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Upcoming Professional Development Events SmART Schools to conduct TWO Mini-Institutes in Providence, RI A special thanks to the Rhode Island Foundation for supporting Year 2 of a new SmART Schools Secondary Initiative. All materials, a continental breakfast, and full lunch will be provided. Certificates for Professional Development Credit hours will be available. For more information or to register email Eileen Mackin, SmART Schools founder and director, eileenmackin@smartschoolsnetwork.org. Session 1: STEM to STEAM: Learning at the Intersection of Art & Science STEM to STEAM has become a major initiative in Rhode Island and recognizes that the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) can benefit enormously by infusing the arts to increase student academic understanding in these subject areas (STEAM). This one day professional development workshop, featuring SmART Schools' master teaching artists, Dan Bisaccio and Kurt Van Dexter, is primarily for math, science, engineering, art, technology and SPED teachers (members of secondary interdisciplinary teams are also invited to attend). This workshop will model and teach innovative STEAM curriculum designed to help secondary teachers utilize the arts to engage students and foster a deeper level of knowledge and understanding in STEAM subject areas. Participants will engage in inquiry, field observations, nature journaling, and a final project and exhibition. The session will be co-designed and co-facilitated by Kurt (an artist, landscape architect, and teacher at RISD and the Green School) and Dan (a former award winning high school teacher who currently is Director of Science Education at Brown University).
Session 2: Bullying, Replies, Rebuttals, Confessions and Catharsis: This one day mini-institute, featuring master teaching artist, Magdalena Gomez, is appropriate for all secondary school educators--newcomers as well as those who attended this summer's Bullying Workshop. Participants will learn how to utilize theater and interruption techniques for bullying prevention.
Past Professional Development Events SmART Schools Summer Institute 2012 Dates: August 14 -17, 2012
NEW THIS YEAR! In addition to its continued focus on improving student achievement in literacy and the humanities, this year's institute, TWICE AS SmART, will introduce a second and equally significant focus, SmART's STEM to STEAM strand. STEM to STEAM has become a major initiative in Rhode Island and recognizes that the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) can benefit enormously by infusing the arts to increase student academic understanding in these subject areas (STEAM). Also new this summer, long time SmART Schools master teaching artist Magdalena Gomez will be returning in August. In addition to her extraordinary talents in theatre, poetry, etc., she has also recently co-authored a book on bullying that will be incorporated into her work and will be provided free to all institute participants - check it out here. A special thanks to the Rhode Island Foundation for supporting Year 2 of a new SmART Schools Secondary Initiative. The RIF grant provides funding for up to 100 educators from qualifying Rhode Island urban secondary schools to attend the institute. All materials and a continental breakfast and full lunch will be provided daily. Professional Development Credit will be available through the Rhode Island Department of Education. For more information or to register contact SmART Schools Founder & Director Eileen Mackin: eileenmackin@smartschoolsnetwork.org. What will participants learn?
SmART Schools Summer Institute 2012 Faculty & Master Teaching Artists Why participate? Who should attend? What will the Institute look like?
SmART Schools To Conduct TWO STEM to STEAM Session 1: Nature-Inspired Design Challenge Session 2: Seeing & Making Mathematical Paper Structures These innovative professional development events are open to Rhode Island urban secondary science and math teachers. Funding for both events is provided through a grant by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA). STEM to STEAM has become a major initiative in Rhode Island and recognizes that the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) can benefit enormously by infusing the arts to increase student academic understanding in these subject areas (STEAM). These mini-institutes are the first in a series of professional development opportunities launching SmART Schools' new strand of work to support Rhode Island's STEM to STEAM efforts. All necessary resources will be provided. Space is limited to 25 participants per mini-institute (first come, first serve) and is filling quickly! Registration fee: ($150) is covered in full for RI urban secondary math and science teachers by a RISCA grant.
According to Leidtke, "the goal of the mini-institutes is to empower educators to develop effective tools for promoting and gauging creative problem solving, ideation and risk-taking in the studio/classroom setting. The sessions will illuminate how design can appropriately integrate Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) subject areas, meeting Rhode Island Department of Education's Grade Expectation Standards for multiple grade levels. Activities will focus on bringing design thinking into the classroom and student assignments, with the objective of integrating arts with academics." For more information or to register email Eileen Mackin, SmART Schools founder and director, eileenmackin@smartschoolsnetwork.org. Session 1 Overview The vehicle for these explorations will be RISD's Edna Lawrence Nature Lab featuring a hands-on natural history collection and studio environment that offers the opportunity to examine and explore the patterns, structures and interactions of design in nature. Liedtke is excited to be able to use this renowned facility because it "supports hands-on creative investigation and research into the relationships inherent in the dynamic living world and aims to inspire participants to engage with our biological realm. The Nature Lab provides a forum, sustained by resources and guidance, for the exploration of connections among art, design, and nature." Session 2 Overview Through play, three-dimensional modeling and two-dimensional diagramming, and discussion, teachers will investigate mathematical design principles, such as the isotropic vector matrix and poly-modular structures. "Even teachers who are not mathematicians will enjoy this workshop, "Leidtke says. "Visualizing polyhedra is actually fun and makes it possible for one to make sense of spatial and structural relationships in our world. No one will go away without making their own mathematical toy, plus renewed insights on how to ignite curiosity in the minds of their students." Back By Popular Demand! SmART Schools Mini-Institute:
Macbeth! Date: March 29th, 2012 | 8:30am – 3:00pm On March 29th this nationally renowned SmART Schools partner for over 12 years will conduct the second in a series of SmART Schools' one day mini-institutes. Macbeth will be the focus of this workshop, however all of the exercises and strategies can easily be adapted to any Shakespeare play or text in your syllabus. Kevin Coleman, Director of Shakespeare & Company's Education Program and founding member of Shakespeare & Company, is a highly experienced master teaching artist who teaches text analysis, acting, stage combat and clown. He has directed most of Shakespeare & Company's New England touring productions since 1978 (see attached bio sheet with more details on Kevin Coleman). For over 30 years, Shakespeare & Company's Education program has been working on ways to present Shakespeare's plays that are dramatic, intellectually rigorous, imaginatively and emotionally engaging, and personally meaningful to students (go to www.shakespeare.org for more information about their programs). WORKSHOP PREREQUISITE: BRING NO LESS THAN 10 LINES OF MACBETH THAT YOU HAVE COMMITTED TO MEMORY. This text should have meaning for you, or represent something you care deeply about – emotionally, not just intellectually. Handouts for the activities will be provided. Notes may be taken. Registration is open to secondary teachers and teams. Registration fees for teachers from participating RI SmART Schools (includes schools that participated in SmART Schools 2011 Summer Institute) will be covered in full by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA). For more information or to register email Eileen Mackin, SmART Schools founder and director, eileenmackin@smartschoolsnetwork.org as soon as possible. Space is limited and will be on a first come, first serve basis. SmART Schools Mini-Institute: Date: February 8th, 2012 SmART Schools is gearing up for another round of innovative literacy-focused, theatre-based professional development for Rhode Island Secondary School teachers! On February 8th Shakespeare & Company, a SmART Schools partner for over 12 years, will conduct the first of a series of five SmART Schools' one day mini-institutes. The first is an introductory performance workshop for secondary teachers who want more effective and dynamic strategies and tools for teaching Shakespeare in the classroom. The focus will be 4 tragedies: Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet. However these exercises and strategies can as easily be adapted to any Shakespeare play in your syllabus. This workshop will be facilitated by Kevin Coleman, Director of Shakespeare & Company's Education Program and founding member of Shakespeare & Company. Kevin, a highly experienced master teaching artist, teaches text analysis, acting, stage combat and clown. He has directed most of Shakespeare & Company's New England touring productions since 1978 (see attached bio sheet with more details on Kevin Coleman). For over 30 years, Shakespeare & Company's Education program has been working on ways to present Shakespeare's plays that are dramatic, intellectually rigorous, imaginatively and emotionally engaging, and personally meaningful to students (go to www.shakespeare.org for more information about their programs). WORKSHOP PREREQUISITE: BRING NO LESS THAN 10 LINES OF TEXT THAT YOU HAVE COMMITTED TO MEMORY. This text should be from one of Shakespeare's plays and have meaning for you, or represent something you care deeply about -- emotionally, not just intellectually. Handouts for the activities will be provided. Notes may be taken. The follow up to this workshop will be 4 separate mini-institutes, each dealing more specifically with one of the 4 tragedies. Registration is open to secondary teachers and teams. Registration fees for teachers from participating RI SmART Schools (includes schools that participated in SmART Schools 2011 Summer Institute) will be covered in full by a grant from the Rhode Island Foundation. For more information or to register email Eileen Mackin, SmART Schools founder and director, eileenmackin@smartschoolsnetwork.org as soon as possible. Space is limited and will be on a first come, first serve basis. SmART Schools Summer Institute 2011 Dates: August 15 -19, 2011
Rhode Island Foundation to Support the Start-up of a New SmART Schools Secondary Initiative: SmART Schools will launch an exciting new secondary initiative with a five day Summer Institute ~ Moving Up SmART: Meeting High Standards at the Secondary Level, to be held in Providence, Rhode Island, the week of August 15-19. The grant provides full support for up to 125 educators from qualifying urban secondary schools. Note: There are a limited number of openings for secondary school educators not included in the grant on a registration fee basis. The regular institute registration fee is $975 for individuals, or $800 per person for teams of at least three or more (preference will be given to interdisciplinary teams). All materials and a continental breakfast and full lunch will be provided daily. Why participate? Over the long term SmART Schools' Moving Up SmART project promises to provide a new and more engaging set of practices for Rhode Island's secondary educators—practices that support the social-emotional, aesthetic, as well as academic growth of Rhode Island's middle and high school students. We anticipate seeing a significant increase in student readiness for college and careers and an overall improvement in citizenship skills. Who should attend? What will the Institute look like? What will participants learn?
