Teacher Q&A: Laurie Katz, Weston Middle School

Laurie Katz teaches theater and dance at Weston Middle School. She recently developed and directed sixth, seventh, and eighth graders in "Street Child," a short play inspired in part by Primary Source's recent course on East Africa.

PS: How did you develop the idea for "Street Child"?

Laurie: We have a relationship with a school in Uganda, The Kasiisi School, and several of their teachers visited us in the spring of 2007. I was really inspired by these teachers during their visit. Their warmth, insights, and humanity touched all of us in our school. I decided to direct a short play that would be set in Uganda as our entry for the following year into the Massachusetts Middle School Drama Festival. My thinking evolved over the course of attending Primary Source's East Africa: Geography, History, and Culture course in the fall of 2007, and it was through this course that I found a number of sources which contributed to our play, "Street Child."

PS: How did your participation in Primary Source's recent East Africa course influence your thinking in this project?

Laurie: I had been thinking about adapting the book, Beatrice's Goat, which is a lovely picture book that tells the inspiring true story of a Ugandan girl whose family receives a goat from Heifer International, a Western Aid agency. She is able to take the earnings from this goat and pay the fees to go to school.

On the second day of Primary Source's East Africa class we spent the day with filmmaker and author, Kenny Mann. Ms. Mann talked a lot about her family's life growing up in Kenya, and the pros and cons of involvement in Africa by Westerners, including those efforts designed to help Africans.

After our discussion with Ms. Mann, I decided to find a source other than Beatrice's Goat, a Ugandan story that did not involve a helping hand from outside of Africa. As part of the East Africa course, we visited Boston University's African Studies Center, where we were introduced to a number of books and artifacts from the Center's resource library. One of those books was a primer from a reading program which is used in Ugandan schools, entitled Street Child, Beggar...Rose. The central character, Rose, is forced to live on the street after her parents die of AIDS. In the end of the story, a social worker is able to locate Rose's aunt, and Rose leaves her gang of street children to go live with her aunt. It is a story of resilience, friendship, ingenuity and survival among these street children who band together. Each street child has their own story of how they came to live on the streets. In rehearsals we developed these story lines through research, extending beyond Rose's story, and created our play about the lives and memories of a group of street children who live on the streets of Kampala, Uganda.

PS: What do you think your students have gained from the process of creating and performing this play?

Laurie: My students have learned a lot about working as an ensemble and developing a play together from scratch. They have also learned how to envision the facts of their research, seeing their dramatic possibilites, and imagining how to bring these ideas to life.

Quotes from participating students:

• Seventh-grader Lexi Abrecht, said it does not matter where you are in the world, what you have, or what you look like, "We all need each other to face challenges."
• Like many of the participating students, Jessica Ober, grade seven, learned how children end up living on the streets in Uganda. "These ways are very sad," she said.
• "Being a part of this play taught us in great depth about the harsh realities some people in Africa, even children our age, are forced to deal with every day," said eighth-grader Reid Gilbard.

PS: What, in your opinion, are the advantages of an interdisciplinary approach to global education?

Laurie: I believe that if you recreate the many facets of the world of whatever you are teaching, and have the students "live" in that context in the classroom for a while, they can truly absorb and experience the material deeply. By creating a play, students are able to portray what they've learned with true understanding, with passion and investment, and most importantly, with empathy. It is this level of involvement that can give students a true sense of how they fit into a global community, and motivate them to want to be caring citizens of the world.

Above: Laurie Katz, drama teacher at Weston Middle School, answers questions from the audience after her students' May 2nd performance of "Street Child."