varsity and varsity teams; next year, she hopes to teach it as an elective. One difference Palmer noticed between her current and previous teaching gigs was how many students arrive at BFA St. Albans without any theatrical experience. At Essex High School, many of her students had taken acting classes or performed in summer musicals. But at BFA, students often looked at Palmer blankly when she mentioned, say, method acting or Bread and Puppet Theater. “You cannot be studying acting in Vermont,” she said, “and not know about Bread and Puppet!” So Palmer formed an after-school group called Theatre for Social Change. The group meets once a week to discuss
Also, Palmer noted, students in the performing arts are learning transferrable skills that will be valuable to them later in life, including public speaking, self-confidence, selfdirection, collaboration, performance under pressure and understanding the different ways in which people communicate. The dramatic arts are also a means for creating interesting, well-rounded citizens, said Doug Bell. As technical manager of the Performing Arts Center, his job includes training the students who work the sound and lighting systems. Bell also teaches engineering at BFA St. Albans and sings with the Vermont Choral Union; he’ll perform this summer with the Pennsylvania Philharmonic. He uses the audiovisual systems as a way to draw in students who see themselves as more math and science oriented than “creative” types. “It’s one of the things I try to point out to my students: You’re not exclusively a math geek or a jock. You can do anything,” Bell said. “You need to be happy and do what makes you happy, not what other people think you should do.” Much of BFA St. Albans’ focus on the arts comes from the top. Superintendent Dirth, who’s been with the district for four years, spent two decades as a music teacher and band director at North Country Union High School in Newport. He has a love for the arts and a firm belief in its educational value. “When I first started in education, the arts were considered a frill,” Dirth said. And then, throughout the 1980s, ’90s and early 2000s, as education put greater emphasis on standardized testing, arts funding was often the first to go, especially in cash-strapped districts. But over the last decade, Dirth noted, research has shown overwhelmingly that students who are involved in the arts become better academicians. And it’s not merely that the “better students” take music or theater, he emphasized, but that the arts make young people better thinkers. “The arts are also important for their own sake, and we can never forget that part,” he added. Go too far in teaching just the fundamentals and “you run the risk of developing … people without a soul, without an understanding of what it is to feel and be human.” m
EDUCATION
I FEEL LIKE I’VE HAD SO MUCH SUPPORT.
SO MANY TEACHERS HAVE BEEN VERY WILLING TO COLLABORATE. S U S A N PA L MER
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FEATURE 37
how the dramatic arts can be used to address political and social issues of relevance to the students, such as gender, cliques and school violence. She invited a Bread and Puppet performer to talk to the group, and the students later attended one of their shows. On another occasion, Palmer invited Charlotte-based Kathryn Blume to speak to the group about her work as a writer, environmental activist, solo performer and cofounder of the Lysistrata Project, a worldwide theatrical event for peace. While Palmer acknowledged that she’s accomplished much in her first year, she emphasized that it couldn’t have happened without the school’s longstanding commitment to the arts. “I feel like I’ve had so much support,” she said. “So many teachers have been very willing to collaborate.” They include Dee Christie, head of the fine arts department. The St. Albans native, who was literally born in the room where she now works — previously, the building was the St. Albans Hospital — has taught at the high school for 30 years. She said that the school has a long tradition of supporting the arts. As she put it, “We can reach kids through the arts that other people can’t.”
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Learn more about Bellows Free Academy St. Albans at maplerun.org/o/bfa. Untitled-7 1
5/24/18 12:38 PM