{"id":8921,"date":"2019-04-01T09:47:35","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T13:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/?p=8921"},"modified":"2019-04-16T14:40:33","modified_gmt":"2019-04-16T18:40:33","slug":"unique-collaboration-brings-art-theater-high-school-and-first-grade-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/unique-collaboration-brings-art-theater-high-school-and-first-grade-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Unique collaboration brings art, theater, high school and first-grade together"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWho\u2019s excited?\u201d<\/p>\n

Salem High School theater teacher Christa Vogt stood before a class of first-graders at Rosemont Forest Elementary School\u2019s cafeteria March 26.\u00a0Their response included enthusiastic hand-raising and nervous giggling.<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t the first time that Vogt had asked the same class that very same question.<\/p>\n

Flashback six weeks to Feb. 5, in the Rosemont Forest art classroom. Vogt and the first-graders\u2019 teacher, art specialist Pamela Thompson, stood before the eager learners just before they were introduced to Salem High School\u2019s theater students.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou\u2019re going to create a creature. It\u2019s going to be about you, your personality,\u201d Thompson explained to her class. \u201cTalk about your three favorite foods, your three favorite animals, your three favorite colors, and your three favorite things about yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vogt continued, \u201cThese older students you\u2019re about to meet are designers. They\u2019re going to design what you all create and they\u2019re going to bring it to life for you. They\u2019re going to make it for YOU! Who\u2019s excited?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWOOOOOOOOOOOW\u201d was the reaction from the first-graders as the elder students were paired up with their young artists. This project required the first-graders to draw their two-dimensional \u201cpersonal creatures\u201d and talk about themselves with their high school partners.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s doing something more meaningful than just reading a script and analyzing a character on paper and then creating it in theory,\u201d said Vogt of the exercise for her theater students. \u201cThis is talking to a real life character…a first-grader….a person.\u00a0Trying to find out who they are. How their costume design work can be inspired by a real person.”<\/p>\n

This collaboration was the brainstorm of Virginia Beach City Public Schools Fine Arts Coordinator Chris Buhner, who knew these veteran educators would work well together, despite the fact they had not met previously.<\/p>\n

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Thompson was all in as soon as she was asked. “Anytime I get a chance to work with another school, I jump on it with both feet.”<\/p>\n

Tenth-grader Taylor Saunders confessed to being nervous. “I don’t have siblings. I don’t deal with little children a lot. So I wasn’t sure what they would be like. But I got here and ended up being paired with Sophia and she was so adorable and shy, and she just reminded me of me when I was her age. And she ended up drawing a Yorkie and I have one. It was like fate. I am very excited about this.”<\/p>\n

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Connor Land and Clara Synowiec were teamed-up with first-grader Ben Williams, and his creature was a bit more complicated.<\/p>\n

\u201cBen loves orange. LOVES orange,\u201d Land said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s a frog that wears a jetpack and boots,\u201d Synowiec added. \u201cIn space. And in the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The theater students returned to Salem High School with the drawings and, over the weeks, created sewing patterns and built three dimensional toy sculptures based on them. Meantime, Vogt looped in her Acting Lab students and had them to come up with a short performance based on the sculptures.<\/p>\n

Which leads back to Rosemont Forest on a late March afternoon.<\/p>\n