For Anna Smith, it's always about drama — and comedy and voice, and gestures and imagination.

When she steps into a Collins Elementary School classroom reserved for the purpose three times a week, Smith brings her education, acting skills and enthusiasm. A carpet divided into colorful boxes becomes the stage that energizes students.

The kids jump, flail their limbs, fall down and shout as they act out a situation suggested by Smith. Then they freeze to hold their positions on her sudden cue.

In the background is a bulletin board, bordered by shiny stars, showing the words, "Theatre, Move, Risk, Passion, Drama, Imagine, Play."

Since October 2011, Smith has been volunteering to give students the opportunity to let loose their hands, feet, facial expressions and mostly important, their imaginations. Although her work at Collins is voluntary, she has paid jobs teaching drama and theater at other locations.

A seasoned actor from childhood, she has been teaching all around the Bay Area. She started the Collins gig at the suggestion of her mother, a former teacher.

"My mom said, 'Why don't you teach in Pinole?' What if I sent you to Collins?'"

She approached Collins Prinicipal Anne Shin, about teaching, either during school hours or after school.

"She jumped right on board," Smith said. She said, 'I think in the school hours would be best because then we can serve more kids, and I think the teachers will love it.'"

This year the Collins program, for all 14 of the school's classes and for special education students, is focusing on a theme of heroes. Each grade has a sub-theme. Kindergartners use kids' literature, like "Where the Wild Things Are."  Fifth graders read short lines from Shakespeare's "Hamlet" during a recent class. The lines were plucked from Hamlet's instructions to the actors he directed in the "play within a play."

Smith varies her approach by grade level.

"For the younger age groups you want to get into the play aspect," she said. "It's almost like the minute they enter, they're in the drama room class. Whereas the older kids, you kind of need to get them a little bit more intellectually. It has to be more of a challenge to them. But it's still brain through body."

For all ages, her lessons have specific goals.

"I try to teach them to use their imaginations and I also try to teach them risk-taking and to kind of come out of their shells a little bit," Smith said. "The sixth graders have so much trouble being themselves and being funny and being kid-like again, so that when they do it's like this huge release and they have so much more fun when they let themselves go and be that way."

Last year, after five weeks of drama class, Smith asked a sixth grade class what they learned.

"One girl who had been just silent the entire time and shy, raised her hand and said, 'I learned that it's okay to be yourself no matter what anyone else says' and I said, 'That's exactly what I was hoping you'd learn.'"

The classes also build confidence in students.

"I tell them that the tools of the theater artist are your voice, your body and your imagination, and that's all they need to be in this room. The kids always say, 'Don't you have to have talent? and I say, 'Nope, talent is subjective.'"

Smith keeps busy teaching at a high school in Marin County, the California Shakespeare Theater and the Town Hall Theater in Lafayette.

"I have a lot of small jobs, essentially," she said. "I'm also an actor. I'm in a show right now with Bay Area Childrens Theater. I'm always auditioning and acting. That's always a constant."

After two years in a program at the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts in Santa Maria, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Musical Theater at the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico.

"When I graduated college I realized that teaching would be a really great survival career," she said. "Education is really imortant to me, and I thought that was a really fun way to do what I love and actually have a job."

Although home-schooled until she went to college, she grew up in the Pinole Young Actors group.

"Then I started taking classes at Berkeley Rep and ACT and then I went to college and I came back and I'm back in Pinole, so it's like a full-circle."

She will suspend the Collins program in April so students can concentrate on standardized tests, then pick it up again with her eye on a show at the end of the school year.

At first, many students resisted the idea of acting in front of an audience.

"I don't want to stress them out," Smith said. "A lot of them were a little hesitant about a perfromance. So what I'm working with is theming the drama games we're already playing."

With school budget cuts in recent years, classes like music and drama have disappeared. Smith hopes some attention on the classes might spur some action on the local level.

"We want to do a performance in the first week of June, which is their last week of school," she said. "I hope this will bring some awareness to the community, and if they're interested in helping us out with any kind of funding. Not huge funding, but if they can donate a couple of T-shrits or hats. We just want some kind of awareness so that maybe we can help get them some kind of costume pieces for their performance or something like that."

After all, as Hamlet said, "..the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."