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Ben Borden
The Play Makers Laboratory (PML) are in their 25th year of providing arts educational programs to students aged 7-13 (3-8th grade) throughout Chicago, focused on storytelling, theater, and social-emotional skills. Cultivating kindness through student engagement and idea creation, is core to PML vision.
Their mission states: PlayMakers Laboratory (PML) is an ensemble of teaching artists who create an experimental learning environment in which students share their personal voices and celebrate the power of their imaginations. PML accomplishes this through creative writing workshops and in-school performances of students stories. PML also engages the broader community in support of the visions of young people through public performances of their work.
Main objectives of their program include:
To teach fundamental creative writing skills.
To provide consistent and nurturing attention to each student over a sustained period.
To build each student’s confidence in self-expression, self-esteem, and writing skills.
A problem that was noticed with McCutcheon's current before and after school programming was the lack of any after school programming on Friday's. This presents a challenge to parents who have a consistent work schedule which does not change for Friday's. Students with parents who have the kind of flexible scheduling that would allow for them to get off Friday early to care for their kids are disproportionately higher-income jobs; meaning this policy more negatively affects lower-income families.
PML is 1.1 miles from McCutcheon. PML has a curriculum to build for afterschool programs. The curriculum builds students’ confidence in self-expression and enthusiasm for writing and the arts; each session is led by 2-3 trained PlayMakers Laboratory actor-educators.To help provide students in 3rd-8th grade after school programing, McCutcheon can partner with PML to help alleviate this current problem. This connection would be strengthened by PML's ideal age range being the same students who don't have support on Fridays.
Results of PML programming:
Writing Skills: More than 600 student stories were scored utilizing our writing rubric. Results demonstrate that 80% of students have a significant increase in their writing skills over the course of the residency. 77% of students demonstrated increased knowledge of story structures.
Engagement: In a typical PML classroom, on average a one-on-one interaction with a student happens every 2 1/2 minutes, a hand is raised every minute, group laughter occurs every 4 minutes, and applause happens every 6 minutes.
Self-Esteem & Confidence: 100% of teachers report increase in their students’ confidence in self-expression. 91% of students report that PlayMakers Lab was fun post-residency.
The services provided by PML will be extremely beneficial to all students. With the community not currently meeting the after school needs of McCutcheon, reaching out to PML, relaying on their after school programming, and contacting them through phone or email would be a great first step to help fix this issue. This program will be extremely beneficial to all students, especially ELL's. This will provide dedicated time for ELL students to work on English Writing that is creative and unlike most academic writing. This program will also help boost student's confidence and self-esteem. One of the components that make up writing is self-regulation which can be built up by increasing one's confidence; further boosting ELL student’s writing ability. Another way ELL students will benefit is the one-on-one connections that are available with smaller group sizes and more educators than a traditional classroom. For many ELL students one-on-one support with translation or decoding is needed for them to be able to understand English at a similar rate as non-ELL students, PML programming allows for this ratio.
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