Year-end Productions 2020

We have reached the end of the year! We ended term 4 with a two week long marathon of Year-end Productions. As with everything this year, we had to rework and adjust to fit in with Covid protocols, but come what may, we were going to end with a banger of a Show for each studio.

 In some cases, this meant a Show at a venue, drastically scaled down to only accommodate the students and parents of one particular studio at a time, similar to how we would do our mid-year Drama Presentations. Even though it was not as grand and elaborate as our usual Year-end Productions, and looked quite different with all the Covid 19 protocols like masks, shields, and social distancing, it certainly was wonderful to do a live performance with a live audience to appreciate the hard work the students did this term. It was also great to be able to hand out certificates and trophies! 

 For our remaining online students, we hosted our first virtual Year-end Productions, which was also very exciting! We worked for several weeks recording our plays, scene by scene and editing it all together. The whole process was so different from what we usually do, but it was lots of fun and the students really enjoyed being in their own movie. At the virtual show, we had a viewing of the movie and presented the students with certificates and trophies! After a long, interesting, and often challenging year, it was wonderful to end it on such a positive and exciting note. Celebrating what we do best: performing with our friends, in which ever shape or form, and having a great time!

Check out our Facebook page for lots more photos!

Helen O'Grady Pretoria

Welcome to Term 4!

 Welcome to our final term for 2020. I can hardly believe we have only two months left of this most unusual school year! 

Term 4 has, like the rest of 2020, brought new and exiting ways to teach Drama. At our Pretoria and Midrand studios we have adopted a hybrid system for the last push to the end of the year. We are still running Zoom classes, but we are happy to report that we have been able to also start ONSITE classes at some of our studios. It is such a pleasure to be in the same space as our students again, even if it is at a distance! 

 As it is not possible to go back to all our schools, YET, and the independent venues are not always practical for the parents, we are continuing with Zoom classes for anyone who prefers the online platform for now. 

 We have also started working on our year end productions, with onsite and Zoom students. How exciting! We can’t wait to show our families, friends and fans what we can achieve when we put our creative minds to it, in whichever way, shape or form we can!

ONSITE.....

ONLINE....

The choice is yours!

“SUPPER THEATRE” a roaring success at the Theatre Domicile

We ended off our third term with a Bang! All our Upper Primary students, and a selection of Lower Primary students hosted a re-imagined version of our Parent Presentations. Normally our students do a group Parent Presentation, where they get to show off what they learnt during the term. This term we had to put a bit of the twist on it and it was in the form of a Supper Theatre performance in their own homes.

                                         

All students had to plan and perform a show, which included a 3-course meal, as well as a variety of items performed while the audience enjoy their various courses. They designed posters, tickets, menus, and programmes. They had to create a stage, set with props and costumes. They had to be the MC and the waiter, or enlist their siblings to help. 

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The Upper Primary students had to perform a solo interpretation of a traditional Verbal Dynamics item, Cities, as well as a Monologue, and an improvised advertisement. The Lower Primary Students who chose to do the Supper Theatre, performed a dramatized prose, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, by Michael Rosen, and a poem from our Term 3 selection. 

We encouraged the students to be creative and put their personal stamp on the event, so some students wrote their own monologues and added items to their performance, changed the “supper” to a “picnic”, and helped prepare the food and used it for their advertisements.

We asked the students to take lots of photos and videos so we could all share in the fun, and from what we received, it was a roaring success all round. The parents clearly enjoyed the performances and the food, and the students loved showing off their work. When asked for feedback after their performance, the one word used to describe their show most often was “amazing”. Time and time again: “It was AMAZING!” 

How wonderful that we could bring enjoyment, fun and excitement to our students’ homes and families. 

 

This year has been so challenging for everyone, but it has pushed us in so many ways to re-invent and re-imagine old favourites, and each time the result was so, well, amazing!  

Let’s keep this momentum and level of enthusiasm going into Term 4, where we are once again going to have to pull a rabbit out of the hat to make our year end productions live up to our tried, tested and much adored live shows.

🌟 O'Grady's Gauteng Competition 🌟

 Let's get creative during the month of September! Open to all ages... Contact us on ogradyspeechcomp@gmail.com for more information 🤩

Teaching is a work of Heart - by Maryka Roux

 Happy Spring everyone! 

It is a new season which means new opportunities to grow, just like the beautiful spring flowers! Spring always reminds me that new beginnings are possible and beautiful.

