lettering

Last night was a party/awards ceremony for students in the high school drama club in my small town. As director of their competitive one-act play, I was there to hand out some of the awards.

I enjoy working with these kids. They want so much to have a strong drama club and they've pushed hard to increase from doing only one one-act play (with the three or four people who audition) to doing the one-act play, a full-length play, and a variety show. The drama club has twenty-four active members -- not bad for a school with a graduating class of only 68.

Part of their success has been their adult leader. Many of the kids don't care for their leader, and I have some issues with her actual abilities in theatre, but I admire her dedication and support of the kids. Because of her efforts at lobbying the school and creating an outline and plan, she has succeeding in establishing a point system for drama kids to earn a school "letter."

This may not seem like a big deal to you or me, many years removed from school, but I think it's long past time that many schools recognize the hard work and many hours that students put in to working in the arts.

Seven students received their drama-earned letter last night, and certainly many of the others saw that and will (hopefully) work a little harder next year to receive theirs

And the efforts of the drama club leader have already opened the door for including speech team members as well.

And the more students wearing the school jackets with an arts-earned letter will hopefully raise awareness of the value of arts in education, making it harder and harder for schools to cut arts programming.