On Friday, April 12, Charles Street School parents were treated to some unique and educational performances during the school’s Living Wax Museum.
Fourth grade students dressed as historical figures lined the walls of the Charles Street School gym, standing still like wax statues, waiting for a visitor to press an imaginary button drawn on their backdrop. Once their button was pressed, the student came to life and delivered a short biography and interesting facts about their chosen figure.
Resident Allison Young came to see her nine-year-old daughter, Genevieve Ciolorito, who chose to take on the role of aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart. According to Young, other than the costume, most of her daughter’s preparations were done in school.
“She said they’ve been practicing every day,” said Young, excited to see her daughter recite her presentation at the Living Wax Museum after being denied a preview at home. “She wouldn’t even put the outfit on for me.”
Although Ciolorito wanted to wait until the day of the actual museum exhibit to perform for her mom, Young said that didn’t stop her from presenting a new fact about Earhart to her family every day as she did her research.
Ciolorito likes the fact that Earhart inspired other women to become pilots and was fascinated by her fateful final flight and the subsequent discovery of the bones eventually matched to the historic figure.
“I thought it was interesting she made something in history by flying across the Atlantic,” said Ciolorito.
A team of fourth grade teachers, Melanie Gerner, Nicole Michaels and Rileigh Ruff originally brought the idea for the wax museum to Charles Street School and held their first around the same time last year. The success of the first attempt led to the event’s return this year.
Michaels said the women were inspired by a similar project at another school and decided to use the enrichment period at the end of their school day to introduce their students to the idea and help them prepare projects of their own.
According to Gerner, their students had been hard at work leading up to the big day, researching their historical figure and writing their speeches.
“The students have been working on it probably for about a month and a half now. They had to research, they created their backdrops and memorized their speeches,” said Gerner.
“It was self driven, we just gave them some basic guidelines and they ran with it. They really, really enjoyed it and that’s usually the best way for them to learn, by choosing their own path,” said Michaels.
For the teachers, the project is as much about teaching public speaking skills as it is about teaching history.
“I hope they get more confident with public speaking because I think if they learn how to do that at a young age, then as they get older and go on to a career they won’t be as nervous to be in front of a crowd or talk to different people,” said Gerner.
Eleven-year-old student, Jahmeer Latimore, got a chance to flex his public speaking muscles in the role of legendary boxer Muhammad Ali. Latimore said he enjoyed researching Ali, and learned a lot of interesting things about him.
“When I started studying, I started learning about how he was actually really good in life,” said Latimore.
He was drawn to Ali by his larger than life persona and his famous technique of intimidating opponents leading up to fights.
“He used to talk trash to his rivals and talk in rhyme about how he would beat them,” said Latimore.
