Call Us: 866-500-9265
About Our Professional Learning Programs
Workshops focus on four important areas that support an educator's effeciveness in the classroom: Curriculum Integration, Reaching All Learners, Building Community, and Enhancing Skills.
- Contribute to the 100-hour professional learning requirement for educators.
- Are Title II or Title V funding eligible.
- Are designed to come to you. Each professional learning workshop is held at your school.
- Prices are per 90-minute sessions. Additional time at $300/hour.
A travel fee of $95 is applied for each in-person visit.
Programs and Pricing
Dance and Movement
Advancing a Step Curriculum with Maxine Lyle from Soul Steps
In this professional learning workshop Soul Steps company member and founder Maxine Lyle will guide dance educators to experience the stomps, claps, and dynamic rhythms of the rich African American cultural tradition known as step. Educators will use their bodies to create hip-hop infused rhythms through foundational step choreography. They will also examine step’s early roots in the mines of South Africa, through South African gumboot dance.90 Minute Session: $1400
Audience Limit: 25
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Creating a Muticultural Arts-Rich Classroom with Liliana Attar
The art forms of storytelling, dance, poetry, and music help educators understand ways to incorporate students' individual cultures into the curriculum. Multi-disciplinary arts experiences will be use to activate student learning, build community, and provide a multicultural environment.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: none
Audience Limit: 25
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Get Up and Learn! Using Movement in the Classroom with Laura Marchese
Educators experience and understand the Elements of Dance as they explore their individual creativitiy. Movement activities are scaffolded to model their usefulness as creative exercises and formative assessment tools. This program examines and analyzes ways in which the classroom can be maximized for engaging our students.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials Fee: none
Audience Limit: 25
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Hip Hop Dance in your Classroom with Hip Hop Fundamentals
This professional learning program will introduce hip hop dance into the classroom space as a tool to explore thematic content and assess student understanding. Educators will experience hip hop dance as an opportunity to have fun, reflect, discuss, and analyze creative teaching strategies.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: none
Audience Limit: 25
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Rhythm: The Lost Language with Maurice Chestnut
In this program educators will learn to collaborate with acclaimed tap dancer and choreographer Maurice Chestnut to develop an understanding of the complex history of tap dance as a distinctly African American art form rooted in diasporic traditions.Educators will gain a clear understanding of the influences of tap including, African djembe rhythms, as well as New Orleans and New York’s Africans and Irish step dancers’ contributions to the percussive dance we now call tap.
Each session begins with a rhythm stretch and a percussive call and response warm-up. Participants will experience how the rhythms branch out through the U.S. and morph to create jazz, bebop, swing and hip-hop. As participants are introduced to African American history and culture, they will also master tap dance basics, including shuffle, flap and time step.
Each workshop includes learning tap terminology and choreographic phrases. The workshop ends with a blended combination of tap, jazz and hip hop, a sharing circle where all participants can express themselves rhythmically and time for teachers to reflect on how they will apply new learning to their teaching practice.
*Tap shoes are not required for this workshop
90 Minute Session: $1400
Audience Limit: 25
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The Fundamentals of Puerto Rican Folkloric Music: la Bomba y la Plena with Segunda Quimbamba Folkloric Center
This workshop, taught in both Spanish and English, provides educators with a fundamental understanding of Afro-Puerto Rican dance and drum culture through the rich musical heritage of Bomba y Plena. Educators will engage with Bomba y Plena’s history and culture and gain insight into how it is used to nourish resistance, healing, and community celebrations. Through guided exploration with instruments and dance, educators will learn the basics of Bomba y Plena, as they learn how gestural cues, active listening, and call and response can increase student engagement. This creative practice is great for promoting teamwork, building leadership skills, and making everyone feel like they belong.90 Minute Session: $2800
Materials fee: $250 and up
Audience Limit: 25
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Literary Arts
Hip Hop Culture Empowers Student Writing and Communication with Bomani
In this professional learning program Baba Bomani will support teachers to be able to use aspects of hip-hop art and culture to create an engaging learning environment. This active workshop will guide teachers to lead rhyme-based strategies to build student writing and communication skills using the five steps of the Writing Process.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials Fee: none
Audience Limit: 25
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Lighting Instructional Gatherings Through Story SELebration! with Queen Nur
In this professional learning, teachers will learn how to use the elements of storytelling to engage and expand student learning. During this collaborative experience teachers will use self-selected classroom curriculum text to explore self to text discoveries, as well as Social Emotional Learning competencies.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: none
Audience Limit: 25
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Me, Myself and Eye with Erik James Montgomery
Participating educators gain an understanding of how photography and social-emotional learning work in tandem. Educators will explore and examine simple photography techniques including color, point of view, shadow, negative space, positive space, and framing. After viewing their photos, educators create an artist statement to explain their creative choices. This workshop uses first person experience to understand how photography can be used as a creative expression that inspires writing and identity, as well as a creative experience to get to know each other.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials Fee: $100
Audience Limit: 25
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The Healing Power of Symbols and Imagery with Eloise Bruce
This professional learning program uses the art forms of visual art and poetry to foster well-being. Collage and poetry offer pathways into our unconscious mind where many of our fears and dreams live hidden from our view. In this workshop participants are given the opportunity to explore their creative selves, identify what sustains them, leave behind some of their recent losses, and create a new future to live into. Teachers can take the strategies of this workshop back into their classrooms and adapt them to give students an opportunity to explore loss and to reconnect with their dreams.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: none
