A Major Operation

Last Thursday, the fifth graders presented their own original opera entitled “Mistaken Word” to rave reviews. The theme was developed from their own experiences and explored how rumors can lead to misunderstandings and hurt feelings. Preschoolers watched the run through on Wednesday, kindergarten through fourth graders, plus sixth graders who created their own opera last year took in the morning performance on Thursday. Parents and siblings crowded the Hajjar Auditorium during the evening. Not just another school play, in which the students learn lines from a play written and directed by adults, the “opera” is the result of a year of original collaborative work by the entire fifth-grade class. As the production manager explained before the opera began, "every word, every note, every design you see and hear was created entirely by us."

PR team member Hannah with the reporter
from NY1 TV - Click here to see the video.

Although there are now hundreds of schools around the world in which students create original opera as part of the Metropolitan Opera Guild’s Creating Original Opera Partnership, Dwight-Englewood has the distinction of being the only school that has continuously presented an original opera since 1988. Actually the opera program was started by music teacher, Mary Heveran, 27 years ago at the Bede School as part of the sixth-grade program, before its merger with Dwight-Englewood.

The Metropolitan Opera Guild created its Creating Original Opera Partnership (COO) to engage students and teachers in an in-depth multi-arts program, emphasizing the effectiveness and value of creating an original work by and for young people. The process-oriented program enables students to expand their writing skills and engage in the cross-disciplinary nature of performance and collaboration. Students participating in COO form a production company in order to write, compose, design, build and perform an original opera.

Students dressed up to see the opera

The paragraph above is from the Met’s website, but it does not do justice to some of its most important benefits, the social and emotional growth that the experience offers fifth graders. First there is the empowering and enduring knowledge that students get from realizing that they have the capability to create something very special from scratch. The entire class wrestles with the theme of their opera. Almost always themes explore issues most important to their own development, such as trust, friendship, mutual support and conflict resolution. Cooperation and collaboration is essential for success. There are disagreements and disappointments as students “apply” for their jobs as carpenters, electricians, performers, set designers, production managers, stage managers, historians and publicists, costume and make-up designers. The process is never completely smooth and students inevitably learn to overcome personal frustration and to concentrate on the goals of the entire group. Four teachers work with the students and coach the process. However, they are very careful to have the students own every step of their creative process. Early in the year the fifth grade takes a field trip to the Met to experience an opera performance, and this year there were alumni and guests from the performing arts who shared their experiences with the students throughout the process.

Dressing up!

There have been challenges as the opera experience has grown to include an increasing number of students from 20 students working together during the first years as part of the Bede School, to 36 students when there were only two classes at the D-E Lower School to close to 50 students with our current three home room fifth-grade configuration.

The process is time consuming, and sometimes might seem inefficient, but such is the problem-solving process. The opera process allows time for students to continue more conventional arts education as well. During the middle part of the year, while teachers are working with half of the opera groups, the others spend time with Middle and Upper School teachers as they learn West African drumming and dancing, continue their formal music education by building on their third-grade recorder skills and explore what they will study as Middle School students in studio art. 

It is no wonder that a number of opera alumni, some now in their 30s ask about the theme of the opera each year. A current senior said at a recent “Lifers Dinner” that the opera experience changed her class into a family. For many, having the experience of creating and producing such a wonderful product from nothing gives them the confidence to think that anything is possible, if you put your mind to it, especially when you get a lot of help from your friends!

For more information about the Metropolitan Opera "Creating Original Opera" program click here. 

NY1 Video link. (may require a Time Warner Cable ID on login)

Link to article on Bergen.com.

Fourth-graders perform an Inca folktale in Spanish during  the Cinco de Mayo assembly presented by third and fourth graders for their parents and second graders.
A link to a video is on the new post on the 3-5 Spanish Blog.

The Cell Phone Challenge

Richard and Jake proudly display the cell phone
that was dropped through the drainage grate.

You may remember that students were presented with a real life engineering challenge of retrieving a cell phone that had been dropped through a drainage grate to rest 10 feet below. Many struggled for days, only managing to lose more things through the grate in the process. However, fifth graders Richard and Jake hung in there, trying a variety of techniques. Once they figured out a strategy, they not only retrieved the cell phone, but everything else that had been dropped in the process. Now that is problem solving!

A meeting of the minds! Members of the Mrs. Barretts' sixth-grade hyper math class, all but one of who came through our Lower School, met with this year's fifth-grade exponent math group in LS math specialist, Cecily Gottling's, math lab.