Jackie Davis is a movement educator at the Pine Hill School in Wilton, NH. She is the director of: the Hilltop Circus, for 7th and 8th graders at the school; The Flying Gravity Circus, an extra-curricular circus for high school youth; and, the Silver Lining Circus Camp, a summer program.

Why a Circus?
by Jackie Davis

Tuesday, January 25, 2000

This February 4th and 5th, Pine Hill will hold its 5th annual Hilltop Circus, a performance centered around the middle school's 7th and 8th graders. Over these 5 years there has been much support and enthusiasm for the program, and also many questions about the validity of circus work in the curriculum:

Is Pine Hill unique in having a circus? Not at all. Many Waldorf schools around the world have circuses, varying from the humbly enchanting to the breath-takingly amazing. Fledgling circus programs can be found at such Waldorf schools as Princeton, Great Barrington, and Green Meadow, with mature programs at California schools in Santa Rosa and Sacra-mento, Austin TX, and Toronto. In Stuttgart, Germany, students of the Michael Bauer Waldorf Schule end their year with four days of circus performances under their own tent, complete with high wire and trapeze.

Outside the Waldorf community, the youth circus movement is on the rise. Summer camps and afterschool programs are blooming, and in the mainstream schools, educators are welcoming integrated circus arts curricula into their classrooms. Clearly something very positive is being recognized regarding circus arts for youth.

We are not a performing arts school; why should my child learn circus skills? It is true that in most cases, children who learn circus skills are not going to grow up to be professional circus performers. That is not the aim of the program. We are not a drama school, yet our plays are a mainstay of the curriculum; we are not a music academy, yet we strive to teach music appreciation and literacy through lessons and concerts. To appreciate the benefits of a circus program, one must zoom out for a broader view and recognize that the end product, the show, is only one part of the picture. The educational experience of circus learning begins long before the opening whistle and is meant to have long-lasting effects in the child well after the crowds go home.

What is learned during circus practice are things that can be useful throughout life:

• having poise and concentration under pressure;
• doing something you never thought possible;
• mastering a skill through trial, error, and plenty of practice;
• creating Something out of Nothing and seeing it come to fruition;
• working together in a cooperative way to bring about something big and special that you could never do by yourself.

Rob Chrust, the movement teacher at the Spring Hill WS in Saratoga Springs, NY, writes: “Children who learn to take new challenges and face some minor failures along the way will excel in taking other challenges in their academic work.”

Circus learning can open doors to peer teaching and mentoring in ways not often seen in other subjects. Only a certain amount of skills are brought by the teacher, while many more are discovered by the students themselves who have taken the next step on their own and made a new discovery. This discovery is often shared immediately with a friend: “Hey, check this out!” Acts are formed when students link their ideas together into a cohesive whole. The final result is the natural culmination of a successful and rewarding process.

How does my child benefit from learning circus skills? There are numerous justifications for teaching circus arts to children. Next week we'll read how the circus meets the adolescent specifically; meanwhile, this is a compilation of benefits as perceived by several Waldorf movement education teachers:

• Improves the abilities to focus and concentrate.
• Improves fine motor skills.
• Boosts self-confidence.
• Develops balance, rhythm, and reflexes.
• Stimulates imagination and higher order problem solving.
• Helps students develop patience and persistence.
• Provides a model for cooperative learning.
• Reminds us that challenges can be fun!

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