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Our professional learning workshops give educators tools for reaching all students while tapping into their own creative teaching capabilities.

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

Get up and Learn
Creating a Muticultural Arts-Rich Classroom with Liliana AttarThe 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 MarcheseEducators 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 FundamentalsThis 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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Literary Arts

Hip Hop Culture Empowers Student Writing and Communication
Black Futures with Summer Dawn & Erik James MontgomeryWhat does the classroom of the future look like for Black students? In this workshop, participants learn how anti-Blackness and white supremacy have impacted Black education in America – and how conscious anti-racist efforts can dismantle these systems of oppression.

90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials Fee: none
Audience Limit: 25

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Hip Hop Culture Empowers Student Writing and Communication with BomaniIn 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 NurIn 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 MontgomeryParticipating 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 BruceThis 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 TAHIRAIn 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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Walking the Walk with Summer DawnIn this professional learning workshop, educators are guided on an interactive journey to examine anti-Blackness, bias and diversity in their learning community. They will learn how to better understand their own identities and pass the mic to others to better understand them. They will also be encouraged to ask questions and incorporate what they learn about others to create a more diverse, equitable classroom and school.

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 MoralesThis 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: $1400
Materials fee: none
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 KnyshThis 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: none
Audience Limit: 25

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Sounds Stories with Alex ShawThis 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: none
Audience Limit: 25

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Theater

Looking In, Out, and Beyond with Patricia FlynnThis 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 ProjectTheatre 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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Theatre to Learn with Summer DawnIn this professional learning program educators will be introduced to the skills and knowledge of theatre. Educators experience a process that takes them from exploring improvisational creative teaching strategies to writing and sharing creative work inspired by a language arts text or theme. The workshop will illuminate opportunities for educators to encourage text to self-connections by prioritizing the lived experiences of students. The creative process can be used by educators to help them better understanding of culturally responsive teaching and learning. SEL core competencies of perspective taking, empathy, respecting diversity, understanding societal norms, and recognizing community supports will be central to the creative process, while also laying foundations for responsible decision making and relationship skills.

90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: none
Audience Limit: 25

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Transforming Learning Through Chinese Theatre with Hua Hua ZhangThrough the use of Chinese Theatre, this professional learning supports teachers in discovering the benefits and possibilities of using puppetry as a creative teaching and learning strategy. Teachers will gain an understanding of how and when puppetry can be used.

90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: none
Audience Limit: 25

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Visual Arts

a large mural hanging on a brick wall that says 'welcome to our garden' and has a border of flowers.
Collaborative Mural Making Techniques with Kate Marie SclaviIn 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: none
Audience Limit: 25

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Creative Approach to Fractions with Molly Gaston JohnsonIntegrating 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: $100
Audience Limit: 25

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Culturally Responsive Education in Action! with Erik James MontgomeryCulturally 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: $100
Audience Limit: 25

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Designing Engaged Learning with Molly Gaston JohnsonIn 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: none
Audience Limit: 25

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Drawing in the Classroom with Triada SamarasDrawing 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: $200
Audience Limit: 25

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ERACISM: Confronting and Eradicating Racist Imagery with Erik James MontgomeryThis 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: $100
Audience Limit: 25

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Grounded in Literary Arts with RescuePoetixThe Literary Arts and Poetry are an exploration of the unknown, embracing the joys and challenges while growing and building through every experience. Each opportunity of written, performed expression is a personal testament into the excitement that leaning into the unknown can ignite. Language inclusivity is paramount to social emotional learning. Participants will learn to embrace linguistic richness as a connection with ourselves and one another.

90 Minute Session: $1400
Materials fee: $3 per person
Audience Limit: 25

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Picturing the Self: Recognizing Students’ Cultural Knowledge with Triada SamarasIn 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: none
Audience Limit: 25

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Benefits of Working with Us

  • Customizable
  • Sustainable
  • Budget-friendly
  • Inclusive
  • Research-backed

Tools for Success

Innovative

  • Young Audiences Professional Learning programs are innovative. Teachers are introduced to new and creative approaches to teaching in and through the arts.
  • Professional teaching artists share promising practices grounded in creative practices, accessible education and student agency.
  • Refresh and expand the use of arts based creative practices to support student learning.
Hands with scissors cutting a colorful piece of paper.
Get up and Learn

Collaborative

  • Every program provides team work and collaboration among educators.
  • Support the creative practice and teaching and learning skills of Arts Specialist & classroom teachers.

Personalized Learning

  • When your school is faced with limited time and resources, Young Audiences teaching artists are able to provide effective and relevant professional learning.
  • Professional teaching artists guide teachers through the skills, knowledge and strategies of artistic practices that personalize and deepen student learning.
  • Cultivate arts based skills and teaching strategies for curriculum planning and implementation.
Hip Hop Dance in your Virtual Classroom

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