Inspiring dreams, creating opportunities

When dreams and inspiration intersect great things could be accomplished and that is the impetus behind The Brandeis School in Lawrence launching an animation program as part of the Frost Avenue school’s curriculum.

In celebration of March as Literacy Month and Dr. Seuss’s birthday (March 2), and helped by a healthy donation of that classic childhood clay Play-Doh from Hasbro, Inc., pre-kindergarten through fourth grade students constructed characters from Dr. Seuss books and fifth through eighth graders attended a clay animation demonstration on March 10 led by Andy Cahill, an animator and freelancer for Mekanism, an award-winning digital production agency with offices in New York and San Francisco.

“It is taking something old and making it new again,” said school Principal Alese Gingold in explaining the matching up of Play-Doh with the computer software iKitMovie, that was also donated by its manufacturer. “We wanted to integrate art, literacy and technology.”

The curriculum was created by art teacher Madeline Bavli who returned to teaching recently after working on the business side of the movie production business.

Though the company Bavli worked for went belly up, her creativity didn’t as she pointed with pride to all of the artwork decorating the school’s bulletin boards and hallways, “was created in this classroom,” she said.

As the younger students rolled their Play-Doh creations of Sam I am, the Cat in the Hat and other Dr. Seuss characters and watched an Internet video on how to work with Play-Doh , the older students learned how to create their own clay-animated short film.

Kindergartener Sally Neugarten used the yellow and red Play-Doh to form the Cat in the Hat and found this was fun since she got to use her imagination. “I like the part of the story when the Cat in the Hat brings out Thing 1 and Thing 2,” she said in explaining how she picked her character.

Fellow kindergartener Dwight Prafder, whose mother Erika was instrumental in getting the school the Play-Doh, used his clay to form Dr. Seuss. Prafder said his favorite books are “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish” and “Greens Eggs and Ham.” He likes Dr. Seuss books, “because they have rhymes.”

Fifth graders Abigail Glattman and Eden Schebovitz were impressed with Cahill’s presentation and how much work goes into to making stop-motion animated videos. “I think it was really amazing,” said Glattman, who added she loves art and would like to make musical videos when she grows up.

Schebovitz, who said she is trying to write a mystery novel based on a dream she had, was moved by Cahill’s recounting of how he created his first video at 12. “He dreamt about it and he inspired himself,” she said.

Cahill showed the students his youthful creations and later work to demonstrate his development. He noted how difficult it was when he first started as the technology was more basic, expensive and hard to learn, and he learned on his own.

He thought it was great that Brandeis was starting this program and thinks understanding and manipulating media is an essential skill.

“The thing that maintained my interest in animation through adulthood is a persistent belief that my next film would always be better and that there was always something more to say,” Cahill said.

Should his inspiration rub off on the students their dreams could come true. “The opportunities are endless, this is just the ribbon cutting on this,” said Gingold, who was referring to the new animation program, but just easily could be speaking about her students’ futures.