Three years ago, Cranston High School East teacher Chris Ougheltree was approached by the social studies department chair, Scott Maynard, who was looking for a team of teachers to apply for a Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Arts Talk grant. “It was proposed to me as another way of getting field trip money,” Ougheltree said.

He and several other teachers took on the task of applying for the grant.

“We tried to put a group of teachers together that would touch as many of the groups as possible, schoolwide,” Ougheltree said.

This year’s group includes World Language Department Chair Lauretta Lunghi, world language teacher Isadodelis Tejada and creative writing teacher Barbara Wahlberg, as well as Ougheltree, who teaches law, sociology and psychology.

The school received the Arts Talk grant, and they soon realized it was so much bigger and so much better, than just field trip money. Three years later, Ougheltree is still on the team that applies for the grant each fall and he is still amazed at the opportunities that the grant money provides for the students at Cranston East.

“This is not your grandfather’s Cranston East,” Ougheltree said proudly. “A lot of good things are going on here with the kids. It’s very diverse, to say the least. There are some good things when you give them the opportunity. Thank goodness we have grants like this. I love how the [RISCA Arts Talk] artists sincerely enjoy working with my students while sharing their talents and how the art community comes together to support one another.”

According to Heidi Carla, school-based coordinator for Cranston High Schools East and West as well as the CACTC program and the NEL/CPS charter school, the grant provides money and artistic personnel to come into the school and teach classes, run workshops and present assemblies in the areas of visual arts, acting and music, to name a few. Every student in the school is given opportunities to participate in some aspect of the grant.

Some of the assemblies are whole-school assemblies, while some of the workshops are for particular grade levels or classes. Some grade levels get to participate in a field trip as well, such as this year’s trip by the seniors to see “A Raisin in the Sun” at Trinity Rep in Providence. The play is based on the poem by Langston Hughes, “A Dream Deferred,” and has many universal themes in it, including family, money, race and dreams, that connect past history with current events.

More than 200 students were there from East at the performance. The freshman students went to Rhode Island School of Design to see a David McCauley exhibit.

“I enjoyed the show,” said Alida Dyami. “It showed everyone’s characters’ determination for what they wanted. A family conquered what they wanted. The actors knew their lines well; they seemed like they were the people.”

This year at East, there were several additional visual and performing arts events at the school. Recently, the actor who played Walter Lee in the play, Joe Wilson Jr., came into Ougheltree’s classes with a representative from Trinity’s education department. They spoke about the play and about acting in general and then taught the students some warm-ups and improv acting activities, even having one of the students perform Hughes’ poem. Wilson is an actor from Trinity Rep who performs in many of their other plays as well.

On March 16, Angela K. Thomas, who played Beneatha in 45 performances of the play, was in Ougheltree’s classroom, going over scenes from the play and focusing on the themes in each. The students were broken up into groups and each group was given a copy of the script, as well as a theme to find within the script.

“This play isn’t limited to a black play in the past,” Thomas told the students.

“Dreams, goals, family – those are universal themes. Each one of us are selfish in our own way. Each one of us has a piece [of this play] that they can hold onto in their own way.”

Earlier in the year, a percussion group came to East to perform for the students. The assembly showed the students the history of music in the Caribbean. It showed how basic beats started in Africa and how the music progressed to its current style. Dan Butterworth, a master puppeteer from Pascoag, also came to East, conducting puppet-making workshops with several world language, creative writing and early childhood development classes.

“One thing we have tried to do is to get as many diverse groups involved as possible,” said Lauretta Lunghi. “My students are creating scripts. The puppets are to look like characters from the scripts. They will perform for the other Italian classes [and] the early childhood development classes are planning to use their puppets for the preschool they run here, reaching another audience. Barbara Wahlberg is teaching Upside-Down Fairy Tales and presenting them to the special education self-contained classes, using the puppets.”

The Rhode Island Philharmonic also brought in one of its groups, the Jazz History Project, which presented to the school two assemblies tracing the history of jazz. Many history classes attended those performances, according to Lunghi.

At the end of April, Lyd E. Perez-Nieves will be coming and conducting three workshops with the Latin Dance Club. The focus of the workshops will be the transformation of Caribbean folkloric dance.

Each year, there is also an overall theme to the Arts Talk grant and the theme for this year is “Transformation.” The theme is reflected in each of the presentations that come into the school, as well as the trips out of the school that the students take and the staff at East works very hard to weave that theme into the courses they teach.

“My students were supposed to create an artifact on transformation: a poem, artwork, etc.,” Ougheltree said. “I hoped to touch them emotionally, hoped to invest their emotion in creating something.”

Shannon Rodrigues, a student in Ougheltree’s psychology class, wrote a very moving poem about the transformation that took place in her after attending her first acting class. Rodrigues had been given a scholarship for the acting classes by Tyler Dombrosky, the head of the Education Department at Trinity Rep.

“I wrote about the transformation from freshman year to senior year, talking to people more, instead of being isolated,” Rodrigues said. “It’s my personal experience. I had it start out that I was very shy in school. I started an acting class and brought that attitude to school and home. I hope it encourages people to try new things – you may be surprised when you do.”

In Ying Feng’s written assignment, entitled “Transformation,” he speaks about his experience of moving to the United States almost four years ago and living in New York City for his freshman year of high school. From there, his family moved to Rhode Island, where he began his sophomore year at Cranston East. Feng describes his lack of motivation in his essay.

“To change into another brand-new environment was the most difficult adjustment I had to face,” Feng wrote. “It seemed like everything started at zero again, just like friendship, the environment and school. In that year I made some new friends and slowly started to fit into the school. In 11th grade I started to get involved in school activities – tennis and the National Honor Society – and I realized that I could still make some really good friends in another country.

In my senior year, I appreciated everything that I received from others, especially my teachers; they gave me huge support in academics.”

Feng described his move from New York to Rhode Island as being the highlight of his life experience.

“To look back on my life journey in those four years, I learned a lot that I could not learn from the textbook,” he wrote.