REDefined Press
April 2017
Singin’ In The Rain
Every year, Cimarron Middle School performs a musical in the spring. This year, the musical is called “Singin’ In The Rain Jr.”- a version of “Singin’ In The Rain” for kids. I interviewed the play director Carolyn Warner, the Cimarron drama teacher, to talk about the musical.
About 80-100 kids audition for the musical every year. There are kids that have never been in a show before, as well as students who have been in several shows. To audition, students sing 30 seconds of songs that are pre-selected from the show. They should practice beforehand and showcase their singing and acting abilities when they audition. Some students get callbacks so the play workers can see more of what they do. During callbacks, students read scenes from the play and showcase their ability to quickly identify character traits. Sometimes, the students have to sing other songs from the show so the play directors can hear more of their voice and to see how they harmonize with other students. anyone is welcome to audition.
The tech crew contributes a lot to the the behind the scenes part of the musical. 20 students are in tech crew from all grade levels. Aubrey Pierce is our Stage Manager and Erin Ohlmeier is our Assistant Stage Manager. The tech crew is in charge of helping designing and creating set pieces. They create and find the props for our shows. They also run the light and sound board. Without the tech crew, the show would not run. They are the backstage people that make everything run smoothly.
The musical is a lot of hard work. The cast begin by learning the songs and then learning blocking and choreography. Once those individual parts are learned, they start to piece everything together in run throughs. When the acting, singing, and dancing have come together they begin to add in our elements of tech (lights, sounds, costumes, props and scenery/set pieces).
Throughout the experience the cast and crew work together and become somewhat like a family. The cast meets four times a week. Each rehearsal focuses on singing, dancing, or acting- to begin with. As the show is pieced together, the cast has practices more frequently. Mrs. Alexander usually teaches the songs, but since she is is on maternity leave an outside music director named Brandon Bill is in charge of this year’s music. Mrs. Warner is in charge of the blocking and teaching the students how to portray their characters. Also, Ms. McManus teaches the choreography this year. After about 4 months of practice, the students have the play fully memorized, and ready for the performance.
In the end, all 50 cast members are ready for the performance. After all the hard work and dedication used to make the show what it is, they perform in the CiMS commons (on the stage). The performances are on May 11, 2017 through May 13, 2017. Hope to see you there!Blazer Ambassadors of Compassion
By Matt Taylor
In Ambassadors of Compassion, they have one goal for everyone, to set an example of how to be RED. So far, they have a plan to do something very admirable for the special needs students. They will make a game day for them after lunch one day where they can ride the scooters and have a wonderful time Though they only meet on Wednesday’s during the advisement time after lunch, they still get lots of work in.
They got small booklets at the beginning of Ambassadors of Compassion. In the booklets, you write down your thoughts during the session about the subject. The subject will usually be of how to be RED around the school.
It might start around the third quarter. When you first start, you will be put into groups based on your seventh grade team. You will work on your booklet every week and they will improve your actions by making you act nicer in your everyday life.
You can get into AOC by having your teacher's hand-picking you. So far, they have only had AOC for eighth graders, but this year, they made it for seventh graders. If you have some extra work to get done, you will still be able to work on it outside of the AOC. We are still near the beginning of the AOC, so they haven’t gotten much done yet.
Being an Ambassador of Compassion is free, but quite hard to get into, but you can get into it by choice of the teachers on how you act. You won’t get any grades in this class, but the experience is very valuable. AOC is only for Cimarron Middle School, People have been participating in AOC for a few years now, but the teachers have been coming from a lot of different schools in Colorado.
Drama
Mason Penington
Have you ever been in drama? Drama is a very fun effective class, Everyone in drama has a great time every day. Most of them are planning on taking drama again next year because they all love it so much, because of the fun atmosphere, hanging out with friends, and the easy grades.
Most of the kids in Mrs. Warner’s class enjoy her unique teaching methods. Matthew Heller’s favorite part of drama is hanging out with his friends and his favorite thing to do is doing short skits. Brig Pyfer said he chose to do drama because it's a fun class and his because some of his friends were taking it to. Several of the students said that their favorite project was making their own short skits. The kids in drama say that they have to take a lot of notes in drama about other famous skits. Some of the students pet peeves are when other kids don't take notes or never participate.
Brig said that there aren't any very annoying kids in their class. Matthews most proud moment is when Mrs. Warner called him out on his good work. Brig said the funniest moment was when a kid was reading the wrong part on one of the scripts the did, and his main strength is making people laugh. His weakness is staying still during some parts of drama. He also loves Mrs. Warner.
International Towne
International Towne (IT) is an amazing field trip that Lipizzan students go on every year. Young Americans Bank, the bank under IT, is the only bank in America designed for only children. At Young Americans 7- year olds can start their own business, 10-year olds become mayors, 13 year-olds rule the world,and 16-year olds take out business loans. This experience is a fun learning opportunity to learn about international business conduct and many other things!
IT takes place on-site at Young Americans Center in a 5,000 square foot space architected to be a 16-country mini-world. What you do at IT is you run your own country, you could be the president or a customs agent, it all depends on how pleasing your resume is,which you write. While you're at IT you constantly use your math skills with currency exchange rate because there are four different currencies at IT!
IT’s motto is“To develop the financial literacy of young people through real-life experiences and hands-on programs purposefully designed to enable them to prosper in our free enterprise system.”
Lipizzan does IT because according to Lipizzan Language arts teacher, Mrs.Gillespie “It offers different elements that feed into content and the idea of a great curriculum”. Next year all the 7th grade teams are planning on going to IT. To do IT, it requires a lot of work and perseverance but is an amazing field trip that all students will treasure. The price of IT is 35 dollars per child, which this year with 108 Lipizzan students it was $3,780. This year though, there was a underworld to IT, one of the countries started a black market! At the same time a few students were practicing there pickpocketing skills by stealing and using other people's credit cards.
Every team should do IT because this is the best way to learn about international trade among other things.
A picture of the center of International Towne
The Celebration of Learning
Cimarron Middle school’s largest focus, is the student’s education. This year they are holding an event to showcase what students have been learning. Also known as the Celebration of Learning.
This event is taking place of the usual parent teacher conferences. The celebration of learning is a better substitute because it shows all student’s work instead of just one. It shows how many different people learn in different ways.
The celebration showed each team’s work from the quarter, so the students were able to direct their parents and tell them what they needed.
From going to the celebration, it not only showed me people what other classes were doing, but it was also a teaching experience. You were able to learn about things much easier. After a year of focusing on your own work, it is an opportunity to learn about the way other teams are doing things. Many students were very proud of their work and it was exciting to them for people other than their parents to see what they had been working on.
Overall, going to this was an eye-opening experience. The way that we are incorporating the 4 C’s into everyday subjects, really shows off how much we are learning in this year.