Page 5 - Hawaii Island MidWeek - Dec 7, 2022

Teruya Focuses On Bringing Home Miss America Title
FROM PAGE 4
2-6 p.m. on weekends. I lived there.”
lot more enjoyable. “Popscotch activates more
This includes her maternal great-grandmother, Dora McBeath, who was a Radio City Rockette back in the day.
DECEMBER 7, 2022 HAWAI‘I ISLAND MIDWEEK 5
While the time commit- ment to a grueling theater schedule seems daunting, it led Teruya to hyperfocus her efforts. She did better in school, her confidence grew, and it pushed her to work hard to be able to continue her passion for performance.
of the body,” she says. “They spin, crawl through shapes, strike a pose, clap, there are so many different activities.”
“She was 6 feet tall and my great-grandpa would call her ‘Legs,’” she says. “She was this gorgeous wom-
Her pageant platform — Arts for All — is inspired by those experiences growing up. In particular, Teruya re- members struggling through- out elementary school and bringing home less-than- stellar report cards.
The “pop” part of Pop- scotch incorporates local pop culture into the structure. For example, at one Popscotch lo- cation, children crawl through a lava tube and must decide to go the ʻaʻā (stony lava) route or pāhoehoe (smooth lava) route. At other locales, Pop- scotch takes kids island-hop- ping or celebrates rainbows. There’s even one made out of “rubbah slippahs.”
an, and I’ d like to think that even though
I didn’t have
“They would talk about how I was reckless and wasn’t paying attention, wasn’t fo- cused,” she recalls. “I was a busybody. I had to stand up and move while I ate.”
child to have that accessibil- ity to unlock an intelligence that they may not be fully activating in the classroom.”
cation,” shares Teruya, who earned her bachelor’s and mas- ter’s in journalism from Uni- versity of Southern California.
“It can be unique to your culture,” explains Teruya, who hopes to expand Pop- scotch all over the world. “Every town and city has so many things unique to their culture that can be brought to life.”
In fact, Teruya’s three sisters — Sophia, Kathryn (Miss Hawai‘i 2017) and Anya — are also perform- ers, which she believes is her grandma’s light shining within them all.
Teruya comes from a family of performers. Her great-grandmother, Dora McBeath, inset, was a member of the precision dance company Radio City Rockettes.
So when she found theater — she’s also well-versed in jazz and ballet — she felt like she found the answer to a longstanding problem.
The integrating movement aims to get arts into class- rooms regardless of funding or having a full-time arts educator. And she has done extensive research on the myriad benefits the arts can have on a child, from cog- nitive growth to social and emotional learning.
One effort she’s particu- larly proud of as part of Arts for All is Popscotch — think the traditional game of hop- scotch but with nods to pop and local culture. The con- cept, Teruya says, is simple and really fun. In normal hop- scotch, children jump through numbers from one end to the other. In Teruya’s Popscotch iteration, though, things get a little more dynamic — and a
When she’s not working on her local community proj- ects, Teruya is preparing for the upcoming Miss America pageant and looks to family, friends and supporters who have cheered her on along the way, including some who have since passed on.
“I remember the night of Miss Hawai‘i, me and the other women were standing in a circle all holding hands and someone told us to close our eyes and picture some- one or something that is going to guide you through the night,” Teruya says. “I re- member seeing this collage, it wasn’t a single person, it
was hundreds of people — co-workers, friends, family, mentors — and that is what IplantokeepwithmeasI travel all the way to Con- necticut. I have gratitude for every single person in my life.”
“I recognized that I learned from doing and moving,” she says. “It got me to thinking about things in a different way than was being taught in the classroom. I want every
“Kids are five times more likely to stay in school when they have access to arts edu-
The Miss America 2023 pageant takes place Dec. 15. Visit missamerica.org for showtime and more infor-
The lei-adorned Teruya will be competing in the Miss America 2023 pageant, scheduled for Dec. 15 in Connecticut. Cheering her on will be many family members, including, from left, father Luke, sisters Kathryn, Anya and Sophia, and mother Kim. PHOTOS COURTESY LAUREN TERUYA
the opportu-
nity to meet her, that she’s in my heart and body and family.”
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