Some students from the Notre Dame School in New Hyde Park became circus performers this week – without running away from home.
The National Circus Project brought its Greatest Show in Schools to the private Catholic school last week as the Parents Activity as Volunteers for Education paid for the first return appearance of the group since they first came to Notre Dame several years ago.
The National Circus Project, formed as the non-profit Educational Specialists Inc in 1984, does outreach programs for schools, where it has put on 10,000 performances and 50,000 workshops since its inception.
The group’s week-long work with students at Notre Dame began with an assembly for grades Pre-K through eight, with two Circus Project’s artists-in-residence demonstrating basic circus skills, aimed at improving motor skills and self-esteem for all the students, according to Notre Dame principal Caryn Durkin.
Basic skills workshops were held for the entire student body, coordinated by Notre Dame physical education teacher Kristina LoCastro. Selected groups of students in grades 4,6 and 8 were given more in-depth, intensive instruction in daily 40-minute sessions throughout the week, with a performance for parents on Friday night as the climactic event.
“They produced a show,” Durkin said. “Students are seeing first-hand that practice and motivation make even a difficult skill easy to learn.”
The young students learned a full set of circus performance skills, including plate-spinning, juggling, stilt-walking, tumbling, doing tricks with a diablo yo-yo and using devil sticks, balancing and manipulating one stick with two others.
When they weren’t physically engaged in mastering circus stunts, the students explored circus themes in their daily class work, through stories, mathematics problems, science questions and vocabulary all related to circus life.
For the Friday night performance, the Notre Dame gym was decorated with paintings and posters the students produced in art classes during the week.
A circus-themed supper of pizza, popcorn and cotton candy was served in the cafeteria preceding the children’s show in the gym on Friday.
Approximately 120 students participated in the Friday night performance with was a “big hit” with their parents, according to Durkin, who said she hopes to have the National Circus Project return to the school for another week of workshops in a couple of years.
“The best part was seeing the sense of fun that the children had and the self-confidence they built up by learning those things in so short a time,” Durkin said.
