After-School Specials : Anaheim teacher uses drama to build vocabulary and self-esteem in her pupils while reducing TV time.

Sharon Lyle’s pupils at Betsy Ross Elementary School don’t mind staying after school. In fact, many of them would rather stay in school than go home and watch TV.

That’s because Lyle has found her own way to compete with the tube. Once a week after school--and on her own time--Lyle meets with pupils to help them work on vocabulary, reading, self-esteem and oral interpretation.

But it’s not done in the classroom. It takes place on stage in an after-school drama program Lyle founded earlier this year.

Lyle’s group is one of five such programs being offered at Betsy Ross, according to Principal Roberta Thompson, who says that nearly half of the school’s 21 teachers are involved in after-school groups ranging from chess to art.

“We aren’t the only school that does things after school,” Thompson says, “but I think we are unique in the number of teachers who are willing to use their free time. We have tried to say, ‘Let’s do something additional that the kids would like.’ ”

Such programs not only help assist in the learning experience for pupils, Thompson says, but they send a strong message to the community. “The message is that teachers are committed to the kids. They do this on the only time they have to prepare lesson plans. They take that time and give it to the kids. It shows a tremendous amount of dedication on the part of the teachers.”

Parents like Theda Kaelin, whose son Aaron, 10, is in the drama group, say they appreciate that dedication. “This is a better alternative to TV and children enjoy it more. Besides, a lot of kids go home to empty houses, and this is an extra hour of education, an extra hour of participation and learning.”

Kaelin says Aaron’s experience in the drama group helped him win the oral interpretation contest at Betsy Ross. “All the children really benefit from this kind of thing,” she said. “We had a lot of kids you wouldn’t think could get up in front of the other kids and perform as well as they did, but they did great.”

Lindsay Morales, 9, says she gained confidence from performing, while Lee Elle Jex, also 9, says that the acting experience helped her with her vocabulary. “I almost gave up because I had so much to memorize. But you feel good after you do it,” Lee Elle says.

“So many of them when we started didn’t think they could do it,” says Lyle, who admits even she was impressed with how some of the normally shy children came out of their shells to deliver a flawless performance. “This really helps with their self-confidence and oral language. And it helps get them ready for bigger and better things.”

Lyle herself has had no formal dramatic training, but says she has always been melodramatic in her teaching. At Paul Revere Elementary School, where she taught before coming to Betsy Ross, Lyle used to dress in costume and go out on the playground to help pupils with their reading.

“I realized how much they liked the drama, and so I started a reading club at Paul Revere, and the kids would come in and hear stories,” says Lyle, whose own acting experience is limited to high school plays and church programs.

Although this is her first year at Betsy Ross, Lyle, who earned her teaching credential at Cal State Fullerton, has been teaching for 16 years. She has taught grade levels from kindergarten through high school and currently teaches fourth grade. Pupils in her after-school group come from her own class as well as from the fourth- and sixth-grade classes.

“This (drama group) is a way of extending the day,” Lyle says. “We’ve been trying to keep the kids interested in things after school because so many parents work and the kids go home and just watch TV.”

Pupils, along with occasional volunteer parents like Kaelin, meet once a week to rehearse, paint scenery and make costumes.

“It’s a lot of work,” Lyle says. “It honestly is. But sometimes you have to use different approaches to children. I just don’t feel like you can learn unless you feel good about yourself. This helps them with their self-esteem. So along with all the academic things they learn that ‘I am worthwhile.’ They feel so much better about themselves.”

The programs that Lyle stages are adapted from books or stories, and all of them teach a lesson about life. For example, theme of the most recent program, titled “I Wish I Were a Butterfly,” was: Be who you are and enjoy it--a philosophy that fits right in with Lyle’s own.

“Teaching is not just the math and science,” Lyle says. “It’s the total child. Academics, self-esteem, interaction with peers. We must start at the elementary level. My goal as a teacher is to make sure pupils are successful citizens. Education can’t just be books. Anything that I can do like this relates to everything that I do.”

Lyle, who is originally from Virginia, says that education was always important in her own family and that’s why she decided early on to become a teacher. A resident of Anaheim and a divorced mother of a 19-year-old daughter, she is currently working on her master’s degree in administration at Azusa Pacific College.

Now that she is a student again, she says she knows how good it makes her own pupils feel to be praised for a job well done. And she believes that success leads to more success. “I’d like to see these kids go on to junior high and not be afraid to make a speech, for example.”

In addition to helping prepare the children for junior high and high school, the drama program also emphasizes the importance of working on something until it is completed, Lyle says.

“Actually, we have two goals,” she says. “Let’s start a project and finish it, and let’s give something back to the school.”

The children perform the short play about a dozen times, before small groups of pupils, so that eventually the entire student body gets a chance to see the production.

A nd no one in the audience is more pleased than Sharon Lyle.

“I feel a real sense of gratification seeing them perform,” she says. “And I know that these children won’t be the children sitting at home depressed or out on the corner getting into trouble.”