Past projects 5
Flexible Seating for New Theatre Makers!
Funded Sep 7, 2021Thank you so much for your generous contribution to our whole school community! The benches are beloved by all, and there is a weekly seat rotation so that everyone gets their turn! Additionally they have also provided a helpful alternative for students who need more support or elevation in our theatre space. The benches have also helped our theatre classroom in further defining our performance space versus audience.
Currently our whole school is invested in project based learning surrounding the olympics. In addition to working on an opening ceremony performance, my students are also working on embodying the Olympic pictograms to display around our "Olympic Stadium." Studying the pictograms has been fun with my multilingual ENL students, as these were originally developed in 1964 to help overcome the language barriers that are prevalent at the Olympic games. The benches have been an extraordinary prop and set piece in helping us achieve the most authentic pictograms with our bodies. Suddenly our benches are no longer benches, but instead are bobsleds, luges, skeletons and snowboards.
Thank you for investing my students. I am grateful! They are grateful! Your donation is being used every single day.”
With gratitude,
Ms. McAdams
Empower New Voices by Bringing Them to the Stage!
Funded May 13, 2019I cannot thank you enough for your contribution to our "Empower New Voices by Bringing Them to the Stage" project! Thanks to your generosity, this was absolutely a huge success! This was hands down one of the most exciting and meaningful projects. Over the past four months, I have witnessed my children develop into mature playwrights who take feedback from their peers seriously on top of also understanding the many considerations of writing a play for an audience.
With your donation, we were also able to bring in a professional playwright/teaching artist to help facilitate their learning. The children loved him, and as a theatre educator, the fact that a playwright has super star status to them is so heartwarming and thrilling. When the children heard the professional actors read the first draft of their play, I was so impressed with how our students really challenged themselves to listen with an excited yet critical ear so that in their revising they could make their play the best it could be. They were so excited to write their incredible ideas into a cohesive play, and on the day the professional actors returned to perform their final play, their excitement was uncontainable. The students were so proud of their work. They waited with anticipation for the scenes they wrote, and beamed with pride and joy while hearing them performed by professionals.
Thank you for granting them a once in a lifetime opportunity that they will remember forever. I am beyond thankful for your generosity!”
With gratitude,
Ms. McAdams
This classroom project was brought to life by Craig Newmark Philanthropies and 48 other donors.Help Costume the Cast of Civil Shadows!
Funded Nov 13, 2015Thank you so much for your generous contribution to Civil Shadows: A Musical by the Students (for the People). Words do not adequately describe the impact your thoughtfulness meant to the children involved in our production and our school community at large.
Our little musical made a big impact. The students involved studied and pondered the questions and repercussions of the Civil War. They created a show where a community of news reporters explore the lives of the "common" men and women depicted in Civil War monuments. In our show, these monuments become breaking news after being defaced due to various inequalities that still exist in America today. Throughout the show, they asked the question: "Why do bad things have to happen in order for us to talk about injustice?" This is a question we posed to our community (that includes you, of course) and one that we will continue to think about in our school. We hope our musical will continue to encourage young people and grown-ups to bring history out of the shadows and stand up for justice.
Your generous donations were also featured on News 12 Brooklyn. Our students were interviewed in costume about their experience writing and performing this show. You helped our kids and you helped our neighborhood.
The donations you provided specifically allowed our kids to not only feel like these characters, but to also confidently look like them. Your generosity provided them with a confidence boosting, academically rewarding, thought-provoking and top-notch looking production that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. Thank you so much for your kindness! You mean so much to us.”
With gratitude,
Ms. McAdams
Microphones to Promote Theatre Troupe Confidence
Funded Apr 26, 2014Thank you so much for the microphones you donated to our theatre troupe! I wish you all could have been present to see their performance during our first annual Spring Arts Festival. They were a hit! I could not have been more proud of the work they shared. The work was their own through and through. They wrote their own script, came up with designs for the set, helped direct the show, and they each developed unique characters with unique character voices. Their voices were so articulate, clear, confident and LOUD, all thanks to YOU!
I wish you could have been in our classroom the day I let them know we would be getting microphones for our performance. A sense of excitement, relief, and of gratitude filled the room. The day the microphones arrived was even more exciting. Everyone passed them around and we happily labeled them with our school's theatre troupe name. Each student involved was so happy to know that we wouldn't have to worry about their carefully written words being unheard. This provided them with an additional sense of confidence. You provided them with a tool of empowerment, which we are all so grateful for!!!
In theatre we always talk about the actor's tools: voice, body, and imagination. This gift truly helped them to consider, craft and develop character voices that were uniquely expressive to their characters. They were able to be creative, confident, and loud! Thank you!
Your gift also went beyond just our theatre troupe, and it impacted our community at large. So many students, teachers and families from our community shared with the theatre troupe students how much they enjoyed the show and were proud of them. This had a tremendous impact on them as young performers, and words would never be enough to express our sincere thanks.
Thank you for giving us this extraordinary gift for young students to share their individual and unique voices! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!”
With gratitude,
Ms. McAdams
This classroom project was brought to life by 100 Women in Hedge Funds and 8 other donors.Elementary Students Building Confidence Through Movie Making
Funded Dec 29, 2013Thank you all so much for donating the video cameras, tri-pod and memory cards to our theatre classroom. I wish you could have been present the day the materials arrived at our school. You would have thought the President himself had arrived. My children are so grateful to you, and they are SO proud of the creative work they have done and are doing on our movie making projects. As I have visited and coached these projects, I can say without a doubt that filming the projects has been the absolute favorite part of this project for the kids, and YOU made that happen for them. After each class I hear "this is so much fun" and "I can't wait until next week." The first day we tried out the video camera and green screen together is one of my fondest moments of my teaching experience. They felt transported! There we were in our small classroom, yet thanks to you, the magic of technology and their brilliant imaginations, we can be anywhere in the world we want to be. Thank you for bringing this resource and empowerment into their young lives.
I have to say, I was so excited when during parent-teacher conferences I had parents come up to me and say how excited they were about our film projects. One parent said they talk about the project at dinner often, and they have written theatre class on their family calendar so that they remember not to send their children to school wearing green (for the green screen). Your resources are extending beyond the classroom, and I can't wait for the 2nd graders to share their commercials with their families in May and the 4th graders to show their movies in June.
The 2nd graders have been using the video cameras to film their persuasive writing commercials. They have chosen unique backgrounds, props, have directed their acting, and have directed each shot. The 4th graders just finished Macbeth, and they are busy working on their screenplay adaptations. They will begin filming these after Spring Break.
The video cameras have added such a sense of importance to their work. The students are not only being challenged to think about theatre more visually but also more technologically. They are writing more liberally, descriptively and imaginatively, because they know with film they have many options for backgrounds, sound effects and special effects. Seeing my 4th graders so passionate about screen writing has been such a thrill to watch. Most of all, these resources have given them a unique platform to express their opinions and feel their ideas validated.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for the impact you have made in our lives!”
With gratitude,
Ms. McAdams
This classroom project was brought to life by Disney and 7 other donors.