This was also the case 5 years and 5 months ago when I started teaching at Helen O’Grady Drama Academy Pretoria. I remember my interview with Principal Juliet like it was yesterday. I met her at the very studio where I still teach, and we just connected. The biggest thing I remember is us talking about how important Drama is for Confidence. Immediately I could feel we were on the same page, but I knew I had to await confirmation to know if she thought I would be fit to teach at such a prestige and astounding Academy.

Thankfully, I got a call a few days later and my new season started. I could feel that there was a Spring in my step and Spring flowers in my heart.

 You see, Drama is not just a form of gaining confidence, teaching it is as  well. When you teach you grow in your skillset, your craft and in  knowledge. With Helen O’Grady, that is exactly what happened. The  curriculum is so well thought out, the exercises, scripts and activities are  super great for confidence building and becoming acting-ready and the  Drama Presentations encourage organizing and event planning with the  wonderful showcases at the end of the year that take you into a true  theatre atmosphere.

                           

As a teacher in different studios I have always felt loved and always see the confidence growing not just in myself but also the students. With new gained confidence it is only natural to become better at what you do. So as time progresses teaching becomes a work of art, a skill that is challenged and beautifully articulated every year, every season, and every term – we get the opportunity to teach and learn.

 

Now I can honestly say, I am still learning something new every day, not just because of the amazing Helen O’Grady context and content, but also the amazing staff, teachers, and students who always aspire to grow. That is why teaching is more than just a work of art, but a work of heart ♥️. Loving what you do and loving people, makes life much more lovable ❣️

My hope and true passion in life is to help everyone find their purpose, the one thing that makes them do their work with heart. I have found my calling and that is to teach. I hope to inspire and motivate others through my company ButtonUp to find the work of heart that they can do and love for the rest of their life!

You know what they say, if you do what you love, you never have to work a day in your life. Thank you Helen O’Grady for not only providing me with a platform to do what I love but also to love and be loved.

      ButtonUp is a Motivational Company specializing in Motivational Talks, Workshops, Courses to find your purpose and Individual Confidence Classes for all ages and all walks of life.

The title of this blog was inspired by a present given to me by an Alumni student - it read: 

Teaching is a work of heart.

                                                            

                                

Written by Maryka Roux

Me, myself and I

The new term has started, and we are off to a running start.

As with everything we have been doing since the dreaded pandemic struck the globe, we have had to put a new twist on what we are teaching this term. For the most part we are still working online, and, in some cases, we have a bit of a hybrid system going.

The third term is usually when we start working on our year-end productions and planning on which plays we will be doing with our respective groups. This is by far one of the most exciting times in our calendar for teachers and students alike. But, for obvious reasons we had to relook our strategy.

The Helen O’Grady way is really based on a lot of teamwork and teaching the students how to be a part of a whole, having your moment in the limelight and giving your friends their chance to shine as well. Encouraging and helping each other to achieve a common goal. Many of our classroom activities, and especially our year-end productions are built around this. All of these are such amazingly valuable life skills for students to learn. As far as the productions are concerned, we will have to put this on ice and change things up a bit.

So, for example, this term we are challenging our Upper Primary students to focus more on individual performance skills using Monologues and adapting our Verbal Dynamics group activity to a one-person performance. It is actually very exciting to be able to give the students an opportunity to work on a different skill set focussing more intensively on the self with characterisation, speaking directly to the audience and communicating inner feelings. Making good eye contact (or speaking directly into the camera), and working on modulation techniques, like Pace, Pitch and Pause. And, how to use costumes and props to help with characterisation.

This will really push individual creativity and self-confidence. Especially for those who usually feel quite safe in the group activities and shy away from the individual challenges.

We are looking forward to what this term and this strange new world will bring! If there is one thing we have learnt this year is that our students are brilliant at adapting and doing whatever we throw at them.

The Rah-Rah file by Charlotte Tervit (Vice Principal HOG Drama Academy Pretoria (Pty) Ltd)

Many moons ago when I worked as a PA in the corporate world, my boss, the MD of an insurance company, used to keep a Rah-Rah file. Simply put, it was a brag file, a thing of pride, stuffed full of articles and information about our company’s achievements and accomplishments. Every now and again, he would take out the file, dust it off and page through it with pride.

