Publish Date: 6/7/2007
Growing up in a circus means school under the big top
By Douglas Crowl
The Daily Times-Call
LONGMONT — A child who wants to run off and join the circus won’t get out of any schoolwork at Carson & Barnes Circus, which brought its big top to the Boulder County Fairgrounds on Wednesday.
The traveling circus is also a traveling school for the 15 grade-school children who live on the road with their performing families.
“Some days it’s a nice, quiet classroom, while other days ... there a lot of distractions,” said Doug Munsell, a 67-year-old circus clown who’s also a grade-school teacher for the circus.
Munsell, a retired teacher, works with three parents to guide the kids through a home-school curriculum, which includes at least two hours of classwork on weekdays.
On Wednesday, class met under a dining hall tent, and the children studied dinosaurs and reading. A circus isn’t always the most ideal setting for a classroom, Munsell admitted.
For example, strong winds cut class short Wednesday as people went running to secure tents.
Munsell, who the kids know as Papa D, is also a clown, which the children enjoy.
“He’s being a clown and being a teacher at the same time,” said Franchesca Cavallini, 11, who also does a hula hoop routine for the show.
While the classes aren’t traditional, the children do get a good education because there’s plenty of one-on-one attention, Munsell said.
“Most of them in my grade level are almost math wizards,” Munsell said, who teaches third- through sixth-graders.
The children travel with their parents, most performing or helping in some way, between March and October. They return to their home base in Hugo, Okla., in the offseason and enroll in the local school system.
Many of the children come from families that go back several generations as circus performers.
“We learn a lot of stuff, and it’s a lot of fun,” said Eric Fernandes, 12, who performs on the trapeze with his parents.
Fernandes said he’ll stay in the circus his whole life, like his father and mother.
The high school-age kids are more on their own for education, Munsell said, though there’s a growing emphasis at Carson & Barnes to encourage the young people to go to college.
But most of them come back to the circus life, he said.
“I think it’s because they grow up in it, and they don’t know anything different,” Munsell said.
Douglas Crowl can be reached at 303-684-5253, or by e-mail at dcrowl@times-call.com.
