Victoria Chatfield

Chatfield’s innovative teaching idea, “Screen It,” is focused on using performing arts to foster collaboration among students in all grade levels. This project will allow students at Williamsburg Collegiate Charter School to create a series of short films that will be presented at a festival in the school’s auditorium, which is open to the Brooklyn neighborhood. Eighth graders will direct, seventh graders will write, sixth graders will design, and all students will be eligible to perform in the short films. Through this project, students will engage and collaborate across all grade levels — enhancing the learning of younger students, while encouraging older students to become role models and leaders in the school’s community. Chatfield’s idea was inspired by a seventh-grade student who wrote a screenplay about a young man who unsuccessfully fights to overcome the gang culture of his neighborhood and go to college. After an in-class reading, classmates gave the student a standing ovation and wrote dozens of requests asking if the screenplay could be performed the following year. Chatfield hopes to capture this enthusiasm by using performing arts to help students learn, collaborate and grow together.