Audience Limit: 25
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The Heart & Soul of Our Stories with TAHIRA
In this professional learning program, TAHIRA will illuminate practices that center the stories of African Americans by offering an opportunity for participants to explore the art of storytelling and active listening. Through sharing personal recollections, TAHIRA will lay a foundation for the impact childhood relationships and family culture have on the development of the creative self. Participants will self-reflect on their own cultural traditions as they apply the foundations of creativity and artistry to their arts enhancement and integration practice.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: none
Audience Limit: 25
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Music
Cajón (box drum): Heartbeat of Africa in Peru & The Americas with Hector Morales
This program is designed to introduce educators to the history, culture, craftmanship, and rhythmical magic of the cajón (box drum). The cajón is an instrument that originated from the Afro-Peruvian community and is deeply rooted in the African Diaspora in Perú.90 Minute Session: $2800
Materials fee: $100
Audience Limit: 25
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Engaging Brain Based Music, Rhythm and Movement Strategies for Classroom Management and Social Emotional Learning & Literacy with Mary Knysh
This professional learning workshop provides educators with fun and engaging rhythm and music activities designed to support classroom management and Social Emotional Learning. Based upon neuroscience and research, these accessible and sequential activities encourage positive group relationships, active listening, and mindfulness. With the goal of creating connected student communities, attendees learn practical methods and techniques for leading and engaging students in music experiences that emphasize creative development and community building.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials Fee: $100
Audience Limit: 25
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Musical Mindfulness Training for Teachers and Students: Cultivating Focus and Emotional Well-being through Music with Bobby Beetcut
This program is designed to equip music teachers with the skills to integrate mindfulness practices with music in their classrooms. The program emphasizes the importance of fostering emotional well-being, focus, and creativity among students through Musical Mindfulness. Teachers will gain hands-on experience with activities that blend music and mindfulness, inspiring them to adopt these practices in their teaching.Teachers will learn how to implement regular, regimented mindfulness practices to improve classroom management, student engagement, student accountability, and overall outcomes. Teachers will leave the session empowered to deepen their own mindfulness practice and they will have many tools to implement mindfulness practices into their music and/or band classes.
90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: $100 and up
Audience Limit: 25
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Folk Music, Ear Training & Musical Games with Musiquita
In this professional learning multilingual Spanish/English speaking musicians Blanca Cecila Gonzalez (violin, uke, percussion) & Jesse Elder (piano, vocals, percussion & melodica) will guide teachers in a variety of general music methodologies including basic music theory, ear training and musical games. Presented strategies and resources will support educators to deepen and diversify musical experiences for young learners, empowering teachers to create joyful, meaningful, and diverse music experiences with students. Through an approach rooted in play educators will engage with Latin Folk, children’s classics & classical Jazz. A priority will be placed on nourishing the lived experience of multilingual and immigrant students.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: $250 and up
Audience Limit: 25
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Progressive Percussion & Mindfulness Professional Learning with Hector Morales
Experience and explore different ways in which percussion music can enrich Social Emotional Learning (SEL) practices in your classroom. Participants will hear and see work samples created by students and teachers who experienced in-person, virtual and hybrid formats of the Young Audiences Progressive Percussion & Mindfulness residency with Hector Morales. Participants will identify and share emotional and sensory vocabulary, as well as co-create meditative music and a meditation. Participants will imagine different applications for the needs of individual classrooms, while considering the collective impact on school climate and culture. No musical background is necessary to be able to enjoy and/or implement the techniques presented in this session.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: $100 and up
Audience Limit: 25
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Songs in the Key of Love+Unity with Carl Brister
Historically general and instrumental music education in the United States has been influenced most by Western and European cultural traditions and art. This in-person two-part workshop will be a dynamic experience designed to help teachers, administrators, and music and instrumental instructors enhance music instruction from a student-centered, diverse, and culturally responsive lens.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: $100 and up
Audience Limit: 25
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Sounds Stories with Alex Shaw
This professional learning session provides a dynamic exploration of the sonic spaces and rhythmic worlds in which we inhabit through deep listening, sensory play, and hands-on collaborative learning. Educators will experience guided deep listening exercises and be invited to consider the many ways we make meaning of the sounds around us.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: $100
Audience Limit: 25
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The Art of Playing Together with Hector Morales
In this professional learning workshop educators will enhance their abilities, skills, and repertoire to create culturally inclusive learning environments through the exploration of “percussion of the world”. World percussion is a fundamental guiding principle that teaching artist Hector Morales calls “The Art Of Playing Together.”Because the percussion ensemble offers multiple opportunities for students to engage, it is naturally an inclusive space. By understanding how it works and learning how it manifests in different cultures around the world, educators will be able to provide different “ways” for their students to experience music, appreciate a variety of cultures (Afro-Peruvian music, Brazilian, Middle Eastern, Indian and Avant-Gard classical) and encourage them to bring their own culture(s) into the collective learning experience.
