Drama teacher Nancy Anaya runs through improv exercises with her students at Utterback Magnet Middle School. She feels that drama provides a way for students to build self-confidence.

Greg Bryan / Arizona Daily Star

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A group of students form a circle around Nancy Anaya in the Utterback Magnet Middle School cafeteria and begin shouting loudly.

They aren't protesting the day's lunch menu; they are doing a warm-up exercise for Anaya, their drama teacher, who stands in the middle of the group, egging the students on to shout louder.

After getting pumped up during the drama exercise, the students and Anaya sit and watch a video featuring students' comments and accolades for the teacher who has been teaching at Utterback for 14 years.

One student in the video says Anaya inspired her to follow her dreams and become an actress.

"I don't just want to be an actress; I will be an actress," said Shira Maas, a seventh-grader at Utterback, 3233 S. Pinal Vista.

Anaya is being honored not only by her students for her drama program, but by members of the University of Arizona's School of Theatre Arts, which has named her Teacher of the Year as part of the fifth annual Theatre in Our Schools commemoration.

"Every year since 2004 we give out this award to feature a teacher who has a good drama program that we can celebrate," said Laura McCammon, associate professor in the teacher-certification program and a director in the School of Theatre Arts.

"There are not many good middle-school drama programs, so it is hard finding a good middle-school teacher," McCammon said.

Anaya says the program offered at Utterback is one of the only true drama programs offered in all Tucson Unified School District middle schools because she teaches classes five days a week.

Student teachers are used in the classroom to help Anaya and also learn what teaching is like.

"As a future teacher, it is really important to see what a teacher does that works," said Christina Culligan, Theatre in Our Schools president and a theater and art education senior at the University of Arizona. "It is so touching to see how her program affects the students and their life, and it propels me as a future teacher to also have a good program."

With funding being cut from drama programs every year, Culligan said the arts are being undervalued in schools and the community.

"Theater is so important in schools because it teaches students life skills and how to be a leader," Culligan said. "I hope the community can see what a great theater arts program can do for the community."

Students learn self-confidence, responsibility and gain a strong sense of community from drama programs, McCammon said.

Drama students at Utterback learn theater games, acting skills, and how to work together in a play.

Students get the opportunity to write and perform their own skits and plays during the school year, and the drama classes present two performances during the year.

This year the students staged "The Somewhat True Tales of Robin Hood" and "The Trial of the Big Bad Wolf," which Anaya organized by herself.

Anaya feels that drama builds self-confidence in students because it gives students a way to express themselves.

"I know for a fact that theater raises their academic achievement," she said. The students learn vocabulary, how to learn lines and they also study quotes.

The daily quotes are used by Anaya as a way for students to reflect on how they act and behave, especially when they misbehave.

"If a student does something bad, we look at the quotes, and it holds them accountable," Anaya said. "I am not really disciplining them, which works well."

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