Brooklyn Theatre Arts Newspaper Elective--WHAT IS THE SUM OF OUR PARTS?

Brooklyn Theatre Arts High School is a Title 1 Empowerment school in its first year of existence. The school integrates Theatre Arts into the Humanities classes. Students explore History and Literature through drama exercises taught by profesisonal thetare artists from Vital Thetare Company in New York City. There are 80 students currently in our first ninth grade ever. 7 of those students are SpecEd.

Eighteen students have volunteered for the newspaper elective. Their first edition of the school newspaper came out with hand-drawn cartoons and includes a fashion column, a music column, a sports column, and editorials. Social Studies Teacher Angelica Melendez, took the students' handwritten work home with her, typed it all into her computer and created our first newspaper. The students greeted it with great enthusiasm.

The school is one of three new schools that has been placed within a larger school called South Shore that is being phased out by the DOE. Four different student bodies inhabit one large school building. They pass each other in the halls but have no knowledge of each other. Communication between schools is essential to the success of all of our endeavors. Thus, the final issue of our school newspaper, due out in May, will explore all four schools in the building and deal with the many complex issues of sharing space.

Using a mobile Digital Camera Lab, BTAHS students would be able to explore this lesson while being introduced to new technology and incorporating visual, linguistic and verbal and social skills.

The focus of the issue and the question for all of the columnists and writers would be:

What makes each school different? What makes them the same? What do we add up to together?

Editorial students would interview and survey 3-4 students from each of the schools about their feelings and experiences of sharing the school building with each other. They would photograph student faces and students in action, They would take pictures of their classrooms and other classrooms in action. Yisa Durosinmi, who wants to be a filmmaker, and all students could use a camera to start exploring the concepts of framing shots and the basics of composition. The Fashion editor would compare and contrast fashion trends in the different schools. The Sports Editor would interview one athlete from each new school. The Music critic would interview members from all the studnt bodies about their music preferences. Photos and personal interviews would allow the beginning of communication between these two students bodies. The project would allow for the beginning of communication between these very different institutions and teh baility to see photos of different faces would make this very large school more familiar. We could teach the students that we are truly, the sum of our parts.