How to Pick a School Assembly or field trip, Part 4

How to Book a Good School Show, Part 4

Kid Power makes educational shows for kids.  We bring them to schools all over the country as well as to small regional theaters where the kids come from their schools to see us. 

So if we were booking an assembly performance or field trip for your school, we would try to find the following:

1. Something the students can't get in any other way. 

2. Professionalism. 

3. A wide range of subjects and styles.  

4. A program that reinforces and/or complements your school's curriculum. 

Let’s talk about #4: A program that reinforces and/or complements your school's curriculum. 

“Wow, those lesson plans look great!” - That’s complimenting your school’s curriculum.  Ha!  We are hilarious. 

No matter how good a school show is, it's not going to take the place of in-class learning. If your kids see a great show about the environment or about health and nutrition, they will probably retain some of it.  But where an assembly program or field trip really pays off is when it is combined with in-class instruction. Then there is this wonderful synergy where they hear something in class and then hear it in a totally new way (for example, in a musical number) in an assembly, and the combination of the two makes much more of the learning stick. 

So you've got two ways to go here, or a combination of two ways:  you can find a program that fits into a curriculum that you know most of the school is doing - say, a science unit on the environment - or, you can book the show with enough lead-time so that the teachers can put together some material on the subject prior to the performance. Either of them work, but both of them require some forethought and some communication with the teachers in your school. We know it's not easy, but an assembly is an investment and you want that investment to pay off. 

Just as a side note here, if you want to book a show about the environment during the week of Earth Day or if you want to book a show about MLK during the week of his birthday, remember that everybody else wants to do that, too. You better book early. You might also consider that learning about how to protect the Earth can happen anytime, it doesn't have to be the week of Earth Day. It could save you a lot of hassles. 

Next, we will look at age-range challenges.