Learning through song - Catholic students take to opera in class

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (CNS) -- Take two classes of seventh-graders. Have them create a 20-minute opera, story, lyrics and all. Add two classes of kindergartners, who will perform the opera before a rapt audience of school parents. Then do it year after year for six years.

The result - Opera America's first National Educator of the Year Award. The proud recipient is Barbara Roddy, music teacher at St. Simon the Apostle School in St. Louis, who earned the award for such student-generated productions as "It's a Yummy World After All" and "Paul the Pickle." This fall will be the 16th year Roddy has been teaching at St. Simon School. Although she studied classical music and keyboard in college, she never had opera training. That changed about 10 years ago, when she decided to expand her middle-school music curriculum by attending summer teacher workshops presented by Opera Theatre of St. Louis at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. "This was something brand new for me," Roddy told the St. Louis Review, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of St. Louis. She said she loves opera now and can't say enough about the summer program offered by the Opera Theatre. In the workshops, Roddy learned how to create and produce operas for children. Six years ago, she decided to take her knowledge into the classroom. "At St. Simon, the eighth-graders are paired with first-graders, so with our first opera we had the seventh-graders create it and the kindergartners perform it, since the next year they would be paired together," she said. This pattern has stuck. Each year, the seventh-graders write the words to the opera, the lyrics and story line in a three- to four-page script that takes about 20 minutes for the kindergarten students to perform. Roddy, who helps her students put the lyrics to music, said the opera involves more than the two grades and is a collaborative effort of the whole school. "It's part of the St. Simon approach to involving the school community and cooperative learning with different teachers. The art teacher helps with set design, the language arts teachers help polish up the writing, the kindergarten teachers have input, of course," she said. Roddy said the parents also play a part in coming up with costumes, which they try to keep simple. Marianne Freiling, principal of St. Simon School, described the school opera as "one of the best pieces of collaboration and ways of learning that we can have for our children," noting that it involves so many different disciplines and builds cooperation among grade levels and teachers with everyone working together. Creating the opera is a long process, Roddy said, noting that before the students start to write they usually study a great opera work. The two classes of seventh-graders brainstorm and eventually agree on one idea for the opera. They usually have the script and music put together by Thanksgiving. By March, the art teacher is working on set design and props. The performance is usually the second week in May. "It's amazing, the kindergartners act like they've been doing this their whole lives," Roddy said. The child-friendly plots included one about a president whose re-election platform was to give everyone all the sweets they wanted while in the background students were singing, "No, we need veggies to grow big and strong." Roddy's personal favorite was "Paul the Pickle," based on the Lewis and Clark expedition. She said that through the exposure to opera, her students have learned to appreciate it. They have also seen more than just their own productions. Last year, the second- and third-grade classes saw "Hansel and Gretel" at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis and the fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade classes saw "The Barber of Seville."

Witness the Words of Jesus Come to Life

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Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops