Working Playground's (WP) Professional Development Program (PDP) trains public school teachers to integrate the arts into their classrooms. This program gives teachers proven methods to approach academic subjects more creatively, make cross-curricular connections through the arts, and help students develop meta-cognitive skills through integrated learning. PDP provides support for teachers to develop their own appreciation of diverse art forms and build their expertise in delivering high quality arts lessons to their students.

PDP immerses teachers in the study of Theatre, Media, Visual Arts, and Dance. Teachers learn the technique of an art discipline and build assessment tools to document student learning in and through the arts. Teachers not only study the technical, cultural and aesthetic aspect of an art form, they use art as a bridge to student understanding and as a resource for independent analysis and theory.

Scope of Services

Workshops serve a maximum of 30 teachers and take place at the participating school or a Working Playground site. Training can take two formats:

Multiple Topic Training Series varies in length from 15 to 30 hours of training services

Single Topic Training Sessions varies in length from 1 hour to a day or more

In alignment with the Department of Education's Blueprint for the Arts, Working Playground offers Professional Development Workshops in the following areas:

Art Making

This workshop will focus on creative strategies that will enable teachers to successfully bring the arts into their classrooms. In this workshop, teachers will learn how to design and scaffold an arts project, develop strategies to create engaging student-centered lessons that have relevance in and beyond the classroom, and learn how to create and maintain student portfolios.

Literacy

This workshop will focus on helping teachers to develop their own and students' observational skills. An arts educator will explore the 'museum model' of how to look at, analyze and respond to artwork, films and/or performances. Teachers will learn to develop a common artistic language that can be used with students, and outline structures for creating a peer critique environment in the classroom.

Making Connections

This workshop will focus on how to create context for your art project by using New York City history as a historical reference.

Careers and Lifelong Learning

This workshop will focus on implementing arts-integrated projects that highlight varied arts professions (i.e. for Theatre: Writer, Actor, Director, Publicist, Set Designer) We will also help make the arts accessible to teachers by identifying cultural events and related arts institutions in and around the city.

Learn more about Arts Integration, Studio and After School Programs

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