KCP Class of 2006 and NYU Tisch School of the Arts Alumn, Isabella Gomez Giron, and two of her NYU classmates produced and performed an innovative and virtual production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The production featured fourteen (14) NYU Tisch students as well as eight (8) well-known artists, located across the world: South Korea, Hawaii, New York, California, Texas. This special version of Macbeth came to life with the desire to keep theatre alive during lockdown.
We spoke to Isabella and she shared with us how being a part of KCP shaped her life.
What are some of your best memories or experiences from your time at KCP?
Participating with the soccer team in Copa Parrish and Binationals.
The Read-a-thon: spending a night in the library, playing games, reading and watching goosebumps, and having Mrs. Donado’s pancakes the next morning.
Organizing and also attending the Halloween festival!
Having the whole auditorium singing happy birthday to you, while Mrs. Donado gave you a shiny pencil and sticker.
The Christmas performances and the beautiful Tree Lighting Ceremony, plus singing in it with the choir!
Playing doucheball, “el barco se hunde,” jump rope, freeze tag in recess and P.E.
The Carnaval competitions and performances!
Singing “Love is in the Air” with the whole 4th-grade class and “Color Esperanza” for our 5th-grade graduation.
Learning how to play guitar with Mr. Larry and singing with Mrs.Visbal.
The senior walk.
The surprise Senior brunch the school secretaries organized for us.
Looking at my classmates while giving my salutatorian speech at graduation.
If I mention every single teacher that marked me, this would be an infinite list! Some of those moments were drum playing and learning through songs with Mr. Chris and then performing them almost every Friday in the big assembly, Mr.Norman teaching us sign language, Mr. Mark’s daily jokes and hangman competitions, long philosophical talks with Mr.Fonseca, Mr. William’s passion for history and how nervous I would get for his tests, the experience of challenging myself with Mr. Linares’s Ap Calc and going through it with my friends, reading 1984, Animal Farm, and Romeo and Juliet with Mr. Dopuch plus the creative monthly projects, solving crimes through physics with Mr.Donatelli or creating chemical reactions with Mr. Godwin, my partners in Mr. Diaz’s class and how we developed a love for poetry and literature in it!
I could keep going for a very long time! So many marvelous days and moments! I deeply enjoyed all my classes, the teachers were so dedicated, the subjects intriguing, and all the types of projects, labs, research motivated me to keep learning.
How has your KCP experience impacted your life and the choices you have made in your career?
KCP sparked my love for learning. Through all types of projects, community days, spirit days, team building, competitions, going to school was a joy! My teachers encouraged my curiosity for life, and this curiosity is what has opened many doors for me in my career. The desire to explore uncommon paths, to create, to discover new ways of connecting with others, and of wanting to understand humans at deeper levels, started in KCP. As Deepak Chopra says: everything you think you can do has a “yes” inscribed somewhere, probably pronounced by a teacher or progenitor from your past. That’s what KCP kept doing for me: saying “yes” to my ideas, to my hard work, helping me believe in my capacity to achieve my dreams. This also gave me the confidence to take risks. Furthermore, I learned to not take the easy way out, to play with honesty, and that to play hard, I had to work hard. Working hard meant persevering, even when it seemed out of my level. Constantly choosing challenging paths, having perseverance, and being honest, have all been key aspects of my journey so far.
KCP also emphasized the importance of finding ways to give back to our communities, to those in need, and that has been something that has shaped the type of work I have done and the one I desire to do. All the food and toy drives, and the community service opportunities, made me realize that a key goal of mine is to use art to build new opportunities for those in need, to create a platform that gives voice to marginalized experiences, to spread empathy and compassion, and to make artistic training more accessible.
Moreover, in my classes with Mrs. Visbal, Mrs. Palencia, and Mr.Chris I started to discover my love for expressing my inner self through art and learning about the ways in which art is both a source for growth and a platform to spark growth in others.
How do you think KCP shaped you for your career?
At KCP I was encouraged to take on leadership positions through NHS, Mu Alpha Theta, STUCO, class projects, and the soccer team. Those experiences made me start embracing my inner leader, which was key when moving to another country with a different culture from my own. It strengthened my courage to share my own ideas, to take initiative, and to build my own projects, as we did in school.
KCP also taught me what a supportive, respectful, loving, community feels like. This has shaped the type of communities I strive to build through my art, and also in my personal life. A phrase I remember hearing constantly in Elementary was “put yourself in other people’s shoes” – that phrase essentially was one of the things that drew me to theatre; I found that through it I could practice that concept, and fulfill my desire to understand other experiences and bring value to them.
What advice would you give KCP students?
Do not let anyone’s idea of you, limit the choices you make, or change your idea of who YOU want to be. Don’t be afraid to take a career path that others don’t expect from you. Go for those things that you think you might get a “no” from, you’ll never know until you try, and passion and perseverance can get you extremely far.
Finally enjoy school, your friends, and teachers; it all flies by so fast! Absorb as much knowledge as possible!
What makes you proud to be a member of the KCP alumni?
I look back at my childhood, and become filled with joy!! Having such a wonderful past to look back to, is a gift. KCP helped make this possible, which makes me extremely proud to be part of this community. The KCP alumni and community is filled with people who genuinely and deeply, care about you and your growth; you don’t find that everywhere.
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