"It's a conversation with movement," says Heidi Wert, (center right) instructor of Heads Up's kids' capoeira, which combines martial arts, acrobatics, music and dance.
Justin Rule (left), founder of Heads Up, and Jesse Rothacker (right), owner of Forgotten Friend Reptile Sanctuary, help kids at Washington Elementary stretch out a 25-foot python.
DJ Image (Vincent Smaldone), a Heads Up mentor, shows 10-year-old Joanne Santiago how to scratch. Smaldone is one of 20 instructors.
Chassity Colon, a 7-year-old Ross Elementary student, gets a bang out of capoeira.
Whether it takes cartwheels or 75-pound snakes, mentors like Heidi Wert are willing to go the distance to reach kids.
Her face framed by blonde dreadlocks, a limber Wert trades cartwheels and kicks with students in the gym of Ross Elementary, located in the heart of Lancaster City.
"It's a conversation with movement," says Wert, instructor of kids' capoeira, an edgy, Afro-Brazilian art form combining martial arts, acrobatics, music and dance. "This is an alternative to gang membership. This is a way to belong to a good gang."
VIDEO: Urban-arts program
A few blocks away, at Washington Elementary, a snake breaks the ice for mentor Jesse Rothacker.
Rothacker, owner of Forgotten Friend Reptile Sanctuary, stretches out Casper the Burmese python for students to cradle in their arms.
"He'll give you a good Valentine hug, especially if you are a rat," jokes Rothacker.
Wert brings out the rhythm.
Rothacker brings out the reptile.
It's all part of Justin Rule's vision to bring out kids' potential.
Rule, founder and director of the nonprofit Heads Up Lancaster — Heads Up stands for Helping Empower And Develop Students — Unleashing Potential — is on a mission to reach young people, with the help of multicultural mentors, like Wert and Rothacker, two of the some 20 instructors involved in the program.
It's about coming to kids where they're at, Rule says.
While the outreach has centered around the city, Heads-Up teachers have also worked in Columbia and will start offering programming in the Conestoga Valley School District in March.
This summer, Heads Up will also host its first summer camp, with the help of Manor Brethren in Christ Church and City Gate House of Prayer, in downtown Lancaster.
"Heads Up is such a visible representation of the hope and promise of urban life ... exactly what Lancaster needs ... To engage a wide range of people in such a positive and encouraging forum is wonderful," says Jessica King, economic coordinator of the East King Improvement District.
Heads Up, Rule says, is also in the process of looking for a hub to launch Lancaster's first urban-arts center.
"Heads Up believes programs don't empower people as effectively as people empower people," Rule says. "It's not about a cool or hip program; it's about connecting face-to-face, soul-to-soul and realizing the unique potential each student possesses."
Take fifth-grade capoeira participant Josie Gates.
"It's fun to make friends, learn about the culture and self-esteem," she says. "Before (capoeira), I was really obnoxious and stuff, but this helped me learn how to stay calm."
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Rule, a Millersville graduate who studied oceanography and now a Manos House Drug and Alcohol Rehab science teacher, calls the evolution of Heads Up divine intervention.
"The Lord had been stirring a passion on my heart to use the pure elements of hip-hop and other multicultural urban arts to reach youth with a message of hope and love," Rule says in his biography on the Heads Up Web site, www.headsuplancaster.org.
In 2006 a magician friend asked Rule to help out by teaching an elementary-school class.
The friend taught Rule 10 magic tricks.
Two weeks later, Rule by chance connected with several urban artists at a Gold Cafe. They ultimately became the core of a program that incorporated as Heads Up in 2008.
Instructors teach everything from break dancing to rap, reading, yoga, acting and mixing music.
Rule and his partners in anti-crime appear at churches and youth-group events. They lead in-school classes and assemblies, and dance instruction at the Boys and Girls Club, Lancaster. Heads Up is contracted for after-school programs through the School District of Lancaster's LIFE (Learning is for Everyone) After School Programs.
"What I appreciate most from observing Heads Up staff in the classroom is the positive way they engage the students, calling them by name, reinforcing good manners and behavior, energizing their actions and providing good hands-on explanations with a smile on their faces," says Nancy Avolese, grants compliance officer with the School District of Lancaster.
Programming is free for kids, but the "staff" of Heads Up are paid based on services provided. Heads Up is always in need of funding and donations as well as additional artists.
"Our biggest goal in Heads Up is to impart vision to youth for their lives," Rule says. "So many people talk about empowering potential — including Heads Up at times — but without giving youth vision for their lives, then it is always 'someone else' telling them what they can do.
"Vision is an essential key for success, whatever the destination. Give youth vision, and you give them hope.
"Hope conquers over obstacles."
Video: Urban-arts program connects with kids
Heads Up instructors and participants will give an urban-arts demonstration 2 to 3 p.m. Sunday, March 8, at the grand opening of the Lancaster General Downtown Pavilion, 540 N. Duke St., Lancaster. There will also be an all-day mural project.
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