Tireswing Theatre

I have long been dismayed by the fact that when school budgets are tight, the first thing to go is arts programming. The need for teaching the basics becomes the tunnel focus. Recent research has proven that different children learn in different ways. I see it in my own children daily. Some children do well with rote memorization, others do not. My theory has always been that instead of cutting arts programs, find a way to integrate and use them to teach reading, writing and mathematics!

What Tireswing proposes to do is to provide teachers enhancement to their curriculums through the arts. Using the “transformation theatre” technique, we can offer a program to teachers which will allow them to select something from their curriculum that they would like to highlight and then we will build a 20 to 30 minute performance around that topic. It is the perfect mnemonic device for children who have trouble memorizing. When they have fun, they learn and retain. This can work for any subject!

If the teacher wishes, we could also extend the project to teach the children how to create their own performance on a given topic, thus enabling them to study better on their own.

We propose to fund this outreach through grants and sponsorship from organizations that share the same vision that “the basics” and “the arts” do not have to be separate and apart.

We will ask teachers after the project is finished to fill out evaluation forms in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the project and in order to fine tune and enhance future projects.

Arts and education go hand in hand!!

Tami Zimmerman Henry, Artistic Director
Tireswing Theatre

Tireswing Theatre hugely successful with school outreach concepts!

In February 2005 Tireswing Theatre organized its first outreach project to further its belief that theater and the performing arts are invaluable to a school curriculum. Unfortunately, when budgets are tight the first things to go are drama and music. Tireswing knows the value of these subjects, not only for their own sake but for their ability to assist in teaching other subjects. And our outreach project has demonstrated this! 

Tireswing went to Disney Magnet School on Chicago's Near North Side. The teacher chose “Feudalism” as the topic. Tireswing went into action and created a 7-minute piece of theater using our Transformation Technique to illustrate the concept of Feudalism. After the performance, we divided the children into groups and had the teacher give us four more topics from their social studies textbook. 

We taught the children to create their own pieces using their class work so that when they get stumped on a subject they can use theater to help them study and remember their subject better. The kids grasped the concept right away and had fun to boot! Later that day their teacher e-mailed us and said the kids couldn’t stop talking about the event. But it didn’t stop there! She was surprised that her students not only wanted to talk about us returning, but they wanted to talk about their topics! It energized them in a way she didn’t think possible. The real proof was when one young lady raised her hand and asked “Can you come back again? I really need some help with math.”