Infuriated that a popular and achieving teacher who has taken them to dramatic heights the last two years has been fired, about 50 Culver City High School sign-carrying theatre students demonstrated for at least 40 minutes this morning before the start of classes on the sidewalk along Elenda Street.
In her only two years on the faculty, Sheila Silver, Creative Director of the vaunted Theatre Dept. of the Academy of Visual and Performing Arts has coached or inspired her students to win the most prestigious regional prizes. At its every-January High School Festival, the California Educational Theatre Assn. awarded its most coveted trophies to members of the AVPA’s Blurred Vision Theatre Company.
This is just the beginning of a firestorm, a long-as-necessary campaign to nudge the rehiring of Ms. Silver, said Kevin Mitchell, a senior, one of the drive’s key voices, told the newspaper this morning. He mentioned fellow student Georgia Funnell and her family as crucial to the campaign’s success.
Mr. Mitchell declined to reveal future plans for pressuring a reversal. He just would say they are being designed. “We want people to know about the injustice going on,” he said, as students waved their signs and responded to supportive horn-honking by chanting for Ms. Silver to be rehired.
A Doubleheader Day
A delegation of upset parents is scheduled to meet early this afternoon with Principal Pam Magee.
While the administration naturally is not commenting, students speculated on several possibilities that may have triggered Ms. Silver’s dismissal:
• By succeeding so spectacularly and swiftly, did she spark green-eyed envy among her peers, jealous or envious of the thundering, dominant attention her theatre students’ accomplishments brought to a single department of the AVPA.
• Was her chosen performance material to edgy for the administration? Or as some student signs read, “Who Ever Heard of Matthew Shepard before Sheila Silver?” (The reference was to her most recent award-winning production, “The Laramie Project,” about the torture death of the Wyoming student punished by his killers for being gay.)
According to Mr. Mitchell, when school officials informed Ms. Silver she would be canned as of June, she was told she “is not a good long-term fit for the school, and even more so for the AVPA.”
Digging Toward the Truth?
Are there any student-accessible clues embedded within that language?
“We were not sure what to make of that,” Mr. Mitchell said. “But because she works so well with students, because she fosters growth and inspiration within the student body, she is fulfilling the needs of the school. She has achieved the highest awards available and inspired us to become involved citizens, which is what we are doing out here now.
“We found out last Friday,” he said, “because a parent email went out. There is a lot of communication in the Theatre Dept. because we are so close.”
Mr. Mitchell suggested that Ms. Silver, whose teaching specialties are English and drama, was fired relatively early in the year because the time is at hand to plan for next year’s major stage production.
About 150 students are enrolled in various AVPA programs in a student body of 2,300.
Have the students spoken with Ms. Silver?
“Not about what we are doing,” Mr. Mitchell said. “She is not leading us. We are leading ourselves.”
Ninth-grader Josh Call suspects that the four other members of the AVPA faculty may have influenced the cashiering of Ms. Silver. “She is bringing attention to the Theatre Dept., and it kind of blocks out the other departments.”
Sienna Gonzalez, an 11th grader, said she was demonstrating “because I have learned so much from Ms. Silver the last two years. We feel it was so unfair for her to get fired.”
What about the reason behind her firing? “I can only give my opinion,” Ms. Gonzalez said. “She has chosen subject matter that offends people or can be controversial, like The Laramie Project. Some people might be taken aback by her blunt theatre style. She she understands the world and really empowers us.”
Olivia Finnegan, a 10th grader, said Ms. Silver’s supporters greatly outnumber her critics.
“There are a lot of different theories about why she was dismissed,” Ms. Finnegan said. “Some say it was a personality conflict with other teachers. I don’t know what is at the bottom of this. All I know is that she is resigning, and I want to fight that with whatever I can.”
