1320 Main Street an Artistic High School

Well Hello-

As this is my first time attempting a “blog” - like thing, I think it would be best for an introduction;  so, here it goes.  I am Rob Thompson, nice to meet you.

I am the Outreach and Development Director at the Main Street School of Performing Arts (MSSPA), located between 13th and 14th streets on Mainstreet in downtown Hopkins.  Along with the duties of letting people all over the state know about our school and the work we do at the school, I have the good fortune to be an instructor there, teaching Theatre.  In case you haven’t heard, MSSPA is a public charter school serving grades 9 through 12 with a focus on music, theatre, and dance.  We are currently in our 8th year and are going strong.

The Main Street School of Performing Arts works on an arts infused curriculum, which requires the students to use the information they are learning in their academic classes to create performance pieces in their focused art area. By integrating class work with their art discipline our students tend to score higher on tests and retain information for a greater period of time. In the MCA test scores posted by the Star Tribune and the Minnesota Department of Education you get a hint of what I mean http://ww3.startribune.com/projects/no_child/district.php?sort=pctRead&dst=metch. Of course we require the students to write essays, do researched presentations, informative speeches and complete lab experiments. They are all part of our classroom experience too! This arts infused curriculum has served our students well and continues to be refined and grow.

Our Music, Theatre, and Dance classes focus on theory and performance.  Our students study the history of each discipline, the theory and mechanics and the creation of new performances pieces rooted in that theory and history.  We also have an extremely busy performance calendar with Fall and Spring offerings in each art discipline, a yearly Musical, monthly open mic nights, and a large number of student organized performances.

In the next couple of blogs I will go more into depth about our upcoming performances and what our graduates do when they leave MSSPA.  Thanks for checking me out and come see a show! If you have any questions you could also send me an e-mail at rthompson@msspahs.org .

-Rob Thompson