A Crankie Fest at Hinesburg Community School
Three classes of students worked for nearly a month to create illustrated scrolls of several folk songs that were then presented to their classmates, teachers and a few parents and grandparents.
By Geoffrey Gevalt
Hinesburg Record Staff
For weeks, third graders at Hinesburg Community School have been hard at work, learning songs, writing lyrics and creating art as part of a ‘cranky’ project led by retired 5/6 HCS teacher Paul Rocheleau and musician Matt Witten of Starksboro.
Crankies are an old storytelling art form in which a long illustrated scroll is wound onto two spools which are loaded into a box with a viewing window and, yes, cranks at the top to move the scroll forward as a song is played or story told. Think of it as a 19th century moving picture.
Rocheleau has been creating crankies with classes at HCS for years – even after retirement several years ago. Working this year with three classrooms, Rocheleau and Witten introduced the students to the concept, presented several different songs for them to consider and then put them to work creating additional lyrics and assigning students or a student pair to create a frame to draw representing a line or stanza of the song.
On Thursday, May 21, the students presented their songs and cranks to the rest of the school in a series of four performances in the school’s common space.
Afterwards, Rocheleau told The Record how much fun the project was for him and for Witten and, he hoped, for the kids. “They were tired out,” he said, noting that each of the groups of kids sang their song four times in a row for different school audiences.
He also expressed appreciation to the school and teachers for participating, to the students for working so hard at it and for two HCS staffers in particular – Carrie Justice and Donna Shepherdson – for helping with setting up the common room.
Click below to hear and see what the students did.