Jade Speaks Up: Developing teachers’ confidence with drama conventions to enhance health education learning

Jade Speaks Up is an Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC)-funded programme. It supports teachers to use process drama and other activities to introduce the topic of domestic violence while at the same time developing emotional literacy, trust, and self-calming skills. This article draws on qualitative and quantitative evaluation data to show how process drama can deepen authentic exploration and generation of strategies. Insights from teachers are shared to illustrate the impact of their delivery of this programme. The purpose of this article is to encourage teachers to adopt the JSU programme to help address student needs of developing skills for keeping safe around domestic violence. The authors conclude that, with adequate resourcing and supervision, teachers can play an essential role in improving student resilience for challenging situations.