The day began by boarding our bus at CRS at 8:00am. Students were prepared and ready to go! We’ve spent the last two months of the school year getting ready and reading The Outsiders novel in English class.
We arrived a little before 1:00pm and were dropped off at our first stop: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In family groups, we explored various exhibits and took in a lot of Spanish and French artwork that provided a hands-on expansion to our studies in our world language classes with Julie and Kent.
Kent provided a Spanish Met Scavenger Hunt! Students found and answered questions about the art pieces View of Toledo, The Vision of Saint John, and Saint Jerome as Scholar.
A prompt on the scavenger hunt asked students to share how looking at El Greco’s work made them feel. One student said “I felt inspired because they are really thought-out and I could never paint anything like them!”
Students studying French found works by Monet, Renoir, and Matisse. They studied the art and described its colors, light, and composition with Julie.
We also visited Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson exhibit at The Met.
This exhibit features 100+ pieces of art created over six decades (1922 – 2015) that the American artist John Wilson created including powerful and poetic works that captured his life as a Black American artist and his ongoing quest for racial, social, and economic justice.
Wilson art depicts “a universal humanity.” While still a teenager, he was struck by the absence of positive representations of Black Americans and their experiences in both museums and popular culture. To counter such prejudices and omissions, Wilson put the experiences of Black Americans at the center and created images that portrayed dignity and strength.
Reflecting on their visit to the museum, students noted that they really enjoyed seeing the Spanish paintings on their scavenger hunt as well as visiting the Ancient Greece wing. The French students enjoyed using their new vocabulary to describe the paintings in their notebooks.
We dropped off our bags at the hotel and walked to Gayle’s Broadway Rose for dinner. This restaurant has been a part of the NYC trip from the start and it is always a favorite place for students to experience live music and get ready for the show.
We enjoyed performances of popular Broadway songs during our dinner including a special birthday song for Mateo!
After dinner, we walked through Times Square on our way to Jacob’s Theater!
We had a lot of fun taking it all in.
We arrived at our destination, Jacob’s Theater, to see The Outsiders on Broadway!
In English class with Jake, we spent a lot of time reading, learning about, and studying the book the show is based on. It explores themes of segregated communities, socioeconomic privilege, prejudice, and what it means to be an “outsider.” We talked before the show about how the set was designed to “open up” as Ponyboy’s life opened up beyond Tulsa.
While reading the text, we focused a lot on character development (why characters make certain decisions, how characters evolve over the course of a story, and how character development impacts the larger story.)
We also discussed the content and stylistic differences between the film and the movie and how their differences impact engagement. Students thought a lot about this as they watched the live show.
Highlights included the burning church scene with pyrotechnics, the intensely athletic choreography, and the rumble between the Socs and Greasers that occurs during an onstage rainstorm. Students examined the lyrics of a few songs from the show in class and noted how exciting it was to see the songs come to life on stage.
After the show, students commented on their favorite elements:
“The closing act was great.”
“I loved the slow motion scenes.”
“The choreography for the fight scenes!”
“Cherry’s singing.”
CRS students performed last year in 6th & Broadway, stagecraft, and a MultiArts performance just last week! After being on the stage themselves many times at CRS, they had a deep appreciation for the production and the actors.
We headed back to the hotel energized from the performance and went to bed to rest up for day two.