Eddie Duran: From Break Dancing to Balancing Acts

As a child, Eddie Duran was asked by his father, what he wanted to be when he grew up. Eddie’s dad, a man who had named his son after Edward Kennedy and thinking that Kennedy would be the next president back in 1972, had imagined Eddie devoting his life to something a little different than becoming an actor. You see, Eddie’s father escaped from Cuba in 1965 and floated for three and a half days on a small raft to the United States. As he floated in the sea, throwing shreds of pig meat in the water to keep the sharks away, so desperate was his journey to obtain the fabled “American Dream.”

When Eddie expressed an interest in the arts, his father, like so many pragmatic parents, did not understand the true value of his son venturing into show business. Culturally, it probably did not seem a tangible career or steady enough work for him. It certainly did not seem like a sure way for Eddie to make a buck, support himself, or in his future, support a family. His father wanted Eddie to be an airplane mechanic, but Eddie insisted on acting. He told his father, “I want to be an actor, and I’m gonna pursue that and I want to teach acting, I want to teach theater.”

Eddie says, “I never thought it would expand to what I live now, but I knew I wanted to work with students and I knew I wanted to work in the theatre. That was a hard concept for a lot of our kids and their families to grasp, because (parents) when you come to this country you are thinking about working and you are faced with the challenges of putting food on the table, keeping a roof over our heads and keeping us clothed, so the arts are often viewed as a luxury.”

Break-dancing

“The break-dancing came up and revealed itself to me, if it wasn’t for that, my father never would have had me perform or work in the arts at all.” So Eddie used his background of growing up in an urban setting (New Britain) with little or no resources to nurture his love for the arts through his ability to skillfully execute the street dance known as “breaking.”  This 1970’s dance style transformed Eddie into a “b-boy” for life. The dance craze also transformed him into one of his school’s most popular fifth graders. Admitting he was breaking to get notoriety, Eddie claims that this hobby did get him a lot of attention. Soon after, he received a full scholarship from a local dance studio and by seventh grade he was teaching dance classes and receiving free classes for himself. In high school he joined the show choir and the madrigal singers, where he ended up doing show tunes in musicals. Eddie says these experiences “launched him into college and grad school,” where he was able to join the theatre club as well as get summer jobs teaching dance.

An Educator’s Motivation

Today Eddie Duran wields his metamorphic arts prowess as the Artistic Director and Magnet Program Coordinator of Kinsella Magnet School of Performing Arts, a unique school where kids are learning through the arts.

Eddie says he is involved in arts education because, “I believe that arts are the best tool to deliver academic content, to teach, to develop the whole student. Students are challenged to communicate and strengthen social skills. They have to explore themselves. It (education) has to be a reflection of how they feel, a reflection of what they are being bombarded with at that moment … pop culture, school, peer pressure …” He also believes that making arts accessible is key to arts education success. The arts were not accessible when he was a child so he “appreciates the value.” As a matter of fact, one of Eddie’s greatest fears is that KInsella students will take what they are being offered in arts education for granted.

Major Goals and Arts Integration

Making the arts accessible is first on the list, followed closely by: comprehensive training, cultural exposure, taking students off campus to see shows, working in the community, and working with arts professionals. “When we created Kinsella as a performance arts school,” says Eddie, “we needed, one, an infra-structure. The infra- structure was comprehensive training that includes everything from drama, to stagecraft, acting, vocal and instrumental. The second area (focus) was cultural exposure, working with our community partners.  The third, which is the most cutting edge, is the arts integration: using the arts as a vehicle to deliver academic content, engaging the student on an emotional level. That’s cutting edge. Our students are learning and they are learning through the arts!  When I say that arts integration is cutting edge, what I mean by that is:  you could tell a student something and they probably won’t remember it, you can show them, they might be more inclined, but if they are ‘doing’ in the process, they are going to learn most effectively.”

Eddie also feels, “if they (students) are emotionally engaged . . . because that’s what happens in the arts . . . then retention is optimal. That’s what we want, we want them to retain the information and then connect it to their life and make it relevant.” Literacy professionals focus on students making connections all the time. They feel that students making connections to other books and to their own lives, or the world, have a platform to explain how much they really have learned from their readings. Arts education, as far as Eddie is concerned, is not only appealing, but also fun! “If we see academic scores go up, then we know that arts integration is working,” says Eddie. Further, “the success has to be attributed to many things, literacy coaches, math coaches, tutors and community partners, working with our students, but over all, the arts have undeniably impacted our culture, and students want to come to school!”

