Imagination and Discovery: New Routes to Learning for Underserved Youth

Bret Hart Middle School, Claremont Middle School, Dolores Huerta Leaning Academy, Fruitvale Elementary School, Oakland Senior High School, Oakland Military Institute, and Skyline High School. Areas served: West Oakland, Fruitvale, North Oakland, Lower Hills, and South Hills (2009)

OFFTA funding helped support California Shakespeare Theater residencies that partnered trained Teaching Artists with classroom teachers to integrate works of Shakespeare and other theater arts-based instruction into core curriculum at these Oakland schools. Residency lessons addressed state standards in various subject areas, as driven by the goals of each classroom teacher, including English-Language Arts and History-Social Science. 7th graders performed original monologues inspired by students’ interviews of extended family members; 3rd-graders created and performed a script based on writing assignments during their study of Native American societies, 10th graders wrote poetry in response to The Crucible, 9th graders learned and performed scenes from Midsummer and Romeo and Juliet; and 4th and 5th graders created staged pictures of major plot points in Midsummer for a Shakespearean “comic book.”