It takes a special teacher to inspire her former students to mount a show in her honour.
Fortunately, Garibaldi Secondary School’s Interdisciplinary Arts Academy is home to one.
Cynthia Lacroix has been teaching drama and the performing arts for 30 years at Garibaldi, starting at the school long before there was an academy, which started about eight years ago.
Whether it was a program, an academy, or just a room with some boxes for a stage, Lacroix has seen one aspect of her job never change: the impact she’s able to make on her students’ lives.
“When you add up class time, rehearsals after school, performances, and everything else, you’re with them for 800-900 hours a year,” she says.
“These kids are going through the most vulnerable time in their lives during high school. Having that much access to them, you’re pushing them and formulating them into who they will become as adults. It’s amazing to be a part of that process.”
Lacroix didn’t plan on this path, at least not when it came to teaching drama. The Victoria native originally planned to teach English and psychology, but the government banned the latter when she was in her third year of study.
“I was told I had to pick a different secondary area of study, and I was so upset,” Lacroix recalls. “I vomited my way through my first acting class,. But when I found directing and stage work, I fell in love.”
After graduation, Lacroix went to 100 Mile House; her first school didn’t even have a drama program when she arrived. It was her job to build it.
Five years and another school later, she got the job at Garibaldi, first as the choreographer working for the previous drama teacher. It was another three years before she found herself running the entire program, teaching everything from dance to acting to directing and scriptwriting.
“It’s been a dream, working with these kids who are so passionate, and so appreciative, and foster their talent,” Lacroix says about her career.
She puts in the work to bring out that passion in her students, but it also comes with some perks.
For the past 10 years, she’s been a member of the Broadway Teachers Workshop in New York City. Drama teachers from around the world travel to the Big Apple for once-in-a-lifetime classes with Broadway directors and creators, taking in multiple shows followed by talk-backs with the cast and crew.
Through the program, Lacroix has had the opportunity to meet and learn from everyone from Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (the duo behind La La Land’s lyrics, and the recent Tony-winner Dear Evan Hansen) to Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Lacroix says she’s always touched by how appreciative her famous teachers are to their students.
“We’ll finish a session, and then they’ll applaud us,” she marvels. “They tell us, ‘We wouldn’t be where we were without people like you, without our own teachers.’ It’s very humbling.”
But not even a shout-out from the star of Hamilton compares to the gift Lacroix was given this past year, when alumni from her entire 30-year stint at Garibaldi came together to put on a show to celebrate her.
There were songs, skits, and performances of choice scenes from the many plays and musicals Lacroix mounted over the years. The teacher was blown away not just by the generosity of her former students, but also by how much they had grown as people and performers.
“To be sitting there, watching these people do a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — a hard scene, mind you — and you remember the same kids do this when they were 17, and now they’re 30 … the depth they brought this time to their performances is incredible, because they’ve lived. They’ve experienced so much more, and they’re bringing that to the scene. It was richer.
“I was speechless,” Lacroix says through tears. “I couldn’t believe it, the way the room just buzzed with love and gratitude. I was very grateful.”
Lacroix isn’t letting an event as momentous as that show slow her down: although retirement came up for her last year, she declined to take it.
She did decide to scale down her workload, however, delegating some of her responsibilities to other instructors.
That doesn’t mean she’s lost her passion for drama; in fact, she feels it’s more important now than ever to instill drama’s lessons in today’s generation of kids.
“People are so much stronger than they could ever imagine, and drama brings that out in everyone,” Lacroix says. “I’ve had to fight tooth and nail to prove that, and I’m not going to stop until I have to.”