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Hess highlights the 27 members, mostly from low-income groups, of the Little Fireworks Kids Opera Company at New Hampshire Estates Elementary School in Silver Spring MD. The kids learned the basics of creating an original opera from their teacher, Mary Ruth McGinn, who received training from the Metropolitan Opera Guild's Creating Original Opera Program.
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Second graders write, stage, and sing an original opera, while mastering the three R's.
Enunciate! Watch your stance! Stay in character!" It's a few weeks until opening night for the 27 members of the Little Fireworks Kids Opera Company at New Hampshire Estates Elementary School in Silver Spring, Maryland, and second-grade teacher Mary Ruth McGinn sits cross-legged at the back of the cafeteria, coaching the five performers on stage.
With seriousness beyond their tender ages, the children respond quickly to the sophisticated vocabulary even though only one is a native English speaker. In other rooms students, each with specific jobs within the opera company, work with teachers and volunteers, furiously fashioning the electric footlights, composing music, painting scenery, practicing makeup application, designing publicity flyers, and calling invited guests who haven't yet replied to written invitations.
Such was the scene before last spring's opera, "Old Memories, New Hopes," the culmination of a yearlong effort. McGinn and co-teacher Ellen Levine integrate creation of the opera into the entire curriculum. Music teachers Emily Hines, Sandy Eichler, and Larry Joynes have joined in the endeavor, now starting its third year at the school, whose children mostly come from low-income homes. It sprung out of training McGinn and Levine received from the Metropolitan Opera Guild's Creating Original Opera Program. More than 1,500 teachers from about 800 schools worldwide have participated since the early 1990s. Most teach middle or elementary school students, some as young as first grade.
"It's the hardest work I've ever done but it's also the most rewarding," says McGinn. The teachers start discussing opera from the opening day of school, choosing read-aloud books with especially strong character and plot development.
"We dive deeper, discovering what makes characters tick," says McGinn. Students compare characters from book to book, generating lists of traits and using these to develop their own multifaceted opera characters. The same digging goes on with plot and setting, all the while making connections to real life.
After a few weeks, the children come up with a theme for their opera and apply for jobs within the company. Team-building activities emphasize the importance of each person, onstage and behind the scenes. Meshing the opera with the whole curriculum "gives an authentic purpose to whatever we had to teach them anyway," says Levine. "Usually it's hard to teach kids the idea of writing for an audience, but in this case it's not so difficult." Students learn area and perimeter by measuring the stage and figuring out how large to build the scenery. Electricity is another focus as kids work out the stage lighting.
The Washington Opera has partnered with the project, sending visiting artists to the school and welcoming the children to see a performance, go backstage, and even try on costumes. Baltimore's Peabody Opera comes each fall to perform for all first and second graders. "We do anything we can to make it richer-to give these kids an experience they've never had and may never have again," says McGinn.
To help parents overcome skepticism that their children can learn basic skills through opera, the teachers hold meetings throughout the year to demonstrate the integrated curriculum. During the actual performances, the walls outside the cafeteria are lined with photographs, writing, and models of scenery-all done by students to explain the process. "A bugite is a plne to not spade all your mouny," wrote one budding business manager in a portion of the exhibit about buying the materials.
The teachers raise about $6,000 per year through grants and donations to fund artists' honorariums, field trips, scenery, costumes, babysitters for parent meetings, and more.
The teachers are working to document the program's impact on life skills, such as teamwork, responsibility, and self-confidence. "Unfortunately no one cares to measure these things, but, in life, they're the most important," says McGinn.
Simply put by young Kemeila Reid from last year's class: "I learned that sometimes it can be hard to be a costume and makeup designer. Sometimes we mess up. We learn from our mistakes and we focus on the job we have to do."
- MARY ANNE HESS
It's dress rehearsal time and the second graders of the Little Fireworks Kids Opera Company, led by teacher Mary Ruth McGinn (above) and her colleagues, are pulling it all together for the Big Day-all the math and writing and music and science and wood-working and art and business skills. Discipline problems? Flagging motivation? Not here.
FOR MORE, contact Mary Ruth McGinn at [email protected]. To find out about the Metropolitan Opera Guild's training program for teachers, visit www.operaed.org.
Copyright National Education Association Nov 2003