February 17, 2005

EDITORIAL

Mills Lawn School staff, parents and student should take a bow

Bravo, Mills Lawn School. The school’s musical, Schoolhouse Rock Live!, which was presented over the weekend, was a great example of organizing, designing and pulling off a sophisticated school-wide event.

The show’s coordinators took the catchy, well-known tunes from the “Schoolhouse Rock” television series of the 1970s — remember “I’m Just a Bill,” “Conjunction Junction” and “Interplanet Janet”? — and put their own twist on the musical, designing a production that, as the director, Becky Brunsman, told the News, was “up to Mills Lawn standards.” The results were 11 songs and an Irish dance that made two entertaining performances of musical theater. The Mills Lawn staff, teachers, parents and students should take a bow for their hard, creative work.

They performed before a packed audience of parents, siblings, grandparents and admirers from Yellow Springs at the Robeson Performing Arts Center at Central State on both Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. You could tell who had kids in the show by the beaming smiles they wore after the performances.

The production featured more than 280 students, in first through sixth grade, including a chorus of more than 140 kids. The show received technical and behind the scenes support from a crew of more than 20 teachers, school district staff, parents and students. The show was directed by Ms. Brunsman, the kindergarten teacher, and produced by Amy Minehart, who teaches art, and Becky O’Brien, who coordinates the school’s Interest Learning Education Program.

Schoolhouse Rock was the third major production that Mills Lawn has produced and performed at Central State, which has a theater large enough to hold the Mills Lawn audience. All-school performances like Schoolhouse Rock demonstrate how well the Mills Lawn staff incorporates art in the classroom and in students’ lives. Schoolhouse Rock is one more example from Mills Lawn of the type of work students can create when they are exposed regularly to art and encouraged to express themselves.

Take, for instance, how, after 120 students auditioned for the musical, teachers were able to incorporate into the show every student who tried out and committed to rehearsing after school. That’s a commitment from the teachers to encourage students to be creative and participate in important and fulfilling extracurricular activities. Mills Lawn teachers and staff should be commended for giving their students the opportunity to be a part of a creative, professionally produced large-scale performance.

But the lessons go further: through a production like Schoolhouse Rock, students are not only exposed to the arts, they also learn important skills, such as team work, patience and cooperation, and get to understand the fruits of hard work. One day, years from now, these students will remember with pride the times they stood, and danced and sang, on a large professional stage in front of 1,600 people.

Mills Lawn may have presented Schoolhouse Rock just twice, but the lessons the students learned during the months of rehearsal, and the experience they gained from working as a group on a major production, will stay with them for a lifetime.

—Robert Mihalek