Professional Development

The Raymond F. Kravis Center for the Performing Arts and the Palm Beach County School District are members of the Partners in Education program of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Selected because of their demonstrated commitment to the improvement of education in and through the arts, the partnership team participates in collaborative efforts to make the arts integral to education.

WORKSHOPS
Receive in-service credit hours for participation.

Florida Dance Education Organization Conference
School Year Sessions - Friday, October 12, 2007 from 9 am until noon
Workshop Leader:  Clarence Brooks 
For Teachers of Grades K-12 and Dance Specialists

As a component of the Florida Dance Education Organization Conference, Clarence Brooks will be conducting a modern class based on principles of Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis; incorporating stylistic aspects of repertoire from his eclectic professional dance career as a dance-theatre, musical theatre, ballet, jazz and modern dancer.

Florida History Through Drama
Saturday, October 13, 2007 from 9 am until noon
Workshop Leader:  Don Butler
For Teachers of Grades 3-5

This workshop focuses on theatrical techniques – with emphasis on the exciting Story Theater form – to enhance interest and participation in the study of history. Teachers will learn how to take a story from Florida’s richly textured past and, by using the selection process employed by playwrights, create a plot which in turn can be performed using the physicality, space substance, imagined environments and narrative techniques unique to Story Theater. There will also be improvisational role-playing on how the teacher can use whatever is occurring in the classroom at any given moment to accomplish a predetermined goal.

Poetry in Motion
Saturday, November 3, 2007 from 9 am until noon
Workshop Leader:  Randy Barron
For Teachers of Grades 4-12

In this workshop, participants learn how to help students express their poems through dance with an integrated approach to language arts. Teachers explore a variety of movement techniques that extend students’ range of movement choices to express their words. Teachers also examine ways to improve the quality of students’ dance interpretations by investigating a useful “drafting” and “editing” process.

Scientific Thought in Motion
Saturday, November 3, 2007 from 1 pm until 4 pm
Workshop Leader:  Randy Barron
For Teachers of Grades 3-12

Teachers can translate many basic concepts in science into meaningful, self-assessing movement activities that put abstract ideas into tangible, visible form. In lessons that engage students in movement, participants learn the elements of dance and how those elements relate to scientific content. Participants leave the workshop with a set of immediately useful movement activities for classroom study of the water cycle and the systems of the human body, along with the skills necessary to adapt those activities to teach other curriculum ideas. Randy Barron guides teachers in easy-to-duplicate lesson plans, which draw upon students’ kinesthetic, visual, and musical intelligence to increase their achievement in science and strengthen their repertoire of learning and social skills.

Ridin' The Rails: Bringing the Underground Railroad
Alive in the Classroom
Wednesday, November 7, 2007 from 4 pm to 7 pm
Workshop Leader: Carol North
For Teachers of Grades 3-8

This interactive workshop offers educators a variety of kinesthetic instructional strategies to introduce students to the subject of the Underground Railroad, and deepen their appreciation for the extraordinary courage of slaves who made their way to freedom, as well as those who supported the long, dangerous journey. Through highly structured games, improvisations, role playing, narrative pantomime, and creative writing exercises, educators will experience first-hand the powerful learning connections that occur when minds and bodies are fully engaged. The workshop will address issues of effective classroom management when using drama and movement, and will offer topical resources for further exploration. Educators will leave the workshop with practical tools to implement immediately in their classrooms – tools that can readily be adapted to any curriculum area.

Assessment in the Arts: Creating Rubrics to
Promote Learning 
Saturday, November 17, 2007 from 9 am to noon
Workshop Leader:  Deborah Brzoska
For Teachers of Grades K-12, School Administrators and Arts Providers

The current emphasis on assessment holds exciting prospects for arts education, and raises questions about scoring and providing feedback to students on their work. In this workshop, participants use actual student work samples to develop criteria for assessing student work in dance, drama, music, and the visual arts. Participants also explore how to involve students, artists, teachers, and community members in the process.

Arts Integration: Teaching Outside The Box
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Workshop Leader:  Tom Pilecki
For Teachers of Grades 3-5

What is arts integration? How can I use it in my classroom? Teachers will be introduced to the concept of “arts-integrated curriculum”; teaching academic subjects through the arts. Techniques emphasize process over product and a departure from lecture and textbook methods.