Using buckets as the main percussion instruments, participants will learn fun activities to transform a class into an ensemble of Afro-Peruvian music, Hip-Hop, Brazilian batucada, Middle Eastern, and/or Avant-Gard classical percussion group.
Participants will explore ways to mindfully adapt Eurocentric and traditional forms so they can successfully nurture culturally responsive arts education. These techniques will include the use of traditional instruments (cajon, cajita, quijada, ago-go bells, tamborim, darbuka, tal, manjeera or taal), technology, and standard music notation.
90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: $100 and up
Audience Limit: 25
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Theater
Looking In, Out, and Beyond with Patricia Flynn
This professional learning program will use theatre, visual art, and poetry to explore personal perspective, the perception of others, and consider the ways in which imagination can console, heal, and liberate. Educators engage in activities that strengthen Language Arts skills of point of view, descriptive language, and inference. The work will focus on personal narrative and perspective, as well as seeing with the mind’s eye, through visual art and theatrical staging.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials Fee: $40
Audience Limit: 25
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Theatre of the Oppressed: A Pedagogical Approach to Enhance Language Learning with Maroon Theatre Project
Theatre of the Oppressed (T.O.) is a widely recognized form of liberatory theatre that centers the lived experiences of the communities it involves and validates their perspectives, emphasizing transformation and social justice. In this workshop, participants will gain insight into how they can integrate T.O. principles and practices, including facilitating exploration and questioning of current realities, promoting critical thinking, cultivating effective communication through thoughts, feelings, and ideas, and challenging the dominant culture and established ways of teaching and learning, into their teaching philosophy, practices, and curriculum to enhance language learning.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials Fee: none
Audience Limit: 25
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Visual Arts
AI Image Tools for Classrooms with Triada Samaras
This workshop introduces AI image generators and their potential to enhance creativity across subjects, including art, literacy, science, and math. Participants will explore various tools, engage in hands-on experimentation, and brainstorm classroom applications. They will gain firsthand experience with this technology and develop strategies for integrating it into their teaching practices.The session aligns with New Jersey’s technology standards, emphasizing digital literacy, technology-driven instructional models, and high-quality computer science education. It also incorporates ISTE Standard 2.6.d, which promotes creative teaching and learning through technology.
Target Audience: 3-12 Teachers Aligned Standards: New Jersey Educational Technology, ISTE 2.6.d
90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: $100
Audience Limit: 25
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Art for Emotional Balance with Triada Samaras
Using Visual Arts Practices to Support Emotional Equilibrium in the Classroom: In this interactive workshop, educators will explore simple yet powerful visual arts practices that support emotional regulation and student well-being. Techniques such as neurographic art, mindful doodling, slow drawing, mandala drawing, and color exploration help students manage stress, improve focus, and engage more deeply in learning. As Dr. Lori Desautels, a leader in brain-based education, explains, “When students are regulated, they learn better,” and these practices offer practical strategies for achieving just that.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: $200
Audience Limit: 25
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Collaborative Mural Making Techniques with Kate Marie Sclavi
In this workshop, participants will explore the power of collaborative mural making as a vehicle for expression, communication, and teamwork through an SEL lens.Through a series of engaging activities and discussions, teachers will learn practical skills on how to execute a large, collaborative art project for your school incorporating the whole student body. We will go over basic mural making techniques, as well as address educator’s ideas for their own dream collaborative school project, whether it’s a mural or a different idea for collaboration.
