June 19, 2008
Cirque has class: Why the famed troupe holds the answer to fixing
public education
By STEVE FRIESS
Back when I first arrived in this city in 1996 to cover public
education for the Review-Journal, the very notion of schools
and Vegas elicited sardonic guffaws from people I knew in other
cities.
They mocked the notion of children growing up in the shadow
of Sin City and actually asked whether there were classrooms
inside the casinos.
In the subsequent years, I’d learn that there are, in fact,
very serious problems with the schools in Clark County. Beyond
the abysmal test scores and high dropout rates, I’d discover
trying to teach journalism at UNLV that a great number of students
who earn Millennium Scholarships from the state for graduating
with a B average are, nonetheless, functionally illiterate.
What I didn’t expect was to discover the ideal classroom—the
answer to all these woes—on, of all places, the Las Vegas Strip.
Okay, technically, the ideal classroom is off the Strip, just
south of McCarran Airport in a small, yellow-walled room overflowing
with books and art projects and, most important of all, a sort
of happiness and earnestness that accompanies real learning.
And the half-dozen boys who attend this school get to do so
because they are full-time performers in Cirque du Soleil’s
Beatles-scored production Love at the Mirage. In other words,
they owe the very existence of the Strip a debt of gratitude.
Their teacher, Andrew Wright, is a full-time employee of Cirque
as well.
The Canadian entertainment conglomerate had to find some way
to educate the boys who appear as stand-ins for Liverpool’s
Fab Four and through whose eyes much of the story is told. So
they decided to hire a full-time teacher, have the students
attend class in a dedicated room at their Resident Show Division
headquarters off Sunset Road and rely on the Clark County School
District solely for general curricular guidance and textbooks.
As a result, these boys, who range in age from 10 to 12 and
are in grades fourth, fifth and sixth, enjoy a level of attention
from Wright, who customizes lessons to their grade and ability
levels, that public school children can never expect.
The boys attend school three afternoon hours a day on days
when the show is on. That means they go to school on Saturdays
and Sundays, but no one seems to much mind. After their instruction,
they head off to the Mirage to get into makeup and prepare for
their performances. The makeup never really comes off all the
way; some of the kids attended school the Sunday I was there
with stubborn red paint on their elbows.
Wright, a former Decker Elementary School teacher, is constantly
amazed by the creativity level of the kids. It’s not unusual
for a creative writing assignment to be turned in at book length.
“They could sell some of their ideas for movies,” he marvels.
And there are Cirque touches to the assignments; one enrichment
exercise involved each boy giving an oral report about a different
show, and a map in the classroom features pins identifying where
in the world the touring productions are right now.
The school is unique in Las Vegas, where, despite the huge
entertainment industry, there aren’t a whole lot of children
who are full-time performers. Anita Wilbur, the principal of
CCSD’s Academy For Individualized Studies, which oversees students
like this, noted that the only other full-time child performer
on the Strip that she could think of is the daughter of Gregory
Popovich; she’s in his animal-tricks show at Planet Hollywood.
Anastasia Popovich, however, is one of the many students under
Wilbur’s umbrella whose schooling is comprised of reading textbooks
and taking tests.
Cirque, responsible for educating so many children, opted
to hire a full-time teacher, something the company also does
for child actors and children of performers in their touring
productions around the world.
Kyle Stokely, 12, seems to be well aware of how lucky he is
to be getting this education. He’s been in Love since its June
2006 opening, but will have to leave the cast—and the class—in
December because he’s growing too tall for the role. He is anguished,
not only because he loves being in the show but also because
he’ll probably end up in a public school.
“You learn a lot more a lot quicker than kids who are in a
class with 35 other kids,” Kyle says.
Certainly, there are downsides to this arrangement. Myro Khetaguri,
whose father is a Kŕ acrobat as well and who has performed with
Cirque on the touring production of Alegría, is eager to leave
the show and go to a normal school. “I’m asking my mom if I
can join the fall soccer team,” he says. None of these kids
can play in sports leagues, both because of the time conflict
with their Cirque duties and also because they have a contract
that prohibits them from risking physical injury.
But mostly, this appears to be the answer to the question
of what ails public education. Wright believes—and I believe
him—that he could take any six kids from any CCSD school and
get better results if they could attend a school like this.
“One of the biggest things that hurts public schools is the
sheer numbers,” Wright says. “You have one teacher and 34 kids
and a huge array of abilities and language disabilities. Someone’s
always going to suffer one way or the other. Maybe it’s the
very intelligent child who could be way up there if only he
were being pushed, but the teacher is not able to push him all
the time, or the other student who’s way behind and needs all
the teacher’s attention but couldn’t possibly get it.”
Wilbur calls the Cirque set-up “a dream situation” and noted
that “you can’t find a private school like that in this town.
They’re a large corporation. School districts have budget cuts,
remember?”
Oh yeah. Hard to forget. But the next time you hear that “throwing
money” at public education isn’t the answer, remember these
kids. Actually, it is the answer. We just don’t have the political
will to do it.
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