Home-School Student
by joshua e. harris
It is 7:30 A.M. at Groton-Dunstable Regional High School. A small crowd is forming outside the principal’s office where the casting list for the upcoming production of Music Man is posted. Everyone is jostling to find out who got which part. Eyes quickly scan to find the much coveted role of Marian, the female lead. They’re puzzled to find a name they’ve never seen before. “Jenna Colleen? Who is she?” someone asks. “I don’t know,” another person in the group says. “I don’t think she goes to Groton-Dunstable.”
What they learned was that Jenna Colleen does not go to any high school-15-year-old Jenna Colleen is a home schooler. Although she’s used to getting good parts in productions, Jenna was a little nervous when she learned she’d gotten the lead role in a public high school play. “I said, ‘Oh, no, what are people going to think?”‘ Jenna remembers. “They’re going to look at the list and ask, ‘Who is this?’”
But now that the musical is in production, everyone knows who Jenna is. She’s making friends with the other students, even the girls who were upset that someone outside the school had been given the lead. If you ever meet Jenna, you’ll understand why it would be hard to stay mad at her. She has an irresistible personality. She approaches life as an adventure, and her enthusiasm is communicated in her every manner.
That might be part of the reason she enjoys acting so much. It gives her a chance to tell the world just how much she cares about something, how excited she is, how much she loves the life God has given her.
Getting the part of Marian is just one chapter in her pursuit of acting. When she was little, she loved to play “pretend” with friends. All her life she’s had an excellent memory which helps in memorizing lines. “She learns through the auditory track,” her mom explains, “so if she hears something she will remember it. Jenna’s first performance was a play in fourth grade. After that she performed as opportunities arose. In the summer before 8th grade, she decided she wanted to seriously pursue acting. “I became a professional two years ago,” she says. “I got head-shots, had resumes done, and did my portfolio.”
Her freshman year in high school she did her first commercial. She got the part because she was expressive—with her feet! The commercial was for a telephone company which featured feet “talking” on the phone. “The day of the shoot they spent an hour painting my toe nails,” Jenna says laughing. “We spent about five hours on the set working for 20 seconds of commercial.” That year she also decided to break into her local high school’s drama pro-gram. She had spoken with a guidance counselor the year before and had been told the school would let her take part in any classes besides sports. Even with this assurance, it wasn’t easy. “It was nerve-racking,” Jenna says. “I called Mr. Deneault, the guy who runs the drama department for the school, and said, ‘Are there any auditions coming up?’ He said, ‘Yes, there are.’ So I said, ‘Okay, when? I’m going to come.’”
The audition was for a one-act play of six women. Jenna got a lead role and was able to take it to competition. “We didn’t advance in the competition,” she says, “but two of our actors won awards, and I was one of them.” Her work with the one’ .act play also made a good impression on Mr. Deneault, who would later choose her to play Marian in Music Man.
What many fail to realize is the J great amount of work and commitment necessary to be an effective actor. Earlier this year when Jenna performed in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with a professional theater in Boston, she spent hours at rehearsals. Each night her father or mother would take her to the theater and stay with her for as long as the rehearsal lasted. Recently she was asked to direct a play for home schoolers in her area. Jenna discovered just how much work it was to organize people, especially younger children. “I’ve found a whole new respect for directors,” she says with a sigh.
But hard work has never discouraged Jenna. Not everything comes easily for her. Jenna’s dyslexic, a mysterious condition that interferes with the brain’s ability to process what the eye sees. This makes reading very difficult, if not impossible. “In the early days, when she was nine or ten, she really looked illiterate on paper,” her mother Sandra says. But sheer determination has paid off over the years. “They don’t know why she can read,” her mom continues. “When she looks at words, the letters are different every time she sees them. They reverse. She’s taught herself; the experts don’t know how.”
Jenna doesn’t view her dyslexia as something that has handicapped her. Instead, it’s taught her how to work through something even when it’s difficult and given her a sense of pride. “I did overcome it, and that’s why I’m proud of it,” she says.
Her mom, Sandra, who has home schooled Jenna and her younger sister for 11 years, feels home schooling is the perfect fit for Jenna’s special learning style, as well as her pursuit of acting. Jenna has home schooled all her life except for 7th grade when she spent a year in a local Christian school. Her mother feels it was a bad experience. “She lost a lot of ground that year in school, personality wise,” her mom says. “Even the special tutor was saying, ‘When Jenna came in here in August, she would attack anything I gave her, even though I wondered if she could do it or not.’ But she said, ‘Now in April I’m asking her to do tasks that I know perfectly well she can do easily, and she’s afraid to do them. Her whole personality is being negatively affected.”‘ Jenna, who was careful to note that she doesn’t want to be critical toward the school or the teachers, agrees with her mom, “I didn’t have a backbone any’ more,” Jenna recalls. “It wasn’t the peer pressure; it was just how I was taught at the school. I don’t think they realized what I needed in order to do the work...they were telling me and giving me the feeling that I was stupid. And I started to believe them. “
At the end of the year they felt confident they should return to home schooling. “We took her out to build her up again,” her mom says. In the three years since then Jenna has regained her confidence and come to enjoy her routine at home more than ever.
While working on public school productions, Jenna has gotten varied responses from others when they find out she home schools. “Some of them say, ‘Oh, cool, I wish I could do that,’ just because of the hours,” Jenna explains. “ And then some say, ‘You’re home schooled? Weird!’ and they go the other way. There are a bunch of those in every crowd.”
Fortunately, Jenna doesn’t mind being thought of as weird. She gets the same response when she tells people she likes guns. Every year she attends a Christian summer camp and has always enjoyed, and been very good at, target shooting. “I’m a sharpshooter,” Jenna says proudly. “I shoot the centers out of all the targets! My friends think of me as this prim and proper young lady, and then they find out I have all these awards in riflery and archery. They think it’s really weird!”
When she isn’t shooting the centers out of targets, Jenna loves reading Shakespeare. “I read it aloud with different voices for each character,” she says. “T o me the language is so beautiful.” If acting doesn’t work out, Jenna thinks teaching literature would be fun. But for now she’s giving acting her all. “One of the lines in the play I’m directing is, ‘I want to do something that I enjoy doing and .get paid for it.’ And I’ve found that!” she says emphatically. “I just hope God blesses it. So far He has.”
NAME: Jenna Colleen
B-DA Y: February 4, 1978
FAV. BIBLE VERSE: Revelations 22:7
FAV. BOOK: Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery
LAST BOOK READ: Tilly, Frank Peretti
FAMILY: Parents: Curt & Sandra
Sibling: Sunnie-12
FAVORITE THINGS: Basketball, reading, archery, target shooting, warm rains