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.
Our Current Adoption
Highlights of our stay at Chester A. Arthur school adoption are: 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, How I Became a Pirate and The Adventures of Flat Stanley; 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.
The 2009-10 school year included 939 teaching artist hours at the school, where arts instruction was increased 300%. The first annual Fall Talent Show involved 89 students and 8 teachers. The spring musical performance of Oz helped raise $400 for future years of drama club and included 47 students, 9 teachers and a "standing room only" audience. We also, 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.
Teachers report 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."
Alumni Schools
Alumni Schools of the Adopt-A-School program include: Samuel S. Fels High School, Girard Academic Music Program, General George A. McCall School, William M. Meredith School and Chester A. Arthur School. Mini-adoptions have occurred at G.W. Pepper Middle School and A.M.Y. at James Martin.
For more information about these programs, contact the Walnut Street Theatre Education Department at 215-574-3550, x510 or email us.
