Young Haunt Actor Training?

[Jim Warfield]

I read this in the local newspaper today. Fourth Graders at West Carroll School were asked to pck out a character from the new museum displays in Savanna, Ill. , then study that person and then they will be wearing costumes as the general public tours the museum and asks them questions about the historical character.
The patrons will even have a fake button to push to activate the kid actor!
The $1.00 admission will go to the West Carroll Educational fund.
Costumes, pretending to be someone else, moving, talking, sounds like everything is pretty much covered to get them started as haunt actors to me!
The museum is now home to about 200 manniquins a retired history teacher assembled and dressed depicting Civil War characters. There were alot of different uniforms for that war!

[Kevin Dells]

RECRUIT them now!

[BruiseMuse]

That's a really cute idea.

[AnandaHexen]

My stepchildren's 3rd grade teacher does a "wax museum" in the classroom that is very similar. The students pick a subject, research them, create a short and hopefully memorizeable biography and dress up as them with a few props, then the families come in on Wax Museum Day and press the "buttons" on the desks to hear the characters talk.
I was very impressed with the whole thing and the kids really enjoyed doing it.

[Jim Warfield]

So are the teachers who inspire such fun activities better teachers or are they just avoiding becoming burnt out or bored?
I knew a teacher who allowed his 5th graders to build cardboard cars and put on a skit for the rest of the school about traffic safety.
The crashes came hard and fast and the ketchup/blood did flow!
The teacher got in trouble. He quit the next year went into retail, too bad.

The three small town schools here were forced to consolidate , all in the" intrest of providing better educational opportunitys"...so how come the highest test scores still come (last I heard) from the one room schoolhouses in Iowa and Alaska?