This week’s post is dedicated to all the amazing Helen O’Grady drama teachers. As we come to the end of a truly unexpected, interesting, challenging and surprisingly fun term, I think we should all file this term and our mind-blowing achievements in our collective Rah-Rah file. In future, when we have a rough week, or just feel nostalgic, we can take it out, dust it off, page through it, and look around the room and say “Wow, we really did this! Well done me and well done all my amazing colleagues.”

There have been very few times in my life that I’ve been prouder to be part of an organisation as I am to be part of Helen O’Grady Drama Academy. And to be part of the greater fraternity of teachers everywhere, who worked so hard to bring education into the homes of our children during these unprecedented times, whilst navigating their own personal lockdown journey with their families at home.

So hats off to all you phenomenal ladies and gentlemen! Rah-Rah!

- Charlotte Tervit

Student Feedback:

The Grade 1-3 Reddam students Charlotte teaches on Zoom were asked to send feedback to her...here are some of their comments:

"I love everyone thing in drama but my truly favourite thing is you!"

"I really really really like the cruise ship one and I also like the one where we got to dress up as a bird it was really really fun, I love drama!" - HN

"I like drama a lot. I like doing the guessing game we played today. I also enjoy intro activities and the Octopus activity it was fun. Thank you Teacher 👌😘"- PT

"Thanks Charlotte that was fun 😂"- TB

"I really liked the drama exercise today teacher Charlotte because my mom and I acted it out" - HN

Parent Feedback:

"Ahhh thanks ... and thank you to you guys as well for making it such a fun lesson"  

"Thank you very much. My daughter is really enjoying every minute of class. The birdie mask, blanket, the matching colours... everything, she did on her own  Thank you for being an awesome teacher too!"

"Thank you Juliet! Super fun for A!" - NB

"Class was awesome, Juliet!" - JP

"Thank you, the session was brilliant!" - SZ

Another Day, Another Plot Twist!

One of my favourite sayings at the moment is:

If something doesn’t turn out the way you hoped, just yell “plot twist” and continue to Sparkle! 

The one thing that is certain at the moment is that everything is uncertain. We plan and plot and just when we think we've got a handle on things, understand the game, someone yells “Plot twist” and the rules change and it's back to square one. And so the plot thickens.

One such area is the reopening of schools and the rules and regulations around it. It is causing much frustration for parents, but sadly also confusion and even anxiety for our kids. While venting about this and processing my own frustration, it dawned on me that once again we have a wonderful teaching opportunity here. We can teach our kids to roll with the punches.

Pre COVID 19 our lives, and importantly our children’s lives, were for the most part very structured (some lives more so than others) but nonetheless, it followed a very clear and certain path. All of a sudden it is all up in the air and things seem to change on a daily basis.

Perhaps we can teach them the life lesson that things do change and that things don't always work out the way we planned. But we as humans can adapt, embrace the challenges and try to make the best of it - the whole life and lemon thing comes to mind....

But even if there is not a jug of refreshing lemonade at the end of the tunnel, we can still roll with the punches, work through the tough times and make it to the other side. Pretending that going back to school under the new circumstances will be fun is possibly setting the children up for disappointment, but they will get through it and they will get used to it. Or if they are not going back to school at all, explaining that they won't be with their friends every day might seem like punishment, but they might end up looking at the world in a whole new way.

Our drama classes can be a great example of how change is not always a bad thing. We have been able to bring high quality and fun drama lessons to all our kids making use of various digital platforms. But we can go back to face to face classes at any time and have awesome classes, or even do a hybrid of the two. We do not need to view the change from the one to the other as bad, just as a new chapter.

We, the teachers and students of Helen O’Grady Drama Academy, can adapt, change and embrace this new reality. As I’ve mentioned before, drama is so fluid and, well, creative that we can make great performance art out of almost anything and any situation we find ourselves in. Social Distancing? No problem, we just inflate our drama bubbles a bit and exploit a good opportunity to work on projection. Protective gear? Bring it on, we love dressing up – hazmat suits are the new black! 

Our classes are incredible, our content is pliable and we are even adapting our year-end productions to, not just a sad watered down version of what it used to be, but an exciting, thrilling new challenge that the children will love. (Watch this space for more on that!)

The important thing is that we SHALL keep going and we SHALL be there for our drama students and we will come out of this in the end with bells on! 

So just yell “plot twist” and continue to sparkle!

Drama Dress Up Day

This term we introduced Virtual Drama Dress Up Days - the children have loved it! One of our favourites was when we all dressed up as birds, learning to fly for the first time.

Dressing up is a great way to get children to transform into their characters and make the activity come to life. 

