As they make their way through “The Cricket in Times Square,” by George Selden, students bring the tale to life within the walls of St. Helen School.
As they make their way through “The Cricket in Times Square,” by George Selden, students bring the tale to life within the walls of St. Helen School.
So much so, the school brought in a traveling Chinese acrobat team, called The Fabulous Chinese Acrobats, recently to demonstrate Chinese culture to students, who had read a scene in the book that took place in Chinatown, N.Y.
“In the book ‘The Cricket in Time Square,’ the boy, Mario, at the newsstand, goes to Chinatown to get a cage for his cricket, so he meets these Chinese friends and they help him,” said St. Helen School Principal Sister Margaret Hartman, referring to the scene in the book, which is a part of the school’s One School, One Book program — a program that is part of Read to Them, a nonprofit organization promoting family literacy.
“Today we have the Chinese actors and acrobats to let them know that this is what Chinese culture is like,” she said, also gesturing to the decorations adorning the walls and throughout the school illustrating various scenes from the book.
“This is our first time doing One School One Book, so this is our first introduction to it,” Hartman said. “Every night the parents read a different chapter of the book, the teachers read it or the children read it with their parents and sometimes their partner classes will read a little bit of it, that way, the whole school is involved.”
Hartman said all the decorations were done by students and staff at Kenston Schools.
“The qualifications of it is once you have it at your school, you must pass it to another. So (Kenston) passed it onto St. Joan of Arc. We went to St. Joan of Arc last year and picked it up and brought it here,” she said. “It’s so well done.”
As she led two lines of kindergarten students to the gymnasium April 3 for the acrobat presentation, teacher Theresa Charmley said the One Book One School program is “opening avenues of learning all different sorts of culture.”
“It’s a wonderful highway to all different sorts of learning,” she added.
As the four-person Chinese acrobat team — the members ranging from 12 to 19 years old — took the stage, students cheered with excitement, oohing and ahhing throughout the performance.
“These wonderful people are from Yinchuan, which is about three hours west of Beijing,” said Greg Kaler, the group manager, after the show. “I am also a performer for the (Bureau of Lectures & Concert Artists). I have my own school show. I was lucky enough to go to Beijing for five months to perform for the Chinese children over there. This year, my boss in Lawrence Kansas, he asked me if I would like to be their manager.”
The acrobats’ English names are Ava, 12, Jennifer, 14, Michael, 14, and Aurora, 19.
“It’s such a great influence to the children, to the students in our audience,” he said. “I hear from teachers, especially, that this is an inspirational program where they see young children achieving this amount of success at such an early age. It is inspiring. I’ve heard young girls say, ‘I’m going to be a gymnast, I want to do that,’ after the show.”
