Grover Cleveland High School
TESTIMONIALS
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FAST FACTS
School Name: Grover Cleveland High School
Teaching Artist: Ben Houghton
Location: Queens, NYC
Programs: in school and after school musical theater
Participants: 42
Duration: ~3 hrs/week, Oct - June
FINANCIALS
IMPACT REFLECTION
In our first year of partnership with Grover Cleveland High School, Broadway for Arts Education was hired to support the administration’s commitment to providing their school community with robust arts education programs. For one day a week throughout the school year, we worked alongside first-year theater teacher Irene Guo to support her as she helped to return the school’s theater program, to quote one of the Assistant Principals, “to its former glory.”
We worked alongside Ms. Guo to incorporate music, dance, and tech into her theater program, and to stage the school’s first musical in years: Legally Blonde. In addition to music rehearsals during the day, BAE spearheaded the stage management, lighting, sound, and set design to amplify the incredible acting work happening in the classroom.
While some school partnerships can leave us feeling like we are operating in a silo, our placement at Grover Cleveland set the gold-standard for collaboration. Administrators and co-teachers were incredibly receptive to BAE’s guidance, and while the learning curve was steep at times, the school year ended with an incredibly successful production of Legally Blonde that left program participants feeling proud of their accomplishments, and the school administration feeling satisfied with the return on their investment with BAE.
We look forward to continuing to support Grover Cleveland in the coming school years by connecting their students with more world-class performance opportunities like Dear Everything and Lincoln Center Art Share, continuing to bring in guests from the Broadway community to inspire their education journeys, and building upon a strong first year of producing performances that bring together and celebrate the Grover Cleveland community.