90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials Fee: $250
Audience Limit: 25
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Creative Approach to Fractions with Molly Gaston Johnson
Integrating fractions and mathematical communication, students create math-based murals using simple art materials and techniques. Nationally credentialed teaching artist Molly Johnson introduces the work of professional artists who use math as their inspiration. Students do the same and practice conceptual, representational, and abstract understandings of fractions. This residency engages students’ creativity and mathematical thinking through hands-on artmaking.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials Fee: $250
Audience Limit: 25
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Culturally Responsive Education in Action! with Erik James Montgomery
Culturally Responsive Education (CRE) in Action will provide teachers with sequential learning to merge arts and culture for greater student engagement. Teachers will apply a shared understanding of CRE to articulate why CRE is important to teaching and learning pedagogy. Teachers will transform their current curriculum by identifying and implementing teaching and learning strategies. These strategies will celebrate the cultural backgrounds of students throughout the entire school year. Effective educational methods that foster deep levels of cultural relevancy will guide teachers to engage the experiences and interests of students. Tools gained in this workshop will ensure that CRE is employed beyond celebratory months such as Hispanic Heritage, and Black History Month.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: $250
Audience Limit: 25
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Designing Engaged Learning with Molly Gaston Johnson
In this virtual professional learning program teachers will learn how to use basic elements and principles of design as a means of communicating ideas. Through designing their own artworks in a series of exercises that build from simple and quick, to more intentionally social-emotionally driven, and then curriculum-driven, teachers will be able to share a design language with their students. These experiences invite students to express their understanding of curriculum concepts and/or social-emotional concepts by employing the elements and principles of design. Teachers will learn to create abstracted visual representations of ideas and use those visual creations as a starting point for verbal and/or written explanation of concepts represented.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials Fee: $250
Audience Limit: 25
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Drawing in the Classroom with Triada Samaras
Drawing in the Classroom will provide sequential professional learning for the visual art teacher to advance his/her/their teaching and learning practices in the content area of drawing. Educators will explore methods of drawing with an emphasis on observation, visual perception, and individual expression. Practical studio information about the creation of a variety of drawings will be given. Educators will discuss historic and contemporary examples of style, media, technique, and content as they relate to students’ current lives and lived experience. Drawing topics may include Portrait, Self-Portrait, Landscape, Still-Life, Found Object, Interior, Exterior, and Abstraction depending on interests, cultural backgrounds, and grade level. Educators will gain access to materials that will allow them to immediately implement what they have learned into their classroom teaching.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: $250
Audience Limit: 25
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ERACISM: Confronting and Eradicating Racist Imagery with Erik James Montgomery
This virtual professional learning program will introduce participants to the history of racism in America. Participants will learn how images are used to perpetuate racist mindsets and understand how racism is found in the arts. Participants will use their understanding to identify the negative impact racist images have on students and identify how their teaching and learning can dismantle racism in America.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: $250
Audience Limit: 25
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Grounded in Literary Arts with RescuePoetix
This workshop integrates poetry and sensory exploration with Social Emotional Learning (SEL) competencies to promote emotional wellbeing, self-awareness, and interpersonal skills. Participants will engage in creative writing activities inspired by sensory experiences, fostering self-expression and emotional resilience. By the end of the program, participants will have created a personalized literary arts body of work in various poetic forms while developing skills in self-management, social awareness, and responsible decision-making.This program is available in Spanish on request.
