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School Visits
copyright ©Teaching K-8
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The Greatest Show on Earth
by Becky Rodia, Senior Editor
Meet Sharon Knight, "ringmaster" of an after-school circus skills program. You've never
seen class clowns like these before.
Sharon Knight has two faces. Most days, in her third grade
classroom at Tuscany Hills Elementary School in Lake Elsinore, CA,
Sharon has fair skin, dark eyes and a ready smile, all framed by
auburn hair.
On certain festive occasions, however, Sharon's skin pales to pure
snow white, her hair gets longer, frizzes and turns bright orange
and her grin literally stretches from ear to ear.
This extreme reaction doesn't mean Sharon's allergic to fun. In
fact, the situation is quite the opposite. When she's not teaching
during the day or conducting Tuscany Hills' after-school "Circus
Thrills" program, Sharon dons a pickle-shaped red nose and a
polka-dot mortarboard with an oversized yellow tassel and goes by
the name "Professor K-OZ." Sharon Knight is a clown.
A card-carrying clown. Sharon first came to clowning in the
1970s, as a junior at San Diego State University, when the school
offered the first-ever accredited course in clownology. Shortly
after that, she began teaching preschool and incorporating her
clowning skills into the school day. Despite breaks from regular
clowning in the years that followed (during which she started a
family and went back to school to become a middle school PE
teacher), Sharon kept her white-gloved hand in by attending
clowning conferences and circus performances.
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Professor K-OZ (a.k.a. teacher Sharon
Knight) clowns around with curriculum.
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Clowning in the classroom. Teaching and clowning finally came
together a few years ago when Sharon had left Tuscany Hills
Elementary for a while to teach PE at a middle school. "Kids can be
challenging at that age," Sharon told us. "I knew they needed
something different to hook onto and get excited about, so I
started a circus skills unit."
For two years, Sharon taught middle schoolers to juggle, walk on
stilts and ride unicycles, with a little face-painting and
balloon-animal-making thrown in. When she returned to Tuscany
Hills, however, Sharon combined the physical and dramatic aspects
of clowning to give students some real circus skills and thrills.
Sharon's after-school "Circus Thrills" club has approximately 50
members. The club meets once a week to learn new clowning skills,
polish the ones they've already learned, learn the history of
clowning and how to develop their own clown personality.
"It develops their confidence," said principal Colleen Andersen. "The
kids stand on this giant ball and balance there; when they realize
they can do it, they're astounded."
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Sharon, dressed as Professor
K-OZ, paints the face of a
student.
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