After years of interviewing professionals in the field of comedy, we began to see a common thread. We consider comedians to be among the most intelligent people in the performing arts; yet despite their extraordinary observational and verbal skills, they were not always successful in school. They needed an outlet for their creativity, a platform in which to express them selves. But comedy is not taught in schools. Moreover with budget cuts, funding for performing arts classes has been drastically cut. We decided to work towards introducing a small workshop in the public schools that could help fill the void.



 We wanted to find a way to use the power of comedy to engage students in the classroom. We established an educational pilot program “Laugh It Out” to bring improvisational comedy to the public schools. After relentlessly navigating the political red tape at the Board of Education, we eventually found our home in the Preparatory Academy for Writers, one of four schools within the Springfield Gardens High School Complex, a New York City public school serving an extremely diverse population, more than 50% of the student body are first generation Americans.



With so many different cultures coming together in one school, the non-traditional learning style and emphasis on communication skills offered in our program were very well received and served to unite students from diverse backgrounds. The initial pilot program was so successful that it was expanded to serve three schools, and now includes an after school program, professional development workshops for teachers and a year-long accredited class. 

We have been invited into several schools for the 2010/2011 academic year and hope to roll out the program nationwide in the near future.