Singing swan teaches tolerance

Iola school kids trucked up to Kansas City Thursday for the summer’s last Safe Base field trip.
About 100 children, parents and staff attended a production of “Lucky Duck” at the Coterie Theater at Crown Center, followed by a visit to the Deanna Rose Farmstead in Overland Park.
Both activities exemplified lessons the students had learned during the week, and indeed, that are fundamental to the Safe Base program itself.
Randy Bevard’s fifth grade class worked on self-esteem issues, he said. That theme was mirrored in the play, a fanciful retelling of “The Ugly Duckling” wherein the swan becomes a singer/showgirl.
“The play targets self-perception and positive body image,” noted Safe Base director Angela Henry.
“Why am I always the victim of traditional notions of beauty?” the swan asks children in the audience.
“I’ll tell you what’s ugly — meanness of spirit.”
The play also targets stereotypes and segregation in a barnyard where carnivores are forced to be vegetarians and remain in the city, while plant-loving fowl have free rein of the countryside.
“How can a world of beauty still be filled with so much hate?” the swan asks, recalling lessons recently learned by the students in a visit to the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Landmark.
An impromptu talk by Bill Russell, the play’s author and lyricist, was born of serendipity.
While waiting to enter the theater, Russell, sitting at a nearby table, noticed the large group’s matching T-shirts and inquired about them. Learning the kids had come from afar to see the play, which opened Tuesday, he shared a few words.
“Lucky Duck” is a rollicking play with good-time tunes, all with a message of tolerance and compassion.
Russell told the children that “the whole idea for this came from when I was your age. I had a Little Golden Book of ‘The Ugly Duckling.’ I always pictured her as a girl.” Russell ran with his idea, adding a bit of Cinderella to the story in the swan’s stepsisters.
Though discouraged by her family, the swan believes in her own talent and sticks to her dreams.
Supporting a child’s positive sense of self has long been a Safe Base tenet, so the play was a natural fit, Henry said.
The children were delighted by actors dressed as feathered fowl, strutting through an audience seated on the floor before the stage.
Mrs. Mallard and her ducky daughters asked the children questions before the play, then led them in a polka- rhythmed “chicken dance.”
Bursts of laughter erupted when coyotes chased fowl, swans bested drakes, and a merry conclusion melted hard hearts and married different species in the play’s promotion of acceptance.

AT THE DEANNA Rose Farmstead, students saw real ducks and geese, petted goats and “panned” for fragments of colored crystal.
The Farmstead acts as a memorial to Overland Park police officer Deanna Rose, who was severely injured in the line of duty in 1985. She died of the injuries, at age 26, only two years after joining the force.
Her family established the farmstead — which also sports an old West-style bank, schoolhouse, mine and Indian teepees — to honor her love of animals.
Karen Meliza, a USD 257 para educator who worked with nutritionist Wanda Kneen during Safe Base’s summer session, noted the children made nutritional snacks that reflected what they might see at the farm.
“Bales of hay made with shredded wheat; sunflower seeds and gummy bugs, corn nuts and berries represent what chickens eat; and pretzel stick fishing rods and goldfish crackers for the pond.”
Teaching nutrition is also a part of the Safe Base program. During the week, children learned how to milk using a Farm Bureau Services mechanical cow with working udder and participated in activities related to farming, Henry said. One such task was planting pumpkins at Elm Creek Community Garden. The plants will be part of the program’s fall activities.
Older students also walked to Iola High School for lunch to enhance physical fitness during the summer sessions, Henry said.
Summer Safe Base is funded separately from the school year program, Henry noted.
“We’ll probably start looking early for funding for next year,” she said. “It’s hard to find money for just a summer program because it’s hard to show (grant providers) you’re having an impact with just a few weeks,” of classes.
Speaking with students, however, that impact is obvious. Many during the trip recalled previous visits — to Woolaroc in Oklahoma, to the Topeka Zoo earlier this year, and on and on.
“For some families,” Henry remarked, the trips are “like a mini-vacation.”