Trauma, recent immigration and inner-city crime make life difficult for children in many American cities, but drama provides a powerful tool for transcendence. This idea inspired educator Margie Maher to start a children’s theatre project in Providence Rhode Island, in space at a local church, using small foundation grants. Students come from various parts of the globe.
The CTC project took on new layers of meaning when she decided to integrate process and performance in her character education goals. She requested materials and mentorship from Full-Circle Learning and spent 40 hours training her team of 13 in Full-Circle Learning strategies. Using scripts that featured student vignettes linked to the habit-of-heart as the basis for scenes in the play, she encourages the students and staff to find new connections between music, dance, drama, art and “internalization of the values we are attempting to teach.”
After a successful 2009 season, she wrote:
The best part for me was one of the posters that the children made for the backdrop, ‘CTC is one big family!’ The attitude of caring for one another that permeated the group and was so evident as they performed brought joy to my heart. Using FCL curriculum truly has the power to transform these children's lives. This was our best production to date.”
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