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Marjourie Hourd (1948)- The round is an inner quality...requiring the actors not so much to look round but to be round.

“The child creates drama in his own way, own form, own kind. It is original art of high creative quality.” - Peter Slade 

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As artists, educators and graduate students, it is very easy for us to take for granted that we are perpetual lifelong learners. For us, we embrace education and studying new ideas while many fear the unknown. As those who are helping to shape the minds of future generations, it is our responsibility to lay the groundwork for young minds to discover their passion for learning and exploration. This resonated with me because it is important to teach children and young adults to be lifelong learners when it comes to the world around them, but it is also necessary to teach our students to continue to learn about themselves and make new personal discoveries every day. As the educator, we have to practice what we teach and find new ways to grow and learn from our students and colleagues to encourage the continual cycle of learning. 

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John Dewey- child centered education. 

“Democracy and the one, ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are to my mind synonymous.” 

“Education is not preparation for life, it’s life itself.”

“Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.”

“To find what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.”

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Harlem Children’s Theatre Festival

My favorite experience of this first semester of graduate school was by far the Harlem Children’s Theatre Festival. Even though my ultimate goal is to teach high school theatre, there is something about seeing little kids experience the magic of creativity that makes me, just for a moment, want to devote all of my days to making them as happy as they were in those hours spent in Aaron Davis Hall. That’s not to say that you won’t experience that kind of magic with older students, but these kids forget all of their woes and are just there to have fun. The entire festival ran like a well oiled machine. I was so impressed by all of the time and dedication that the entire ensemble put into making this event such a success. 

The arts and crafts tables were a hit. I was at the table where kids could either make dragon puppets to bring into The Reluctant Dragon or make masks in either butterfly shapes, flower shapes, cat shapes, or what all the little boys liked to call the superhero mask shape. The cool ideas that kids ranging anywhere from 2-8 was so fun to watch. One little girl spent the entire time she was making her mask telling me about her new pet turtle that she was so excited to bring into the family. After the show was finished and they came back out of the theatre, she found me and was holding hands with her mom and said she had to show me her special turtle because she wanted to meet me, and inside of her backpack was a baby pink stuffed animal turtle names Ella who was her pride and joy. It now made sense why she made her mask in different shades of pink and purple, not just because she was a girl girl, but because her turtle Ells was going to share the mask with her.

The dot art table was overflowing with kids that they spilled over from the tables onto the floor to create their masterpieces. At this point I had a camera and was taking pictures and they were so excited to show off the art they created and have their pictures taken. One group of kids that I made masks and puppets with wanted to pose with all of the crafts that they made for the day “so all the other kids would want to come next year and play with them too.” A little girl names Desiree was with another one of her friends making dot art, but earlier in the day I helped her make her butterfly mask and I saw that she was still wearing it, so when I went over to ask if she wanted to take a picture she jumped up and of course said yes but then said that she wished that she could stay here forever because it was the best day and threw her arms around my legs and gave me the sweetest hug. At that moment I realized that in their busy, fun filled day they were making memories, taking those memories home with them and thinking about how they can’t wait to come back and do it again, and I think that is the whole point of what we all want to accomplish as educators and advocates for the arts. We want our kids to have fun while they are learning and expand their minds to create new worlds and foster ideas they may not have known were there.

Just like Desiree, I can’t wait to do it again next year. 

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“How can you read this? There’s no pictures!” “Well, some people use their imagination.”

Gaston and Belle

Beauty and The Beast at Tottenville High School

It was such a fun experience to see kids that you teach in a regular classroom transform on stage during the Spring musical. The always appreciate it when they know that their teachers and school staff come out to see their performances, and such a small act can really make their day. I hope that next year I will be able to spend more of my time with the students who are passionate about theatre and become more involved in their journey. 

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Face to Face 2017

On April 13th I was a volunteer for Face to Face 2017. It was the first conference that I have attended and I was not at all disappointed. I was not quite sure what to expect because it seems like one of those things that you don’t really know what it will be like until you experience it first hand. I was prepared for a long day but I don’t think that I was prepared for all of the positive energy that I would take home with me.

