ALL THEWORLD’SA STAGELessons in arts education from CICS Longwood’s drama guru

by Hilary Masell Oswald

Wander into Roderick Lewis’s drama class at CICS Longwood, and you’ll find a room full of high school students engaging in a kind of work that involves their minds, voices, bodies, and souls. They might be busy untangling themselves from a “human pretzel.” They might be pantomiming to a song. They might be acting out familiar children’s stories, improvising their way through a scene, or performing monologues they’ve written. But no matter which activity you catch them doing, Mr. Lewis wants you to know that what happens in his classroom is about more than drama.

“I always compare what we do in class to life,” says Mr. Lewis, now in his eighth year of teaching at CICS Longwood. “There are students who say, ‘I’m not going to be an actor.’ But there are skills you learn in my class that are crucial to your success in college, in an interview, in a job.” Consider an audition, which is really just a unique interview, he says. “The director is not looking for second best. Neither is the CEO of a company,” Mr. Lewis tells his students. “This is not just about getting ready for the stage. This is about getting ready for life.”

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Roderick Lewis–Preparing future stars for the real world.

Photos by Joshua Dunn Photography

“ This is not just about getting ready for the stage. This is about getting ready for life.”

Arts Education: It Does a Brain Good

Students who take four years of art courses score, on average, 58 points higher on the verbal section of the SAT and 39 points higher on the math section than students who take a half-year or less.Source: 2005 College-Bound Seniors: Total Group Profile Report. The College Board, 2005.

Top: Mr. Lewis with his 6th grade class. Bottom left: Joshlyn Fikes (left) as Grandma and Nicolette Barksdale as Sandy. Bottom right: O’Dell White III (left) and RaJah Welcome-Neely as Ike and Tina Turner.

AllTheWorld’sAStage

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Despite the good things that are happening in classrooms like Mr. Lewis’s, Americans are torn about arts education. On one hand, 93 percent of us agree “the arts are vital to providing a well-rounded education for children,” according to a 2005 Harris poll. And more than half of us rated the importance of arts education a “ten” on a scale of one to ten in the same poll.

But high-quality arts education is increasingly hard to find. It’s often the first area to go when administrators have to make budget cuts, especially in urban districts, where research shows it has an especially positive effect. As No Child Left Behind emphasizes achievement on standardized tests of math and language arts, 44 percent of all districts nationwide have added time for English and/ or math, at the expense of other subjects, including art and music instruction, according to a February 2008 report from the Center of Education Policy. These cuts are significant: The elementary schools that reduced instruction time for art and music cut instruction by 57 minutes a week between the 2001-02 school year and the 2006-07 school year.

Many charter schools, including CICS, emphasize the value of diverse instruction by adding more minutes to the school day and more days to the school year. “The purpose of this extension is to support student growth through a variety of activities,” says Dr. Elizabeth Purvis, executive director of Chicago International Charter School. “The key is to make sure that these varied activities are anchored in what the empirical data indicate are related to real learning.”

Indeed, in urban environments, evidence shows that arts education makes a more significant difference for students from low-income families than it does for their more affluent counterparts. UCLA professor James Catterall examined records for 25,000 students and found that 41.5 percent of low- income 10th-graders who had arts courses scored in the top two quartiles on standardized tests, compared to 24.9 percent of their peers who were not involved in the arts.

None of this data surprises Mr. Lewis or his students. O’Dell White, a junior who is now taking his third class with Mr. Lewis, says theatre in high school saved him from the perils that trap other young men on the South Side. “I was a bad boy from a young age,” he says. “If it wasn’t for Mr. Lewis, I’d probably be in a dungeon somewhere. I would definitely not be going to college.”

Mr. Lewis’s influence doesn’t end in the classroom; in addition to teaching, he writes and directs about three plays a year. The extracurricular drama program is called f.c.b.c.: for children, by children. His students perform, stage manage, handle lighting and

sound, and choreograph. Despite the group’s innocuous name, Mr. Lewis’s productions often tackle grown-up issues that affect his students’ lives. For example, he once wrote and staged “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye,” which addressed the horrors of gang violence. “Putting it on stage is letting kids know that if you choose this type of lifestyle, there are consequences,” he says.

Other plays include “P.H.A.T. (Does Size Really Matter?),” a story about three girls and how weight affected their lives; “Freshman Year,” which addressed teenage pregnancy; and this year’s smash-hit “Expressions in History,” a musical revue celebrating African-Americans’ influence on our country’s musical heritage.

The lessons in these plays go a long way toward helping students figure out how to maneuver through a complicated world, says Leticia Boddie, a senior who has been working with Mr. Lewis for four years. “He teaches us how to grow up,” she says. “When I found him, I was going through a tough time, and Mr. Lewis gave me a reason why I wanted to come to school. He’s like a father to a lot of us.”

While many arts programs across the country face an uncertain future, Mr. Lewis and his students at CICS Longwood will continue to dive head-first into the creative process. “Drama—and arts in general, really—enrich students’ lives,” Mr. Lewis says. “It offers something different, a place where they feel confident and can think creatively and critically. What my students learn is at the core of life.”

It seems that Roderick Lewis and his passion for high-quality arts education take Shakespeare’s claim one step further: Maybe all the world’s a stage, but more importantly, perhaps the stage is the best place to learn about the world.

For more information on the f.c.b.c. Educational

Children’s Theatre and Entertainment Group, or for

theatre schedules, please visit www.fcbcdrama.com

Mr. Lewis and his spirited cast and crew from various productions.