Duke Energy Helps Support Family Performance and School Matinees

More than 2,000 students and teachers attended the recent performance of The Magic School Bus – The Climate Challenge in Loeb Playhouse on the Purdue campus. The program helped students understand global concerns about climate change and how conservation, recycling and alternative energy can make a difference.

Duke Energy partnered with the Bay Area Children’s Theatre and Oregon Children’s Theatre in providing support for the national tour. Locally, Duke Energy partnered with Purdue Convocations to help make our local presentation of the performance possible. The energy firm saw the Magic School Bus program as an effective tool to teach energy-related concepts in a memorable way, District Manager Kevin Johnston, said.

“Duke Energy supports the use of a variety of teaching methods, including the arts, to help students learn important concepts about the safe and effective use of electricity,” Johnston said. “[We] are committed to the concept of sustainable energy use, which means using energy in ways that are good for people, the planet and profits. Children and adults should make every effort to learn how to use energy wisely and responsibly.”

In our state, Duke Energy is a participating utility in “Energizing Indiana,” a united effort by participating utilities, the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, and consumer organizations to offer comprehensive energy efficiency programs that bring savings to communities across the state. These programs include K-12 education programs. Click on this link: Http://energizingindiana.com/programs/school-programs/ for more information on these programs, or call 800-722-2231.

For a comprehensive look at Duke Energy’s position on climate change, click on this link: http://www.duke-energy.com/environment/climate-change/doing.asp Duke Energy also maintains a website that encourages your participation in the ongoing conversation about global climate change, called Shedding a Light, at https://www.sheddingalight.com

Local Artists Utilize Storytelling in the Classroom

Stories can help students learn almost any subject. Local teaching artists Doyne Carson and Sheri Johnson are helping both students and teachers at Edgelea Elementary learn to use storytelling across the curriculum.

“The power of story helps children become active and better listeners who are able to recall the sequence of events, values, and historical or scientific information that was related in the story,” Doyne relates. “With story, listeners learn more efficiently. Their visualization and imagination skills are stimulated. When watching a storyteller, children learn to interpret various kinds of body and language communication; vocabularies grow and lessons come alive.”
Lafayette School Corporation and Purdue Convocations , as partners in the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Partners in Education program, work together to help teachers develop twenty-first century teaching techniques. The Kennedy Center encourages the use of local teaching artists who can be more available to coach and work with teachers.

Storytelling is one of the most flexible performing art forms. It can use almost any other type of performing art in its presentation or stand on its own. Helping teachers learn how to use storytelling techniques in the classroom can increase student interest in the topic being discussed. The teachers for each grade level K-4 at Edgelea Elementary chose a topic to explore through storytelling. Doyne and Sheri have developed a program of stories and created study materials to help teachers cover these topics.

Sheri Johnson taught fourth grade at Happy Hollow Elementary School in West Lafayette. Now retired, she is using all the skills she developed in the classroom to help other teachers understand how storytelling can spark a student’s imagination.

“Storytelling was a way for me to help students understand concepts in science, social studies and reading,” Sheri says. “Students began to see their own life as a story.”

On January 5th, Doyne Carson presented “Abe Lincoln’s Boyhood Friend” to the fourth grade. The hour-long performance told of Lincoln’s early years growing up in rural Kentucky and Indiana. It related some of the true incidences of his life and the many challenges of learning to be self-sufficient. The story pointed out many of the personality characteristics that helped Abraham Lincoln become a great man and a strong president. Teachers had study materials to follow up in the classroom including books, a crossword puzzle about facts presented in the performance, and a set of portraits and other artwork featuring Lincoln. Doyne works with many area schools helping students learn Indiana history through stories.

Grades K-2 teachers have chosen to concentrate on character tales, and Grade 3 has chosen tales relating to rocks, plants, and sound and light. Doyne and Sheri customize their tales to fit each grade level and Purdue Convocations is providing picture sets to correspond to the tales.

Laura Clavio, Assistant Director