|
|
Sister Janice Otis is the principal at Cre-Act School in Pocatello.
Cre-Act founder: Sister Dorothy Prokes takes a break from packing up at the Cre-Act School Wednesday afternoon. Sister Dorothy took a sabbatical to travel throughout the United States before she settled in Minnesota to write a history of the Cre-Act school and her teaching philosophy. She is currently awaiting the publishing of her manual. She is back in Pocatello currently.
 Journal photo by Bill Schaefer
By Daniel Mooney - Journal Writer POCATELLO - Creativity seeds confidence. That's what Sister Dorothy Prokes has taught at Cre-Act Elementary School since 1975 and what she's been an example of throughout her life.
Now the school's 86-year-old principal will take a one-year break from her position to spread her unique teaching methods by way of a book. “She is Cre-Act,” said Gretchen Vanek, mother of two former Cre-Act students. “My son is so comfortable with himself, and I think it's because of Mother Dorothy's philosophy.”
Prokes will leave her school on Aug. 31 not to take a rest but to spend a year working on refining the philosophy that has taught many of Pocatello's youth through the integration of art in education. She said her ultimate goal is to see the implementation of her methods in more schools across the country. “I've started with the methodology and how it's applied here at Cre-Act, but now it needs to be put into a (marketable) format,” Prokes said.
Prokes has seen Cre-Act grow from a seven-student, three-grade school housed in the lower level of the First Congregational Church in Pocatello to the successful elementary school it is today, but the idea that inspired the school began long before. “I think I learned creativity from my parents,” Prokes said, adding that she was raised in Jackson, Minnesota. “I was a Depression child and we lived on a poor farm so we had to create a lot of fun from hardly anything.”
The long-time teacher said she first saw the need for a more creativity-integrated education when she started teaching high-school drama. “When I saw what happened to the kids through the arts, especially theater, I realized that this should start earlier,” Prokes said.
That realization set her on a mission to bring theater into elementary education, but the journey wasn't easy. She said she was pursuing her dream at a time when the arts had been pushed aside for more “practical” disciplines. She found what she was looking for, though, at New York University, which had recently started a new children's theater department. Prokes jumped in, earning her doctorate in educational theater in 1971. She began touring the country searching for a venue for her ideas, but found none until she came to Idaho and began teaching at St. Margaret's School in Blackfoot.
“That was the first Cre-Act school where all of the principles were applied,” Prokes said, adding that soon afterward the school moved to Pocatello. In 1985, her dreams were fully realized when her Catholic order, The Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist, helped fund the opening of the current Cre-Act school. She says the journey has been worthwhile, especially now that she has received so much interest in the book she is set to write.
“It's exciting to know that there is a desire for it, that I've spent my life doing something worthwhile,” Prokes said.
She is unsure of her future plans, but she feels like she is leaving Cre-Act in good hands.
“I'm not leaving for good, because my heart's here, but I have to be open to going wherever the need is,” Prokes said. “We have the Franciscan Sisters here and we have good parents who love the school. I feel like the seed has been planted.”
“I'm not leaving for good, because my heart's here, but I have to be open to going wherever the need is. We have the Franciscan Sisters here and we have good parents who love the school. I feel like the seed has been planted.”
- Sister Dorothy Prokes
Sister Dorothy Prokes, FSE, Ph.D., foundress of Creative Acting (Cre-Act) and the Franciscan Cre-Act School, Pocatello, Idaho. Sister Dorothy, known nationally for her creative, pioneer efforts of using creative dramatics as a mode of education, holds a doctorate degree from New York University. She anticipates the publication of her new book about the Cre-Act method soon.
|
|
|