Students perform "The Three Little Pigs on Tour"
Adopt-A-School Program
Walnut Street Theatre's Adopt-A-School program creates a special three-year partnership with a K-8 Philadelphia Center City public school. It creates long term, meaningful partnerships with individual schools to nurture the direct links between Walnut Street Theatre and its surrounding community. During our three-year stay at the host school, students and faculty members receive many unique opportunities to use Walnut Street Theatre's resources, including in-school performances and workshops. The Adopt-A-School program is individually designed to meet the Arts Education needs of the host school in creating theatre curriculum, improving students' dramatic skills and guiding teachers through every aspect of producing a theatre performance. We seek to support education reform by improving the school environment through enriching the school community.
Past adoptees have included: Laura Wheeler Waring School, Meredith Elementary School, McCall Elementary School, Girard Academic Musical Academy and Samuel Fels High School.
More About the Recent Laura Wheeler Waring School Adoption and Our Successes
The recent (2005-2008) adoption at the Laura Wheeler Waring School contained many highlights including the creation of a "black-box theatre" within the school; A teaching artist in residence to provide weekly instruction for all students; Performances at the school; Trips to the theatre to see productions; After-school Drama Club; Professional workshops for teachers; A culminating performance of the After-School Drama club drawing 300 students, parents, teachers and community members for a Spaghetti Dinner and Performance of OZ at the Highway Tabernacle Church.
Our Current Adoption
The Chester A. Arthur School, located at 20th and Catherine, is our current adoptee from September 2008 through May 2011. Our next search will begin in February of 2011.
Highlights of the first year for the Chester A. Arthur school adoption included: 4-6 week arts integration units in every classroom; Trips to the theatre to see productions, including A Christmas Carol, The Berenstain Bears Family Matters, and How I Became a Pirate; Performances by Walnut Street Theatre's Touring Outreach Company at the school; After-school drama club instruction; Professional Development workshops for teachers; Scholarships to the Theatre School at Walnut Street Theatre for selected students; Scholarships to Camp Walnut at Walnut Street Theatre for selected students; Installation of a sound system with two microphones; Drama club performance for parents and the community; and multiple all-school performance assemblies by students for students.
This year we launched the first annual Fall Talent Show which involved 89 students and 8 teachers! We also installed a sound system with two microphones, organized a book drive at Camp Walnut that yielded over 900 new and gently used books for the school library, and created a new program to encourage student attendance that resulted in over 100 donated gifts being raffled in December.
Quantifiable signs of success included: 148 of 150 invited students attended A Christmas Carol setting an attendance record of 99% on the day of the show; 87 students self-selected to participate in the after school drama club (this is over one third of the school!!) ; 4 teachers served as advisors and assisted with the drama club; Teachers reported that WST "exceeded their expectations" and are "thrilled" and "grateful for the adoption." One teacher wrote, "The only two questions my kids consistently ask are: 'is it pretzel day' or 'is there drama club today?'" At the final drama club performance a teacher commented, "In the ten years I have been here, I have never seen this many parents in our school!", and another teacher remarked, "I've never heard children sing at school before."
For more information about these programs, contact the Walnut Street Theatre Education Department at 215-574-3550, x510 or email us.
