This is Chocachatti Idol
Chocachatti Elementary, a magnet school for the Performing Arts and MicroSociety, is expected to foster some really impressionable talent. And they delivered on Friday with a sampling of dynamic creativity and undeniable skill as the best of the school’s talent took center stage at Chocachatti Idol, which this year included a special goodbye to Principal Maria Rybka, who is leaving at the end of the school year.
The annual final assembly was created to encourage the students to dig deep into their creative performing abilities and demonstrate them in front of an audience in a talent show format. Dancers, singers, and musicians were all welcomed. Some performed solo acts. Others got groups together and choreographed difficult numbers.
Each Chocachatti Idol begins with a talent week where students in all grade levels were encouraged to come up with a number they could perform in front of their grade. The acts are voted on and the top five from each grade are then performed at the final assembly titled “Chocachatti Idol.”
“It has been an annual event since the school began,” said Kimberly McAuley, the Micro Coordinator at Chocachatti who, along with several of the teaching staff, helped coordinate this year’s final send off.
Thirty two performances demonstrated a myriad of talent, including solo, duet and group dance numbers, musicians rocking a drum kit, quick finger-plucking the tight strings of the violin or delicately maneuvering the piano keys.
Sweet angelic voices projected poignant lyrics to a diversity of different classic songs. One fifth grader, Max, impressed the audience with a memorable vocal performance of “When I Was Your Man” while also playing the melody on the piano.
Even Chocachatti’s littlest students, the Tee Pee Tots, marched on stage to their own creative dance number.
McAuley said the degree of talent that came out of this year’s talent week was phenomenal. The grades are limited to five acts each to be performed at the final assembly, which was difficult.
“There were so many really good ones,” McAuley added.
But the end result, Chocachatti Idol, was a professionally displayed compiling of so many talents from a school that focuses on encouraging the individuality of each unique child.
And they performed in front of an eager and supportive audience made up of students, faculty and guests in a packed cafeteria.
The final number is a gift for the fifth grade class, McAuley said, and is performed by the teachers and staff.
“Mrs. Bowers chose the song and choreographed it,” she added. And as many as 20 of the school’s staff, including Rybka and McAuley, took center stage.
They danced to Disney’s High School Musical theme song, “All For One” as the students cheered them on. And when the teachers, performance wrapped up, the entire student body sprang to their feet and danced for their principal. The gesture had been planned for a few weeks, McAuley said, to surprise Rybka with a send off she wouldn’t forget.
The principal of six years, with cans of spaghetti string in hand for the finale, was stopped in mid movement, tears pooling slightly as the magnitude of her students’ gesture sunk in.
“I had no idea they were going to do that,” she said.
Rybka is leaving Chocachatti at the end of this school after six years serving as its principal, a decision she announced in March. The new principal, Lara Sylva, was introduced to the students at the opening of the assembly.
So this year’s final act of the Chocachatti school year was a showcase of talent, support, and a bittersweet send off that had Rybka pausing a moment to find the right words.
“The kids are amazing,” she said. “I just couldn’t imagine how they did that because I have not seen them practice. I felt so loved.”
Leaving a school she’d worked so hard to mold will be a bittersweet experience, Rybka said.
“I am excited about the future but I also love what we’ve done at Chocachatti. I know it’s time to leave,” she said “And I know they’re going to be great.”
