It's time to get ready for our annual dramatic peformance! For the past several years, we have performed student written plays in conjuction with the Vermont Young Playwright Festival. This year, our production has evolved even more! The plays have become a focus for our Project Based Learning. Project Based Learning is a teaching method in which students gain knowledge, skills, and experience by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to a complex question, problem, or challenge. Teachers are working to include more project based learning in their individual curriculums and we also wanted to create a school-wide project. In this case, the challenge is collaborating to produce a performance and event!
All of our students are contributing to produce this year's student-written plays. Throughout several community meetings, we worked with students to figure out what they wanted the event to look like. Several ideas came up, including having the plays be the centerpiece of an Arts Fest, where we can showcase other aspects of the program, such as stained glass, creative writing, etc. Using those meetings as a springboard, we broke the school into four groups, and are letting students take the lead on play-producing, event-coordinating, and documentation & outreach. Now, we have weekly project days, where the whole school works on their team to set goals and make and execute plans to reach them. Last week, in the library, the actors read through their plays, while the tech team listened and began brainstorming for set design ideas. At the same time, at a local coffee shop, the coordination team tackled questions of ticketing and budgeting. The documentation team was busy lining up interviews and snapped pictures of the teams at work.
The Arts Fest will happen the weekend of April 1 & 2, aligning with our Maple fest. It will be a weekend of performance, maple tours, and brunch, and students will have made it all happen! We are planning a 7 pm performance on Friday, April 1st. Maple activities are Saturday, April 2. Stay tuned for more information about the event!