By using objects they had at home, and clothes from their (and mom's) cupboards, and with a dash of creativity we had the most colourful and exciting birds in town! 

The lockdown has presented us with a surprising bonus. In some schools or studios, it is just not practical for children to take part in our dress-up lessons. With everyone one being at home, this is a brilliant way to add another level of excitement and creativity to the lesson. They can use props, and even select a setting or “stage” where they can do the activity, like in the garden for the birds or the kitchen for the chef.

TEN weeks is an extraordinarily long time to be confined to your house and unable to go anywhere fun and exciting. Giving children the opportunity to transform their house and garden into a forest or restaurant or desert island or haunted house is a great way to give them some ideas of how to start playing pretend more often and give them a break from their electronic devices to use their imaginations freely.

Electronic devices used to be their fun time, their “escape” whether to watch animated movies and programs or to play video games, and there is one thing these things all have in common – the children don’t have to use their imaginations much, the graphics and animation are so amazing these worlds seem real.

What a lucky happenstance it is then that we have a beautiful moment to teach our children how to step away from these devices, which is now a learning tool (and not only for fun as much) and reignite their own ability to create worlds and stories beyond anything they have ever been spoon-fed by popular culture. Let’s help them, through dress up and imaginative play to try new feelings, come up with fantastical ideas and let their imaginations soar!

Friend or foe, that is the question:

January 2020:
"Johnny, please go play outside, you've been on your iPad all day!"April 2020:
"Johnny, please stop playing outside, you haven't been on your iPad all day!"
Who would have thought a mere few months ago that our iPads, mobile phones and laptops would become our most valuable partners in education!

Long gone are the days (well, actually not so long!) that we obsess about too much screen time and worrying that our children’s brains will turn to mush from looking at their mobile devices for more and an hour a day!

It's true that in many countries, like in North America and in Western Europe many education systems have successfully integrated technology and multimedia as part of their basic education platforms, but nothing like it is now and most certainly not in most of South Africa.

It is actually phenomenal how we have been able to embrace technology as a teaching tool, and especially the mobile device, and how we have started using it, neigh, depending on it to bring all sorts of educational material and programs to our youth, as is the case with Helen O'Grady Drama Academy. We made an almost seamlessly smooth transition from face-to-face classes to delivering our classes on multiple platforms, from pre-recorded lessons on Facebook, to live Zoom lessons right in our students’ own homes. To be honest, there was a lot of frantic paddling beneath the surface for the first few weeks, but for all the world to see, it was swan-like and graceful 😊

And it has been a roaring success! Drama has just been one of those subjects or activities that works brilliantly on a screen. The children enjoy it, they participate with gusto and are incredibly creative under these conditions. Perhaps we should not be surprised - children have known for years how much fun it can be to stare at a screen and now we are capitalising on it.

But it does beg the question though, what happens when this is all over? When life can go back to a more familiar routine of leaving the house, going to work and attending classes again face-to-face? Do we abandon all we have created and established during this dark time in our history and pretend it was just a bad dream, or do we continue with a hybrid system of face-to-face classes and an online offering to those who might not be able to attend classes in person? All our hard work and lessons learnt for the greater expansion and footprint of our amazing Academy?

I guess only time will tell, but it would be interesting to watch. I, for one, am very excited about what our future holds. 

Here are a few testimonials from Happy Parents:

Mrs Dinath: You doing an awesome job with them 😘 Thursday is the highlight of the week!

Mrs Govender: Yes and the kids are loving it as well. This is the new way of life I guess until further notice 😊

Mrs Paruk: Thank you for introducing the kids to Zoom! Both Uzayr and Isa loved it!

Mrs Nel: Hi Juliet, G is enjoying the videos, thank you. We do one video per day. G likes me to participate with her. The length of the videos are perfect! Not too long and not too short, and they are wonderfully engaging. 

And testimonials from Teachers:

Hi Juliet! It was lovely. Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m very impressed with how these kids stayed engaged. I was wondering how that would go and if they wouldn’t lose interest. You are such an amazing teacher even on screen😉 – Larisa Grove JP Drama Teacher Redhill

The kids are loving the Zoom lessons! - Tanya Gerasimo Reddam House Early Learning School, Deputy Head

If are interested in finding out more about our Online Pre-recorded and Zoom Drama classes please feel free to contact, Principal Juliet Jordaan, on 0829091630 or email juliet@helenogrady.co.za

Much needed Comic Relief

We are now approaching our 6^th week in Lockdown and the fatigue is starting to show. Parents are taking strain as they try to juggle work, home schooling and entertaining children during their off time, not to mention cooking and cleaning.

