Skit illustrates use of boldness

During an East Aiken School of the Arts assembly last week, Tazania Lloyd portrays a playground bully who gets in the face of Emma Murray. In the skit, Emma boldly wins over Tazania’s character by offering her friendship.

Fifth-graders Tazania Lloyd and Emma Murray are great friends at East Aiken Elementary School of the Arts but didn't act like it last week for a very good reason.

During an assembly program, the girls hilariously brought the character trait "boldness" to life with a skit based on the children's book "The Recess Queen" by Alexis O'Neill.

Physical education teacher Kathy Linton said she immediately thought of these girls when she selected the book. The very tall Tazania portrayed "Mean Jean," the playground bully who terrorizes everybody. The very short Emma played Katie Sue, a new student who stands up to Mean Jean and eventually wins her friendship by offering to play with her. Soon, they were doing double-dutch jump-roping together.

The guest reader, fifth-grader Elizabeth White, did a great job with all the rhythmic dialogue as the other girls acted out their roles.

Tazania is quite charming in real life and so is the feisty Emma. Both clearly enjoyed their verbal confrontations on stage.

"She's my best friend," Emma said.

"It was fun being mean and getting to jump rope with my friend," said Tazania. "We had to learn to do it for the play."

As she told Aiken Sunrise Rotary Club members Thursday, Linton began the monthly character-based assemblies in 1999. Aiken Mayor Fred Cavanaugh approached the school about it after he introduced the Character First program to the city.

Linton, a teacher at East Aiken for 14 years, was joined at the Rotary meeting by 21-year veteran art teacher Carrie Power and music instructor Megan Jensen, who joined the faculty full-time last fall. They described the process that led to the "school of the arts" designation by the Aiken County School Board a year ago.

Through professional development an several grants, East Aiken offers a boys' choir, jazz and strings and visiting artists in residence, who spend four or five days at the school. The entire faculty has bought into the concept of arts integration as a way to engage students. Parents apparently like the concept, as well. The student enrollment has grown by 17 percent.

Third-graders study South Carolina history, and this year they made relief maps of the state's regions in art class.

In several other classes, "the kids had the maps and were breaking out in songs about all the regions," Power said. "We've had 31 percent less student referrals this year, and we hope to see an improvement in academics, as well."

Contact Rob Novit at rnovit@aikenstandard.com.