When 16-year-old Jennifer “Jenny” Gonzalez heard she was going to the White House, she tells me, her first thought was, “Oh, no! It’s too good to be true.”
And her second thought was, “Oh, no. I’m going to mess up.”
Her nerves were understandable. Gonzalez had been chosen to speak on behalf of all 12 of the programs that received 2014 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Awards on Monday.
First Lady Michelle Obama presented the awards, often called the nation’s highest honors for after-school arts programs, in a Monday ceremony that I attended at the White House.
Gonzalez was selected from one of this year’s honored programs, CPS Shakespeare!, a program that the Chicago Shakespeare Theater has operated for the past nine years with Chicago Public Schools.
As signaled by its exclamation point, CPS Shakespeare! aims to get students excited about the arts and self-expression through Shakespeare. It’s been a big mind-opener for Gonzalez, a junior at Chicago’s Prosser Career Academy High school on the Northwest Side, who says she used to think of Shakespeare as “something ancient and boring.”
The President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities chose this year’s 12 honorees from more than 350 nominations across the nation. Among those accepting the award for CPS Shakespeare! was Marilyn Halperin, the program’s creator and Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s director of education.
And in case you didn’t guess, Gonzalez’ little speech came off so well, complete with a spirited excerpt from Shakespeare’s “Othello,” that she even received a standing ovation.
“You can be whatever you want to be,” she told me later, “if you put education first.”
Yup. Shakespeare couldn’t have said it better.