It is now more than ever we need to keep our Drama classes entertaining, fun and engaging for much needed Comic Relief. Many children are under immense pressure from school and their Parents who are, justifiably, concerned about their academic progress, as well as the inescapable boredom and cabin fever setting in. They also just miss their friends and the social interaction at school – children are (for the most part) social creatures who are at their happiest surrounded by their peers.

This is where we step in – Drama is, in its simplest form, a form of escapism where students get to interact with their Drama friends and to just have fun, laugh and be silly – especially during lockdown!  It is also a creative outlet where they can take a breath away from the books, as it were. And honestly speaking the kids just love the lessons! We even have some lessons continuing on the Public Holidays because the students couldn’t bear not doing Drama for a whole week!

So, we just need to keep on bringing our A-game to each lesson. This is when our Parents are going to appreciate us the most and the children become lifelong devotees and so cement the future of Helen O’Grady Drama Academy whether online or face to face.

                                          

The Show must go onLINE!

What an exciting few week this has been. Our online lessons have been running virtually flawlessly (see what I did there? 😉) and we are all getting into the rhythm of this new reality we are living. Our students have had an absolute ball doing online drama classes, those who were not able to join our live Zoom lessons have sent us videos of themselves following our online content posted on various platforms. It is quite amazing how good humans are at adapting to new circumstances!

And I have to say our students have been just amazing! They just took to this “new normal” like ducks to water. They are happy to go online to do their schoolwork, extra-mural activities and to see their friends. For the first time ever, they are not getting into trouble for the amount of “screen-time” they are having, and parents are encouraging them to go online! And surprisingly what I have witnessed at home and heard from friends is that children are choosing to spend time away from their screens playing outside, getting fresh air and exercise. Before this we couldn’t pry them away from their cell phones and iPads!

Of course, we can’t wait for children to go back to school and back to doing face to face Drama classes, but until then, we will harness the full power of the online world and enjoy every minute of it!

It was the worst of times, it was the best of times

The title of this weeks’ blog is a bit of a play on the opening line of Charles Dickens’ novel, Tale of Two Cities. I changed it around a bit as I think this is really a tough time for all of us, maybe even the worst we have ever lived through. There is a lot of fear and uncertainty about our way of life and when things will go back to “normal” (whatever that may turn out to be).But the strange thing is that in some respects it has also become the best of times!

The best time for creativity and innovation - thinking outside the box - to keep the wheels turning and to keep people connected, be it for work or to connect with friends and family. And it is no different for us at Helen O’Grady Drama Academy here in Pretoria and all over South Africa, and in fact all around the world. We are having online staff meetings, making videos, meeting our students in chat rooms and creating online content.

To be honest it has been a load of fun to figure out the best way to connect, making and sending silly videos out to our Helen O’Grady family to keep the spirits up, and how we can transform our live lessons into live streaming lessons. Drama is perfect to go on-screen – it’s dynamic and exciting and gets the creative juices flowing. It forces the kids off the couch, to move their bodies, jump, dance and laugh, whether they are watching pre-recorded content or during a live streaming lesson.

Not only can we do our conventional lessons in video format, but teaching our students on-camera performance techniques, how to film themselves using camera techniques like the best angles, lighting and camera shots, and how to use the latest technology to record and edit video clips are just an awesome by-products of our new line of attack. Even teaching them a universal skill like using online chat platforms like Zoom or Google Chat which they will be using in all walks of life in the future, from social interaction, to conference calling with colleagues and running online businesses.

It has also been really great for all the principals and teachers to discover new technology and forcing us to look at what we do in a new light and all the exciting possibilities that exist in the way we deliver and offer our Helen O’Grady lessons in the future. Online lessons could very well become part of the options we have available for students, especially students in areas where we do not currently have studios or opportunities for students from across the globe to connect with each other and collaborate in special projects.

Who knows?! …At the moment it feels like the possibilities are endless. And if this horrible, scary virus didn’t grip our planet in an icy grip of fear and uncertainty, we would never have explored these ideas and come up with all these awesome innovations to overcome an obstacle we never saw coming.  In closing we would like to give a shout out to everyone who follows our blog - during this time of lockdown and self–isolation….stay safe, stay healthy, stay focused and stay strong!