T

he vast majority of the time the best part of this job is the people I get to meet.

Working in a smaller town, I am forced to wear a variety of hats from covering education, to covering a football game, attending a festival and more.

I got into journalism because I enjoy telling people’s stories, whether that is just a recap after a football game or a longer feature story.

One of my current duties is writing an education feature for every Tuesday’s paper. I did a series on the new VWSD principals recently and have been very VWSD heavy thus far.

This week I decided it was time to mix it up a little and sent a message to a friend to see what was going on of interest at the Vicksburg Catholic School. Her immediate response was they have been doing some really cool things in the arts department.

I was hooked, made a few calls and was set up to go hang out with the art classes Monday.

Little did I know just how much of a treat it would be. One of the big changes this year is the introduction of a performing arts class. St. Al has had a spring musical for 10 years, but this is the next step and three classes of students meet everyday.

In the first month of school, they are working on improv with their teacher Chesley Lambiotte. In order to take pictures and bring the story together, I attended a class that afternoon where the students used a piece of pottery made in the ceramic class as a prop to create scene after scene.

They had a few different situations, but the best were the two at the end. One was called switch left, where four students stand in a square and each student is assigned a location (they were given school, a scary movie, a marathon and a big college football game). The two in the front are live and the location assigned to the person on the front right determines the scene. As they switch left, the scene changes and so does one of the actors. The pure creativity of these students in their setting was incredible.

The last activity I am going to call freeze frame (not sure if that is the right name or not). Two students start with a scene then other students yell freeze and go replace the other students. The key is they have to hold the same position and base the next scene off of the frozen pose.

Cavemen building a fire eventually became a salsa dance, a baking show, a dress fitting, a talent show and more as students switch in an out and let their imagination run wild.

As school becomes more and more structured and dependent on testing, it was great to see these students let their hair down, have fun and be free. It was an absolute pleasure to spend an hour with them and have the chance to capture the magic in an article for the paper.

As a final note: if you know of a teacher making an incredible impact or a class that is participating in a creative or unique project, send me an email at brandon.oconnor@vicksburgpost.com and I’d love to cover it for an upcoming education feature.

Brandon O’Connor is a staff writer with The Vicksburg Post. You may reach him at brandon.oconnor@vicksburgpost.com.