SmART Schools West Dates: June 14, 16, 2010 Facilitator: Lynn Robb, Master Teaching Artist Visual Art Local history is the final social studies chapter for third graders in California. Lynn Robb and a team of teachers at Will Rogers Learning Community designed and presented an experience built on poems that express various locations and characteristics of California. We investigated the poetry by tagging texts: the students explored several texts and chose lines that had meaning for them. They took their lines and illuminated the letterforms and adorned them with illustrations. Their texts were shared with classmates and prompted rich classroom discussions. They were shared with the larger community, as well, at Third Grade Poetry night where they were read and displayed.
Dates: January, 2010 Facilitator: Lynn Robb, Master Teaching Artist Visual Art Fourth grade teachers at McKinley Elementary School collaborated with visual artist Lynn Robb to design science lessons integrating visual art with the food web. First, students created a “Gallery of Decomposers”. Presented with electron microscope images of fungi, mites, isopods and others the students rendered them in pencil and oil pastels on toned paper. Careful observation, scaling images to a larger size, as well as pastel shading and blending techniques combined with an exploration of the role decomposers play in the transfer of energy. The second goal was to use visual thinking to organize and represent the flow of energy in the food web along with description of each of the participants. Students focused on a specific biome and created two-sided diagrams containging text, symbols and images that illustrated the movement of energy throughout the web.
Dates: October 12 & 13, 2009 Facilitator: Wendy Cohen Teams from two sites, Will Rogers Learning Community and John Muir Elementary, came together for an intensive two-day session of Collaborative Team Leadership Training. Teams were made up of site administrators. The two participating teams explored their school culture through a powerful two-day workshop led by Wendy Cohen. They began the process of analyzing the culture of their own schools, defining and building leadership traits and skills and explored practices and ideas that form the basis of creating a professional learning community. Essential Questions
Workshop Outcomes:
Each site has continued to move forward with this work in advancing their specific goals.
Dates: September 3, 2009 Facilitator: Ana Maria Alvarez, Master Teaching Artist Dance The chosen focus for McKinley Elementary School this year is strengthening students experience and knowledge in science. SmART Schools West partnered with McKinley in a pre-service day focused on providing science resources for their entire staff. Throughout the day Dance Master Teaching Artist Ana Maria Alvarez conducted sessions with each grade level. She began by introducing teachers to call and response games to enliven and focus the classroom. Then she guided each set of teachers in creative ways to use our bodies to illuminate grade-level specific science content (such as choreographed movement sequences and ‘human machines’). At the end of the day the entire staff reflected on ways in which they would integrate this new work into their classrooms.
Dates: September, 2009 Facilitator: Vanessa Mizzone, Master Teaching Artist Theater Giving teachers and students a means to bring stone to life was the goal for Vanessa Mizzone at Will Rogers Elementary. Together with Pam Dresher, Rogers’ science teacher, Vanessa designed an experience for students to explore and communicate the processes that form rocks and minerals. Students created small groups and designed tableaus to illustrate igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks. Classmates were challenged to read each tableau and identify the formation it depicted. Sharing their scientific knowledge with creativity gave students a deeper understanding of how change occurs in an element of nature that appears to be static.