Good Citizenship

Kinsella’s Piazza is not only the place where students have meals, but it is also the location of the school’s town meetings, the seat of the school’s democratic process. Students are challenged to own every decision they make and to “own” their school, through the strongly-encouraged sense of citizenship.  The system that is in place to ensure such government is called ARRTS, which stands for Attitude, Respect, Responsibility, Trustworthiness, and Safety.

There is ARRTS signage posted strategically, everywhere in the school, as a friendly reminder to all Kinsella citizens. There is even a reward system in place for students who “get caught” being good citizens. “Any adult in this building, seeing a student embodying one of the ARRTS values,” says Eddie, “is ready with a reward for that student.  Let’s say I see a student …nobody asks that student to pick up that wrapper that was on the floor . . . and I see a student doing that. I’m gonna take what’s called an ARRTS card and I’m gonna check off ‘responsibility.’ That was responsible for them to pick that up. I ‘m gonna write their name on it, sign my name and give them that card. Well that card becomes currency, they (the student) can go to the arts store and they can buy anything …” Eddie then relates a story about a young male student who had so many arts cards that he considered entrepreneurship. That boy wanted to buy the whole arts store and sell things himself!

Balancing Acts

With a rigorous performance schedule that includes sixty- eight shows per year, twenty on the main stage, Eddie says, “It’s a delicate balance with academics. We balance by having an extended day program. So it’s all gotta be coordinated precisely and strategically. The school day begins as early as 7:15 in the morning, with some students boarding buses as early as 5:15 a.m. Most students are on the bus at 6:00 to 6:15 a.m. They eat breakfast at 7;15 a.m. Classes starts at 7:45, and go until 2:15p.m. The official extended day goes from 2:15 ‘til 3:45 p.m. (In) that hour and a half, students have their afternoon snack, an hour of rehearsal and then transition to get on the bus and hopefully are home by 5:00… six hundred students who stay after school, who are placed in everything from visual art classes, to dance classes, to drumming classes, all kinds of instrumental classes, drama classes, and then our shows rehearse. Shows that rehearse during our school day are instrumental concerts and dance concerts and those happen during that performing arts majors block.

Those performance arts teachers see the fifth and sixth graders at least forty-five minutes a day consistently. Seventh and eighth graders, they have an hour and a half of performance arts, they also have an hour and a half of math, language arts, a half hour for recess, and there is also an extra hour for writing in the lower grades.  We also provide Spanish, science, dance/physical education and social studies. All that is put in that 7:45 to 2:15 day. Then the students audition and rehearse after school.”

When asked about the challenges he faces working so close to the helm of a this multidisciplinary enterprise, Eddie says, “ I see everything as an opportunity, I know that sounds like a cliché, but I really believe that, and I view the entire world through that lens …” Eddie does confess, “time is a big challenge… working with so many initiatives at one time, training those new initiatives, scheduling … whenever you are working in a collaborative environment, personality and opinion, giving everyone the right to speak and listen, these are opportunities … the teachers here are amazing, they are able to adapt, able to modify, to roll with the punches …it is amazing the attitudes they have. They are constantly open and positive. I won’t say that we don’t have our days. We all have our days. We are here for the students, and we put the students center every time. When we make a decision, it is based on the student at the center of what we are deciding.” 

Sadly, Eddie retells how two years ago, they did not have enough buses to allow students without their own transportation to be involved in school productions. Those students had to leave when the buses left at 2:45 p.m. So they were never able to be a part of the school shows. “This was heartbreaking,” cites Eddie, “that was a challenge.” He goes on to say, “challenges range from everything from, again, scheduling to the balancing of academics, but they are opportunities.”

The Winning Hand

Eddie’s school, Kinsella Magnet School of Performing Arts, is in its fourth year and his students have shown a thirty two point increase in test scores. It is a win-win situation for the school, and for the kids. They are at a 70% proficiency overall, so the arts are definitely the nucleus for success in school. “My father was desperately leaving Cuba. I was desperately looking for a place in the arts, even though it didn’t make much sense for a first generation American to pursue. It made sense to me and I pursued that. That’s what I tell every student here when I do my radio program at the Piazza every morning. I tell them to get it, believe it, we are here for you, don’t be afraid of it. Don’t undermine your efforts. You’re here, and you can do it.

“If we have performing artists that leave our building and they continue in the performing arts, God bless ‘em. I will know that every student who walks out of this building and is promoted from our eighth grade program will have empathy, and insight, into the human condition . . . and what that means, and how that relates to their experiences as a human . . . and will have an open enough mind, broad enough thought, to be patient, nurturing, caring and incredibly intelligent adults. The benefits are infinite. I believe we are creating a generation of feeling people who will contribute to society in such a way that no other area of education can prepare them more effectively for life.  The arts are without a doubt 100% the best way to teach on all levels.”