Students from kindergarten to 12th grade participated in a variety of learning opportunities because of these grants.
The Allied Arts provided the Upper School with two grants for Shakespearean studies this year. The first grant was Introduction to Shakespeare. Connie Gatlin, a former drama instructor and English teacher, visited to give the middle school and high school students an acting workshop where they did impromptu skits and learned about staging a play. Gatlin taught the students the importance of stage presence, verbal delivery, and character interpretation. Students worked in groups and individually on their acting skills culminating in a production of the Shakespearean performance on May 3 at TCPS.
The second Shakespeare grant, “To Be or Not To Be Shakespeare Performing Club”, allowed Lisa Stewart and Wendy Benton to direct the middle and high school students in a performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Because of this grant, TCPS students were able to present an entertaining version of one of Shakespeare’s most popularly staged plays while also learning the rudiments of Shakespearean English and performance.
In April 2012, Maurine Olin shared many insightful and fun techniques with the TCPS middle school students for a Story Telling Workshop. She shared her expertise with the students and focused on the delivery of various forms of writing in public. Students were able to gain an understanding of how to appeal to a particular audience as a result of the instruction and coaching from Maurine depending on the type of writing they were performing. Students performed poetry the following week at the First Annual Poetry Reading Night. Students were confident in their reading and showed a mastery of the skills taught by Maurine Olin. Fourth and fifth grade students shared in a Story Telling workshop as well with Olin and have already begun building their own story telling skills to prepare for their story telling debuts.
Michelle Morgan’s Kindergarten class received an Art Grant “Native Americans: How Did They Make That?”
This grant served the kindergarten and first grade students at TCPS. Artist Jennifer White taught students about the history of Native American pottery and how it was made. The students were then given clay and were able to make pinch pots. The pots were given two weeks to dry and White then returned to school and worked with the students to paint the pots.
Local art therapist Blythe Mayfield participated in an Exploring Collage grant with TCPS students. Mayfield showed them collage examples to inspire them to choose a “theme” for their work. Students used a wide variety of “found” objects as well as papers to create their final work.
Middle and high school students gleaned pottery and ceramic skills from two Allied Arts grants entitled Ceramic Mural Workshop and Ceramic Sculpture/Hand Building Workshop. Over the course of one week, Athens artist and sculptor Andy Phipps taught high school students to create functional pottery like bowls and free-form objects. Middle school classes created works of sculpture by building on square tiles of clay. Both groups were taught the technique of “bonding”, the properties of clay, the “coil method”, as well as the use of various ceramic tools. Students were able to glaze their work as well after Mr. Phipps completed the firing process. All of these Grants and the students’ work will be on display at the TCPS Fine Arts Festival Tuesday, May 15 from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm. TCPS invites the community to come and enjoy the arts.
