Actors, Teachers Join Forces In Yonkers

YONKERS, N.Y. – A Westchester college is using storytelling to connect with Yonkers’ elementary students.

Purchase College, SUNY,  and its Performing Arts Center have introduced a number of city students to a literacy program, inserting professional actors into English and language arts classrooms.

Working closely with teachers, the artists use storytelling and acting techniques in ways that are helping to improve students' writing and public speaking abilities, said Ian Driver, manager of education for Purchase College’s Performing Arts Center.

The program “is intended to not only integrate performing arts into the school day, but actively impact other areas of the curriculum while doing so,” said Driver, the man who piloted the program in Yonkers Paideia School 15 last year.

The literacy program, called Neighborhood Bridges, is modeled after a Minnesota program that has enjoyed success on a national level. By combining the abilities of actors and teachers, educators can use storytelling, theater and creative writing to challenge students into developing critical thinking skills and improve their narrative and descriptive writing, Driver said.

Two years ago, he brought his model of the program to a fifth-grade classroom in Yonkers, much to the delight of instructors at Paideia.

“We are eager to engage more of our classes in this program,” Paideia Principal Michael Shapiro said in a news release. “Neighborhood Bridges not only helped our students improve their writing skills but also empowered them through increased self- esteem, heightened confidence in public speaking and improved social skills.”

Thanks to its successes last year in Yonkers, Purchase College’s program was awarded a grant by The Frog Rock Foundation, allowing it to expand to other schools in Westchester this fall.

As a result, educators from across the county were in Yonkers last week, learning the program and how to best implement it in their own classroom.

They were joined by the brains behind the original idea as members of The Children’s Theatre Company made the trip from Minnesota to Yonkers, spending two days giving hands-on instruction.

The growth of the program into a countywide project is a welcome sight for Driver and "recognition of how arts organizations can realign their arts educational mission to ensure maximum impact in local schools,” he said. 

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