These Kids Are Worth It: a drama program success story

Episode 140: These Kids Are Worth It Stacey Tirro works in a district with a negative reputation. There are threats of budget cuts all around her.  People ask her all the time “do you feel safe teaching there?” (She’s never felt safer by the way)  And none of this stopped her from doing one of musical theatre’s most difficult shows - West Side Story. Stacey thinks her kids are worth it. Listen in to hear her story. Show Notes * American Theatre Article * This American Life Episode * Typecast Episode Transcript Welcome to TFP – The Theatrefolk Podcast – the place to be for Drama teachers, Drama students, and theatre educators everywhere. I’m Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello! I hope you're well. Thanks for listening. Welcome to Episode 140! You can find any links for this episode in the show notes at theatrefolk.com/episode140. And we’ve got another podcast that makes you think – makes me think – about the question: “What motivates you for your students?” We’ve got Stacy Tirro who works in a district with a very, very negative reputation. There are constant threats of budget cuts around here. People ask her all the time, “Do you feel safe teaching there?” and, for the record, she’s never felt safer so let’s put that out there. None of this basically swirling negativity that is all around her stops her for not only doing her job but doesn’t stop her from being motivated to put on one of musical theatre’s most difficult shows with her students – West Side Story. Stacy is highly motivated – not only to do the best for her students but she’s motivated to expect the best from her students. Enough of my blah blah blah-ing. Let’s hear from Stacy. LINDSAY: I am very excited to be talking right now to Stacy Tirro. Hello, Stacy! STACY: Hello! How are you? LINDSAY: I am… I’m excellent. How are you? STACY: I’m doing great! LINDSAY: Good! Good, good, good, good! Stacy and I are talking, earlier in the year, I put out a sort of call for success stories and challenges and we put those out about a month ago. But Stacy’s story was so… it was big. I’m sure it felt very big to you, didn’t it? And I wanted to talk to her – to you – in more depth and for a lot of reasons. I think that, so often, when we hear about an area that is dealing with political strife and dealing particularly with arts cut-backs, it can be a story of despair and I just think how wonderful it is to kind of have an uplifting story that kind of comes out of that. I think you see your story as uplifting. STACY: I do. I do because of the people that are involved – my students who are one of a kind in terms of their individuality and in terms of them as a group of people who come together to make theatre happen. They’re some of the most incredible people that I’ve ever met and I say that collectively. I’ve been doing this since 1996 with this particular group who was established before I even got there and I was fortunate enough to be able to continue it on as I went through the years. This year in particular was really, really magical. I feel like we’re kind of like the little engine that could – you know, constantly going uphill, constantly dealing with problems that don’t have anything directly to do with us – but because of the stuff that goes on above and around us,