Reaching One Classroom at a Time EP:8

NORTH PLATTE, Neb. (KNOP) - The North Platte Public Schools Foundation and Fat Dogs awarded the eighth REACH grant to a theater teacher at North Platte High School.

With the grant, Brittany McDaniel wants to start the Bring the Stage to the Students Project. She wants 20 members of her advanced acting class to go on a tour of all the elementary schools in the area. She wants to bring the art of theater to the young kids in hopes of inspiring them to be interested in theater, speech, or other fine arts when they get to high school.

“It’s hard for elementary school kids to get involved in theater because we have some in our community with Fox Theater, but they don’t just focus on children’s theater, so it’s hard for them to get out and find a time with all the elementary schools to do theater with them, so with this project we would be able to take a whole show to them,” McDaniel said. “Theater can be fun and not scary, and you can have a good time, and I’m hoping it’ll be a great introduction to them so that maybe when they come up to high school they will want to do theater and speeches and be involved in the music and the fine arts a little more. So I think it’s really a nice place to express yourself so much because there’s so much emphasis on test scores and data and doing well academically that sometimes it’s just nice to have a class where we can just come in and breathe and explore and do fun creative things and be a little goofy.”

New grant winners will be chosen each week. You can watch these stories every Thursday at 6 p.m. on NBC Nebraska News 2.

If you want to nominate a teacher that is deserving of the Reach grant and should be featured on our “Reaching One Classroom at a Time” segment, submit their names here.

If you’d like to support the North Platte Public Schools Foundation and their REACH grants, you can donate here.

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