Residency in Heathcote & The Shadow Puppet Show!

3/9 - 3/27 2009. Heathcote 3rd grade classrooms. The Heathcote Team: Pam Sparks, Lisa Onofri, Amber Frantz, Alice Yugovich, Katerine Bescherer, Mary Ann Kingston, Mark Goldberg, and Jodi Giroux.

My residency at Heathcote was a very powerful experience about collaboration. By far, I spent the longest time in my elementary school residency at Heathcote. The teachers agreed to use the folk stories as the theme for a collaborative project. 

Despite some initial obstacles, the project went very well. In fact, it was the most monumental work during my whole residency. We did a shadow puppet show featuring mouse deer stories, the Indonesia folk tales that I taught to kids. 

We divided the work into three areas: creating the puppets (Ms. Lisa Onofri's class), composing the music (Amber Frantz's class), and narrating the stories (Ms. Pam Sparks' class). Special credits should also be given to Ms. Alice Yugovich (the Art teacher), Ms. Katherine Bescherer (the Music teacher) for the wonderful creative ideas that made the performance looked spectacular. Also, Ms. Mary Ann Kingston, who helped prepare the narration. We spent a few weeks in preparing the whole show, and finally we pulled it off. We performed it in the auditorium. 

The puppet show itself  was a testimony of the district’s commitment to global education, the great support from the administrators, the incredible talent and effort from Scarsdale teachers and students in Heathcote, and most importantly the amazing miracles than children can do, and this is what exactly this performance proved to us once again. Shadow puppet is one of the longest oral traditions in human history, recognized by UNESCO as the Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Mouse deer is a very famous character in Indonesian children stories. It was a very special show for all of us who were involved, an unforgettable experience for the rest of our life!

Apart from Heathcote 3rd grade parents, K-2 classrooms, some of the guests were the Indonesian Consul General, Madame Sadmojo, District's superintendent, Dr. Mike McGill, and other key District's staff, Dr. Joan Weber, Dr. Lynne Shain, Dr. Bob DiYanni, and Dr. Eve Eisenstadt. The students did a great job, and I heard that it is a very popular program in Scarsdale Cable Television. If you missed it, and would like to watch this amazing production too, here is the link:

http://sps.pegcentral.com/player.php?video=eb166a3abf8e5c914f2cff5d2f64ac65

In addition, students also learned a great deal about Indonesia from the lessons both in the regular and special classrooms. They showed constant enthusiasm. They were very inquisitive in learning about Indonesian geography, family life, schools, games, government, economics, animals, plants, art, music, sport, and folk tales. In many ways I feel that they have built a very good foundation for intercultural awareness and understanding, which will definitely equip them to be successful global citizens living  the 21st century world. What a great learning time!