutions and ideas about how to avoid the situations or escape them once they arise.  Bruce McAllister, educational consultant, remarks, “[Anderson’s] skits are mini-plays that celebrate the spirit of young people, while the discussion questions offer them the tools of critical thinking they need on their journey to become the successful adults they so wish to become.”

All skits are photocopiable.

Doris Anita Anderson, currently a writer and reviewer for Safe Learning magazine, taught English at the intermediate and high-school level for the San Bernardino Unified School District for more than 30 years. She is a graduate of Walla Walla College and received an advanced degree in English composition from California State University at San Bernardino.

TACKLING TOUGH CHOICES
Discussion-Starting Skits for Teens
Doris Anita Anderson
128 pages,  8½" × 11",
ISBN: 0-89390-518-6
$29.95

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