As an educator, especially an educator in the arts, I think that it is so important for work together and share ideas and inspirations that will lead to long term success for our students. There were so many people who came from different backgrounds and were genuinely interested in hearing your story and sharing their own. One of my favorite parts of the conference was reading the Upstander Love Letters from educators who were at the conference and from other parts of the country. The letters that we wrote will become archived with The Museum of Impact and will travel the country with them as they go from event to event. One of my favorite letters read “Dear Artist-We need you! The world needs to see your magic. Dear Writer-We need you! The world needs to hear your voice. Dear Performer-We need you! The world needs to experience your vision.” I spent years working as a freelance director, and still do, but so often the experiences you had were so cut throat that I found myself starting to drift away from the drama and competition because it didn’t feel like I was creating art that really meant something to me anymore. It is not fair to say that this was always the experience because that is far from true, but being in the same room with so many individuals who wanted to work together and learn from one another reminded me why I love the theatre as much as I do. 

I was able to attend a break out session called “Finding Our Groove: Exploring Group Dynamics Through Rhythmic Composition” and I really enjoyed it. If i was not a volunteer the title of this session would not have drawn me in so I am glad that I was able to experience it. The session had educators of all ages and an array of backgrounds from chorus teachers to a science teacher, and no matter the difference between our ages and backgrounds we all created this rhythmic sound that we shared with in our session. I am looking forward to attending more conferences and attending Face to Face next year, as well as being able to spend one of the days as a regular attendee and fully immerse myself into the experience of the event.

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“I didn’t go to the moon, I went much further - for time is the longest distance between two places.” 

The Glass Menagerie is one of my favorite plays, and this performance did not disappoint. I have always believed that the story belonged to Tom, but Sam Gold, who is my favorite director, broke this piece into a raw and damaged tale that fell apart in front of our eyes and at at least one point was owned by both Amanda and Laura. It literally poured on the stage and I walked away completely inspired by the reinvention of this classic. 

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Partnership and Ensemble Building 

In this video I am in an English Drama classroom at Tottenville High School in Staten Island, NY. This class has spent weeks preparing for their final scene performance, and when I spoke with the regular classroom teacher about what kind of exercises I would be focusing on during my classroom takeover I knew that I wanted to work on partnership and ensemble building.

I started the class by asking their class to find their scene partners and to face one another so they could mirror in pairs. Everyone in the classroom has worked on a mirror exercise before so from our pairs I asked the class to find another pair so they could group mirror in groups of four. This was more difficult because it requires more focus, but that is required when working with an ensemble on stage. I was genuinely impressed with how long the groups were able to mirror one another and take it seriously and not mess around.  

After working in groups I wanted to get the pairs back together to work on refining their listening skills, so I had a volunteer pair choose partner A and partner B. Partner A had to tell partner B what they had done so far that morning from the time they woke up until now. Partner B had to listen carefully to partner A so they could pantomime their morning. The kids had a great time doing this activity, as well as those who were watching their high school drama unfold.  When all was said and done, as a class we were able to create a partner bond and build ensemble with the rest of their classmates. 

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I am only a sparrow amongst a great flock of sparrows.

Evita Peron 

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Evita

When I was in high school I was not a big theatre nerd. The drama department at my high school was not very big, but in NYC public high schools there is a big competition called SING, and I spent all 4 years involved. Up until my senior, for the most part, that was the extent of our theatre department. Then my senior year the school hired a new teacher to take over the department and build it up into something of substance. To say that the department has grown in tenfold since I graduated in 2007 is an understatement.Susan Wagner has undergone a major renovation, including a 3 million dollar new performing arts building. When I went back to go see Evita I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was not at all surprised at how impressed I was with the caliber of their performance. Evita is not the first show that I would think of a high school performing because of the sheer size of the score, but almost 150 students were flooding the stage to give a phenomenal performance that I could have only dreamed of having in high school. It was really inspiring to be in a space that I would love to have the opportunity to work in someday watching all of these inspired students growing into their own and becoming individual artists. 

