Ep. 15: Stacey Tirro, hand to heart

Lights Up: The High School Theater Podcast · Oct 12, 2026 · 44m

Stacey Tirro is a dance and theater teacher, an arts advocate, an author, a Substack writer, a singer and dancer, podcaster and a geriatric gymnast.

For 30 years, she has taught dance and theater at Spring Valley High School, in the perennially strapped East Ramapo Central School District.

She joins Pete to talk about all of it, and about a post-COVID podcast in which she reconnected with former students to gauge the impact that arts had on their lives, years after they graduated.

As Pete said during the conversation, the fact that Tirro is leaving her post is the only thing retiring about…