July 31, 2009
by Marci Garson
“The game has begun!” announced actress and teacher Katie Hartky from the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. And immediately her students formed two concentric circles. One boy from the inner circle lifted his hands and pinched his fingers together mimicking the pinchers of a scorpion. Then, with eyes closed, he began blindly exploring the circle searching for his prey.
It was an acting exercise and its purpose was to prepare students from the Bronx, who have been selected to participate in a three-year summer scholarship program in Chappaqua, for their in-class production of William Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing.”
“It’s better than sitting down and reading the book,” commented Imannie Wiltshire who is spending her first summer here. She will be a tenth grader at Dewitt Clinton High School in the Bronx this fall. “You study the characters and understand [Shakespeare] the way it was meant to be.” Wiltshire is one of twenty students whose academic record and motivation helped her to qualify for this unique experience in Chappaqua. “We look for high performing, highly motivated kids and invite them into our program based on our assessment of how much they could benefit from participating in CSSP,” explained Fran Alexander, a board member of the Chappaqua Summer Scholarship Program.
Chappaqua Summer Scholarship Program, a long-term experiment in sharing
The Chappaqua Summer Scholarship Program is a non-profit, wholly volunteer organization that was started forty years ago by local residents who wanted to share Chappaqua’s educational resources with high-achieving New York City students. Individual donations are primarily responsible for the more than $2,000 needed per student each summer for tuition, transportation, supplies and activities.
Several institutions and foundations also donate funds and services, pointed out Diane Albert, current chair of the board of the Chappaqua Summer Scholarship Program. The program has the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville to thank for making it possible for the summer students to take a class at the film center called “Reel Change,” which teaches how the media affects social change. The Danbury, Connecticut – based Praxair Foundation is funding a computer robotics course for the summer students.
Shakespeare comes to the summer program thanks to a local foundation
Two years ago The Frog Rock Foundation, a Westchester-based philanthropic organization that funds organizations working with disadvantaged children in Westchester County, began funding the summer Shakespeare class. It is taught by two actors from the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, a critically acclaimed regional theater company that performs Shakespeare all summer long at historic Boscobel in Garrison, New York, overlooking the Hudson River, and provides educational programs throughout the tri-state area as well. http://hvshakespearefestival.org
“We are blown away by their creativity,” Katie Hartke acknowledged, as she and her fellow teacher – and husband – Ryan Quinn finished up the scorpion game and led the kids into another exercise where they imitate talk show hosts and interview one another.
“Everything in life is related to a Shakespeare play,” commented Marcia Clark, the public relations consultant to the Shakespeare Festival who works closely with the Festival’s educational program. The class sets the kids on a journey that helps them explore the often-confusing world of William Shakespeare, she explained. “It is a mix of performance, student interaction and an array of acting techniques and analysis,” the former performing arts major added.
Quinn and Hartke call their students “extraordinary, special kids,” who take care of one another and have a true sense of self. Quinn credits the program with allowing these kids to delve in depth into Shakespeare, especially since they must participate in the program for three consecutive summers. The teachers believe it gives the kids a chance to gain self-awareness and confidence. The kids added, “And it’s a lot of fun.”
“It wasn’t my favorite genre,” grinned Qendrim Gjevukaj, a native Albanian who will be a junior at the Collegiate Institute of Math and Science High School in the Bronx this coming school year. “When I came here I actually got interested [in Shakespeare]. You get a whole new perspective.”
This is Gjevukaj’s second summer in Chappaqua. He believes he has also gotten a whole new perspective on life in the suburbs. All of the students live with a host family Monday through Friday while they attend classes and enrichment activities. “Chappaqua is awesome,” Gjevukaj enthused, and stressed that it’s a lot different from home. “The Bronx is so active, but here it’s really calm and settled. You just want to lie in the grass and fall asleep, it’s so peaceful.”
Students and their host families both benefit from the summer program
Gjevukaj is staying with Diane Quandt, a Chappaqua Summer Scholarship Program board member who has been a host mother for the past 20 years. “People who host start and don’t stop,” she explained. “I was home with young children running around. I wanted the experience to help the kids and the exposure for my own two children who were growing up in an affluent community.” She noted, “Chappaqua is a very homogenous community.”
Board member Fran Alexander is also a host parent and she considers the experience as enriching for families who have opened up their homes as it is for the kids. “We see them transform and thrive. The first time they arrive at the Chappaqua train station, they don’t know what they’ve gotten themselves into. They’ve never seen anything like this in their lives, the trees, the big houses, the sound of insects.” Imannie Wiltshire agreed. “It’s a lot of green!” she exclaimed.
Besides academics the students perform community service at Northern Westchester Shelter. In the afternoons they can play tennis at Greeley and swim at the Saw Mill Club.
The Greeley counseling department also volunteers its services, meeting with seniors once a week to give them individual help with the college application process.
When asked to give an example of how successful the program is, board members Albert and Quandt recalled a young Vietnamese immigrant who was extremely shy and did not have a good command of the English language when he started in the Chappaqua Summer Scholarship Program. He blossomed over the three summers he spent in Chappaqua, they noted, graduating valedictorian from his high school. He is now a graduate of the University of Virginia and has a career as a civil engineer, they reported. Now that’s about as far from a Shakespearean tragedy as you can get.
Marci Garson is an Emmy-award winning television reporter. For 15 years she covered national news on Capitol Hill and local news in Miami, Florida, Connecticut and New York. Garson moved to Chappaqua in 1995 to raise her two boys.
Copyright 2012 NewCastleNOW.org