Post by Jonel on Mar 23, 2003 17:03:58 GMT -5
March 23, 2003
Teacher brings cultural events to detention center
By Cathy Hayden
chayden@clarionledger.com
It's not every day that a little Motown comes to the Henley-Young Juvenile Detention Center in Jackson.
But when it contributes to the social growth of young people housed at the center, a show of Temptations standards is what the teacher — Ginger Smith — orders.
Compozitionz, a group of five Jackson-area men, recently performed a Temptations revue for students who are housed at the detention center for a variety of offenses.
The performance is one in a series of cultural events Smith is setting up to expose her students to formal performances.
"It exposes them to a lot of cultural events that occur in everyone's life," said Hinds County Youth Court Judge Houston Patton, who was on hand to see the performance. "That's a form of education in itself, and also a form of rehabilitation for the children."
Students don't dress in the standard detention center jumpsuit for the events.
For many of the performances, they wear formal dress. For this one, they were dressed in casual street clothes.
"We want to teach the children to dress appropriately at an event, to teach the children how to act, dress and behave at different functions," Smith said.
All of the groups — including Ballet Magnificat, the bass quintet from the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra and New Stage Theatre — are performing for free, she said.
Dressed in matching black pants and black-and-white checked jackets, Compozitionz performed a series of Temptations tunes including My Girl, Just My Imagination, Papa Was a Rolling Stone and I Wish It Would Rain while dancing in sync.
Students gave them rapt attention.
"It's pretty good. It's inspiring," said Preston Lewis, 16, in the detention center for auto theft. "It's entertaining. The rest of them (other performances) were the same way."
Calvin Keeton, 16, in the center for truancy from school, said he knew most of the words to the songs. "I love this kind of thing," he said.
Compozitionz member Larry Armstrong is an eighth-grade science teacher at Northwest Jackson Middle School.
"We have performed all over the country. It was good to perform at home and for people who would not usually go to a show like this," he said.
He said students appeared skeptical when the performance started, then began mouthing the words to familiar songs.
"It was amazing to have them say 'OK, I like this,' " he said. "That was the most beneficial. We thought we actually touched some people out there. We needed to give back to the community and try to turn some of these guys around and do something positively with them."
"I'm glad and blessed that we came," Brian Johnson, one of the Compozitionz members, told the students.
Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger
www.clarionledger.com/news/0303/23/m09.html
Teacher brings cultural events to detention center
By Cathy Hayden
chayden@clarionledger.com
It's not every day that a little Motown comes to the Henley-Young Juvenile Detention Center in Jackson.
But when it contributes to the social growth of young people housed at the center, a show of Temptations standards is what the teacher — Ginger Smith — orders.
Compozitionz, a group of five Jackson-area men, recently performed a Temptations revue for students who are housed at the detention center for a variety of offenses.
The performance is one in a series of cultural events Smith is setting up to expose her students to formal performances.
"It exposes them to a lot of cultural events that occur in everyone's life," said Hinds County Youth Court Judge Houston Patton, who was on hand to see the performance. "That's a form of education in itself, and also a form of rehabilitation for the children."
Students don't dress in the standard detention center jumpsuit for the events.
For many of the performances, they wear formal dress. For this one, they were dressed in casual street clothes.
"We want to teach the children to dress appropriately at an event, to teach the children how to act, dress and behave at different functions," Smith said.
All of the groups — including Ballet Magnificat, the bass quintet from the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra and New Stage Theatre — are performing for free, she said.
Dressed in matching black pants and black-and-white checked jackets, Compozitionz performed a series of Temptations tunes including My Girl, Just My Imagination, Papa Was a Rolling Stone and I Wish It Would Rain while dancing in sync.
Students gave them rapt attention.
"It's pretty good. It's inspiring," said Preston Lewis, 16, in the detention center for auto theft. "It's entertaining. The rest of them (other performances) were the same way."
Calvin Keeton, 16, in the center for truancy from school, said he knew most of the words to the songs. "I love this kind of thing," he said.
Compozitionz member Larry Armstrong is an eighth-grade science teacher at Northwest Jackson Middle School.
"We have performed all over the country. It was good to perform at home and for people who would not usually go to a show like this," he said.
He said students appeared skeptical when the performance started, then began mouthing the words to familiar songs.
"It was amazing to have them say 'OK, I like this,' " he said. "That was the most beneficial. We thought we actually touched some people out there. We needed to give back to the community and try to turn some of these guys around and do something positively with them."
"I'm glad and blessed that we came," Brian Johnson, one of the Compozitionz members, told the students.
Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger
www.clarionledger.com/news/0303/23/m09.html