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Romeo and Juliet: Re-writing Sub Lesson Plans

As a sub, I spend most days covering for Social Studies classes. I work in a really big high school on Staten Island so any given day there are a least a dozen teachers out. For the most part, I have had really great experiences with all of my classes and kids, but I haven’t always had the best experiences when I have covered classes in the English department. I usually try to avoid them, but needing to work when called, I went in to cover a freshman English class. When I got there, the work the regular classroom teacher left indicated that the class was reading Romeo and Juliet so that made me a little bit happier. When I looked through the work it was obvious that this would take them no more than 10 minutes to complete. And that was pushing it. I flipped through the worksheet and saw that they were assigned to read a scene and then write down a quote from each character in the scene that describes how they are feeling. It was about two days from winter break so you could imagine their hype to get out of the building so I knew I needed to try to figure out something else that I could do with them. Thankfully 1st period was my prep so I was able to brainstorm and throw together some sort of sketch of a lesson plan to fill more of the class period. Keeping the basic outline of the classroom teachers sub work, instead of the students reading the scene on their own we read it out loud together. It was a pretty quick scene but it still took about 20 minutes to get through it in most of the class periods. After reading we had a brief discussion about what we had just read and talked about how each of the characters appeared to be feeling in the scene. From the discussion I separated the class into groups to complete the rest of the assignment. I gave each group a character to focus on and to find a quote to describe how that character is feeling in the scene. I had planned to have each group create a tableau depicting the emotion that the character was feeling, but I was not able to get to that point in the lesson with all of the classes. I was able to reach the end with two of the classes and they did really seem to enjoy it. This day of subbing was a really great lesson for myself as an educator. It was a spur of the moment day that I was able to turn from dread to fun. I had a mix of kids throughout the day that ranged from honors classes to kids with IEP’s so finding the balance of what worked with some kids and what didn’t work well with others was a great hands on lesson for me that I have been able to take into other classrooms.

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The Jungle Book

Today I went up to Tarrytown, NY to Washington Irving Middle School to see their production of The Jungle Book that was directed by Peter Royston. For starters, the town of Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow is so quaint and inviting and I can’t wait to go back there when the weather gets nicer for a day trip. I was also blown away by how beautiful this elementary/middle school auditorium was. It was recently renovated with an updated sound system and sound board, beautiful drapes, an orchestra and mezzanine. When I got there the kids were getting ready for their first performance for their peers and they were all anxious excited. They acted like little professionals during their mic checks and were practicing their lines and getting their props in place. The backdrop for the show was drawn by a third grader in the school and blown up and printed to muslin-such a great way to incorporate kids who may not want to perform. The auditorium was shortly full to capacity and the whole cast did a fantastic job. They had such a great time performing and I loved watching!

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The Staten Island Children’s Museum...

For almost two years I worked as a nanny for two incredible twin girls who I grew to love like they were my own. Their family has become my family and I see them as often as possible. One of the best parts about watching them grow into little humans is that they love to go out and explore everything that is happening in the world around them. I took the girls to the Staten Island Children’s Museum, which if you have never been or heard of is a phenomenal tucked away gem in the heart of the Snug Harbor Cultural Center. There are so many hands on exhibits for the kids-the mission of the museum “is to nurture the creativity and curiosity natural to all children, to recognize and celebrate different learning styles, and to demonstrate vividly that learning can be exciting and fun.”

For the first time, I was in the museum thinking about how I could take what students are learning in the classroom and incorporate these fun exhibits into the curriculum. One of my favorite rooms is Portia’s Playhouse, where kids can put on their own performances and have access to costumes and props to have an authentic and fun experience. For my girls their favorite room is definitely the Bugs and Other Insects. In this exhibit they can crawl through ant hills and hear the hissing cockroach make “crazy noises!”-but this exhibit could be so great for kids learning about the rainforest in their science classrooms, or the metamorphosis of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. The Walk in Workshop is an arts and crafts paradise- definitely one of my favorite rooms!