In the Thursday, Jan.
7 edition of the Winston-Salem Journal, reporter
Arika Herron write about a play that Parkland High School students presented to
students at Philo-Hill Magnet Academy. Photographer David Rolfe took the
pictures.
Here is an excerpt:
Gay. Ghetto. Cocky. Promiscuous. Nerd. Snob. Immigrant.
Outcast.
She’s a fast girl, hanging around the wrong people.
That boy’s a no-good thug.
These are just a few of the things that Stacie Pelsinger’s
theatre arts students at Parkland High School have heard about themselves.
“It’s about how people first perceive you,” said Pelsinger,
who does the project each year. “And people get bullied because of (those
perceptions).”
In their original work, “I Can Be Anything,” the Parkland
students are setting the record straight.
“I’m a black, African American male with a 3.5 GPA,” said
senior Cameron Wagner, who plans to play football in college next year. But,
Wagner said, that’s not most people’s first impression of him.
“They say, ‘He’s probably slinging drugs. He’s going to end
up in jail,’” Cameron said.
People assume that Elijah Booth, a senior, only likes to
play ball. Really, he likes to sing. He might join the student choir at North
Carolina Central next year, where he’ll be majoring in education.
For Shaquayvia Christian, it was: “She’ll be pregnant by
senior year.”
“Well I’m a senior,” she said from the stage at Philo-Hill
Magnet Middle School, where the Parkland students took their production
Wednesday. “Do I look pregnant?”
Shaquayvia does not, and is not.
But, Pelsinger said, the things that people think about
young people can have detrimental effects. So she invited her three theatre
arts classes to push back against those perceptions.
After the students wrote down what people thought of them,
Pelsinger asked them to write down how they see themselves and what they want.
She took the written assignments and created a script with the 45 strongest
statements.
“It ends up being a very powerful play,” she said.
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