90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: $125
Audience Limit: 25
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Let's Get Animated with Rashad Malik Davis
Do you love Pixar, Disney, or anything animated? Then this is the class for you! In this beginner’s animation course, students learn the basics of 2D animation using some of the 9 principles established by classic Disney animators. Through a series of projects, students learn how to bring their drawings – and their imaginations – to life! Projects are completed on provided Ipads and Apple Pencils using the digital art programs Rough Animator and Procreate!90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: $100
Audience Limit: 25
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Observational Drawing and Arts Integration with Triada Samaras
Observational Drawing and Arts Integration will provide teachers with strategies for using observational drawing and art critique to support learning across content areas. Observational drawing fosters higher-order thinking skills—such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation—enhancing academic success. Educators will explore how hands-on observational drawing methods intersect with arts integration, combining visual art with other disciplines.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: $200
Audience Limit: 25
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Of Heroes and Villains: Comic Design Studio with Rashad Malik Ddavis
This one is for all the Marvel, DC, and manga fans! In this comics studio, participants learn the basics of comic storytelling – both written and visual – to bring a sequential story to life. A focus will be placed on learning character design to create a compelling and fun story! Participants will learn to compile student work into a high-quality, larger, final anthology!90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: $250 and up
Audience Limit: 25
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Picturing the Self: Recognizing Students’ Cultural Knowledge with Triada Samaras
In this workshop, participants will learn how to apply Zaretta Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning research to their practice. While the focus will be on applying strategies to drawing experiences, other art disciplines will also be discussed. In addition, participants will learn how the Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) method can be transformed into a tool that develops culturally responsive thinkers as well as acts as an oral assessment strategy. Participants will come to understand artistic expression is a natural pathway into culturally responsive teaching.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials Fee: $250
Audience Limit: 25
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Wood Scrap Art for Learning with Triada Samaras
This hands-on workshop will inspire and equip educators to incorporate wood scrap sculpture into their teaching. Participants will explore creative ways to use repurposed wood as a versatile material to support learning across multiple subject areas, including Literacy, Math, Science, and Social Studies.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: $300
Audience Limit: 25
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The Stories of Quilts – Professional Learning with Steven H. Hobbs
This workshop will introduce participants to the world of quilting. Participants will see and feel Steven’s quilts, and learn about the history of quilting and a variety of ways quilts are used (wall hangings, lap quilts, beds, clothing. etc.) Participants will be introduced to a small quilting project emphasizing the personalization of their quilt square. In the extended version of the workshop, we will make blocks using fabric with the goal of making a collective quilt that reflects our collective story. Folks will experience a demonstration for how a quilt is put together.90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials Fee: $250 and up
Audience Limit: 25
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What people say
“sources whereas high standards in web readiness. Energistically scale future-proof core competencies vis-a-vis impactful experiences. Dramatically synthesize integrated schemas with.”
Luke SmithCEO & Founder odx
"Our PD with Maxine was excellent. Her presentation was thoughtful and well delivered. We received a lot of positive feedback from a majority of our staff after the PD session. Many agree on the positive message Maxine is promoting with her step program. The interactive section of her presentation where we all followed along in step was a highlight of the day. Afterwards, one colleague told Rachel and I that it was good for the soul."
Cranberry Pines Elementary School
"Alex is 100% supportive. I loved all of the activities that Mr Alex did. He is extremely engaging and I love using his activities."
Early Childhood Teacher
"Mr. Bobby made connections to our early childhood content while incorporating music education. Mr. Bobby is a wonderful person to collaborate with. He met expectations, connected music to our curriculum, and he allowed for students to use hands-on materials."
Early Childhood Teacher
"I learned that through the use of songs, rhythm, and repetition children will build on their vocabulary, phonemic awareness, and listening skills. This will build a foundation for reading readiness in a fun and engaging way."
“sources whereas high standards in web readiness. Energistically scale future-proof core competencies vis-a-vis impactful experiences. Dramatically synthesize integrated schemas with.”
Irene J. HolmesPublications specialist
”Maxine's presentation was excellent! She had all of the teachers engaged and did a great job balancing her time presenting to us, facilitating discussion/ questions, and then teaching us all to dance. Teachers were also able to make connections from her presentation back to other PD they had that day regarding Universal Design in Learning. Afterwards, we got a lot of positive feedback from teachers who were really excited for her to work with students and expressed that they hoped to be able to pop in on some of her workshops so they could see her in action. As Marybeth mentioned, we also really appreciated her leaving us with some "food for thought" with an article on equity in education. I hosted a meeting with a group of teachers who were interested in discussing the article further, and we were so inspired that we hope to continue to meet to discuss issues related to equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility in our school.”
Rachel SmithMusic Teacher
"With the Young Audiences teaching artist I learned the quality of hands-on learning through music, the importance of music and movement strategies - how to apply them in my classroom, and to be open to implementing new ideas, songs, and games in my classroom."
Benefits of Working with Us
- Customizable
- Sustainable
- Budget-friendly
- Inclusive
- Research-backed
Tools for Success
Innovative
- Teachers are introduced to new and creative approaches to teaching in and through the arts.
- Teachers will refresh and expand the use of arts-based creative practices to support student learning.
- Professional teaching artists share promising practices grounded in creative practices, accessible education and student agency.
Collaborative
- Programs provides time for teamwork and collaboration.
- Arts teachers and those teaching non-arts subjects are given time to understand and implement standards-based practices.
- Programs provide time for curriculum planning and classroom implementation.
Personalized Learning
- Provide effective and relevant professional learning.
- Guide teachers through the skills, knowledge and strategies of artistic practices that personalize and deepen student learning.
Let's Continue the Conversation
Call Us: 866-500-9265
