• PAMELA BOND - Victoria Advocate
• Originally published May 16, 2008 at 9:23 a.m., updated May 16, 2008 at 9:23 a.m.

Before Drama For Schools training, Krista Boldt, a seventh grade social studies teacher at Patti Welder Middle School, said she would have been afraid to stand up in front of her class as Abraham Lincoln.

“Drama For Schools is the most wonderful tool in the classroom,” Boldt said. “Today’s students have a lot of different learning styles and we need to change the way we teach. It gets the students excited about learning and that makes teaching worthwhile.”

Drama For Schools is a professional development program in place at the district’s three middle schools and Profit Magnet High School that focuses on drama-based instruction. The program exists in three school districts in Texas and one in Alaska through the University of Texas Austin Department of Theatre and Dance’s Arts in Communities initiative.

Katie Dawson, the program’s director and a lecturer at UT, gave a presentation on the program and its success in the district over the past three years at Thursday’s school board meeting.

“It gets kids up and moving and asking questions,” Dawson said. “It gets them a context to use and apply knowledge. When people apply what they’ve learned, they are able to remember it and connect it.”

The program trains teachers to use drama-based instruction in the classroom. An example Dawson gave is a math teacher pretending to lay carpet in a room that’s an irregular shape and enlisting the help of students as a way of learning those shapes.

UT and the district jointly applied for a Department of Education grant for $350,000 a year for three years, which would fund the program in all the district’s schools over the next three years. Thirty of these grants are given out nationally.

“We were originally interested in it as teaching method for addressing gangs and violence,” said board member Bernard Klimist. “It’s a great tool for teachers to reach these kids that we’re losing. The only reason we have a prayer for this grant is because UT chose us as their partner in this grant.”

Pamela Bond is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact her at 361-580-6578 or pbond@vicad.com, or comment on this story at www.victoriaadvocate.com.

• Print
• •
• Share
  • Share this item

    Send this to a friend

    Share on FaceBook

  • Grab the link

    Copy and paste the link:

  • Blog about it

    Blog about this page.

  • Close
• •
• Post a Comment
• •
• Favorite
• •
• Report error
  • Thank you for your submission.
    Error report or correction

    Contact name (optional) Contact phone/e-mail (optional)  

    
  • Close
• •