The Manor School will hold interviews for their Visual and Performing Arts and Chess Scholarships from 2-4 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 20, at the school. There will be eight $1,000 scholarships awarded to be applied to tuition for the 2011-2012 year. The Manor School is offering St. Croix students a newly developed Integrated Arts strand within their strong academic program. The school is a Middle States Accredited K-12 school known for a strong academic program with a whole person approach.
The integrated arts program began two years ago with the assistance of The Virgin Islands Council for the Arts, the V.I. Lottery and Innovative Communications Corporation. These three entities helped the school hire a performing arts/music instructor and fund the purchase of musical instruments. This year, under the direction of Linda Garvin, Manor students continued studying improvisational theatre and began performing poetry recitations, as well as musical and choral performances on and off campus. The program builds much more than confidence and skills in performance. Garvin coordinates with art teacher Cindy Male to utilize the arts as learning and evaluative tools for all other academic areas of education.
For example, this past school year, ninth grade students studied Diaspora in history, geography, language arts, mathematics and literature. Local filmmaker and Manor alumna Johanna Bermudez showed the opening section of her film on the migration from Vieques to St. Croix. Afterwards, students wrote and performed stories, poems, and essays about their own family’s journey to St. Croix. Then each student developed a visual using symbols and related images to represent their understanding of the concept of diaspora. This type of synthesis and applied learning allows a student the opportunity to deliver knowledge at the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
The Manor School’s goal for the 2011-2012 school year is to develop two more grade-level-appropriate, integrated curricula for various concepts and knowledge-based academic units. They have also set as goals the building of a stage in the music room and the renovation of an outdoor exhibition area.
All Manor students have the opportunity to become engaged with the arts as completely integrated into their academic learning experience so that literacy will be developed from both left and right brain approaches. Being a participant in this program means that students will become familiar with their own personal learning style be it visual/motor, auditory/vocal, or kinesthetic. The Chess Club at Manor helps develop strong skills in logic and has a strong competitive team that travels to several tournaments each year.
Students will be interviewed for the scholarships. If applying for a visual arts emphasis, please bring examples of art completed if available. For more information about the school, go to www.manorschoolstx.com or call 718-1448 to schedule a visit. If unable to audition at times given, call Linda Garvin at 690-3002. The school is located at 4236 La Grande Princesse in Christiansted.