Dates: August 11-14, 2009 Come join us in August for a 4-day SmART Schools summer institute facilitated by SmART Schools’ staff and notable international, national, and local professional/master teaching artists with expertise in all four arts disciplines (dance/movement; instrumental & vocal music; theatre; and visual arts). Participants will engage in hands-on studio workshops to develop new skills, techniques, and methodologies to:
Participants will have opportunities to design their own curriculum units utilizing the Wiggins/McTighe Understanding By Design backwards-planning approach. Daily common planning time sessions will be facilitated by SmART Schools professional teaching artists and SmART Schools staff (including curriculum design and assessment experts). Participants will learn how to recognize and improve their individual and group working styles and use this information to create a productive culture of collegiality. Participants will also begin to establish close ties with New England based arts and cultural organizations, institutions of higher education, and the SmART Schools network. SmART Schools West Dates: May, 2009 Facilitator: Ana Maria Alvarez and members of CONTRATIEMPO
SmART Schools: Creating Arts-Centered Dates: April 23-24, 2009 Facilitator: Eileen Mackin (SmART Schools Founder & Director) In this seminar, participants will learn how professional learning communities contribute to increased student achievement. In addition, participants will work together, creating a SmART Schools WEST network, and engage collaboratively in learning the concepts, habits, tools, and skills that lead to more reflective practice. Together they will prepare to adapt, and translate, their own seminar experiences in order to create and lead groups back in their own schools. The goals of this training are to:
SmART Schools West Date: February 28, 2009 Facilitator: Co-presented by Lynn Robb and John Zeretzke Elias Simé, an up and coming artist from Addis Ababa, uses yarn, plastics, tattered fabric, buttons, used plastic, and bottle tops, to create work that reflects the current state of his surroundings. Simé’s three-dimensional sculptures are made with traditional organic Ethiopian building materials such as mud and straw, as well as wood, metal, and other found objects, gathered in part by neighborhood children. February’s Mini-Institute will begin with a tour of the exhibition and then proceed with hands-on explorations inspired by his work. Participants will practice autobiographical art-making, reflective prose and personal musical interpretations of their lives and surroundings. Initial expressions will focus on the individual’s ideas, then culminate in collaborative performances that meld the unique visual, oral and musical voices into communal works. SmART Schools FALL Mini-Institute November 2008 Kurt Wootton, co-founder and co-director of HABLA: Center for Culture and Language, and faculty member of Brown University, will facilitate a new studio-based SmART Schools training as part of a series of ongoing, yet separate and distinct, professional development workshops designed to help participants cultivate Culturally Relevant Arts Integration Practices. In this hands-on studio mini-institute participants will study the arts and culture of Mexico and South America and explore the ways in which students from all cultural backgrounds bring a vast set of cultural and artistic resources to the classroom. This culturally embedded professional development experience will challenge educators cultural assumptions and help them to reflect on their own cultures as well as the cultures they are experiencing. Arts-integration in a Cultural Context participants will:
SmART Schools WEST Summer Institute 2008: August 2008 Research shows that music, art, dance and drama not only increases student creativity and critical thinking skills, but also increases student achievement in language arts, math, and science. SmART Schools WEST intensive four-day studio-based professional development institute. Participants experience professional development by engaging in workshops centered around innovative SmART Schools prototype curriculum facilitated by international and local professional and master teaching artists in visual arts, music, theatre, and dance. Participants also collaborate in the design of their own arts-integration curriculum units. SmART Schools master teaching artists help participants to cultivate arts-based methods, techniques, and skills to:
SmART Schools WEST Master Teaching Artists: Ana Maria Alvarez – Dance Vanessa Mizzone – Theatre Lynn Robb – Visual Arts John Zeretzke - Music In addition, SmART Schools Featured International Visiting Artist & Partner: Kurt Wootton, Co-Founder and Co-Director of Habla: Center for Language and Language will conduct the following workshops for SmART Schools Summer Institute 2008: Imagining Mexico: Integrating the Arts in Cross-Cultural Classrooms: Literacy is more than just a set of reading and writing strategies, it is a way of describing ourselves and the world we live in. This series of workshops will explore how the literature and photography of Mexican artists serves as inspiration for students to create their own, original work through various artistic mediums. Participants will learn a variety of innovative tools & techniques for integrating the arts into classrooms environments. This toolkit has been assembled by the team of artists and teachers based at Habla: The Center for Language and Culture in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. The workshops utilize and model the best arts-integration practices from around the world including: The Cordel from Brazil, Images and Words from Mexico, and approaches for developing student literacy created by the Arts/Lit Project in the Education Department at Brown University. SmART Schools Winter 2007 Mini-Institute December 2007 Facilitators: Master Teaching Artists Lynn Robb and Jennifer Zakkai Collaborate in cross-district grade level teams and engage in hands-on studio workshop to:
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