Artists as Educators Seminar: Presenting Effective
Workshops for Teachers
Tuesday and Wednesday, December 11 and 12, 2007, two-day session
Workshop Leaders:  Lynne Silverstein and Sean Layne
For Local Teaching Artists (participation by invition only)

The two-day Seminar, Artists as Educators: Presenting Effective Workshops for Teachers (Workshop Presenting Seminar) is designed for artists and arts educators who want to explore how to more effectively present professional development workshops for teachers. This seminar helps artists identify the roles they play when leading workshops for teachers and develop the communication skills needed to effectively present their workshops. Workshop components such as Introductions, Transitions, Learning Activities, and Reflections are carefully examined, deconstructed, and reshaped from a presentation perspective. (Artists as Educators: Planning Effective Workshops for Teachers is a prerequisite for this Seminar.)

Living Pictures: A Theatrical Technique for
Learning Across the Curriculum
Thursday, December 13 from 4 pm to 7 pm
Workshop Leaders:  Sean Layne
For Teachers of grades 2-8

This workshop explores a theatrical technique that at its most basic level simply requires participants to freeze their bodies to capture a moment in time. Known as tableau, the technique provides a creative, controlled, low-risk experience with drama that helps students apply and expand their knowledge and understanding across the curriculum. Participants learn new ways to build students’ focus and concentration required for this work and examine elements of successful tableaus through activities based on history, literature and art.

Demonstration Teaching Through the Arts
December 13-14, 2007 (two-day, in school session)
Workshop Leaders:  Sean Layne
For designated Heritage Elementary teachers

Shakespeare for Teachers: The Bard Unbound II
Saturday, March 29, 2008 from 9 am to 3 pm
Workshop Leaders:  Paul Fontana
For Teachers of grades 9-12

This workshop, presented by The Acting Company (TAC), is designed to give educators an inside look into the actor’s process when approaching the works of William Shakespeare and methods with which to approach this work in the classroom. Learn to find the clues Shakespeare has left in his text and new and exciting methods of presenting this information to your students in a fully interactive manner.  A more advanced exploration of The Bard’s text and themes, the second installment of Shakespeare for Teachers is ideal for all educators who participated in the original workshop and those with prior knowledge of Shakespeare.

Musically-Moving Math!
Saturday, May 3, 2008 from 9 am until noon
Workshop Leaders:  Marcia Daft
For Teachers of grades 1-6

In this workshop, teachers explore how the conceptual parallels between music and movement can deepen students’ understanding of elementary math concepts. Participants discover creative and experiential ways to help students learn about patterns and sequences, groupings, planar and 3-dimensional geometry, fractions, addition/subtraction, multiplication/division, pre-probability and set theory and beginning algebra. And, teachers learn how to assess student learning through students’ performance of mathematical concepts! Participants see how integrating music and movement with the teaching of math can make full use of students’ aural, kinesthetic, visual, analytical, creative, and social intelligences.

Musical Adventures:A Door to Writing
Saturday, May 3, 2008 from 1 pm to 4 pm
Workshop Leaders:  Marcia Daft
For Teachers of grades 2-8

Music opens the imagination and helps students develop sensory images. These sensory images have the power to stimulate language and vocabulary development, and enhance memory and fact retention. In this workshop, teachers explore how to use music to guide and enhance students’ creative writing. Participants see how this music-based process involves students in developing listening skills and visual imagery, brainstorming vocabulary, determining importance and learning to structure a story outline.

Demonstration Teaching Through the Arts
December 13-14, 2007 (two-day, in school session)
Teaching Artist: Sean Layne

Finding Your Theme Song: Reflection on
Teaching from the Heart
Tuesday, May 6, 2008 from 4 pm to 7 pm
Workshop Leaders:  David Parker
For Teachers of grades K-12

Finding Your Theme Song: Reflection on Teaching from the Heart is a workshop process that involves collaboration and sharing of ideas of motivation of self, students and peers. During this interactive session, participants reflect upon what motivates them to do the incredible work that they do and what some of the obstacles are that prevent movement to the next level in their development as educators. Educators will take with them a renewed commitment and the dedication to teach and lead from the heart. This is an opportunity to invigorate your teaching and leadership with a firmness of purpose and a deeper understanding of who you are as a teacher and leader.

To fill out an application for any of these workshops, please click here.

EDUCATOR RUSH TICKET PROGRAM
By presenting their Educator ID at the box office one hour prior to curtain time, teachers receive 50% off the ticket price for any seat in the house, based on availability, for any Kravis Center self-initiated performance.
Sponsored by  Suzanne G. Reis Arts Education Fund

EDUCATOR RECOGNITION NIGHT
By invitation only, a select group of dedicated teachers will be honored at a reception prior to the Dreyfoos Hall performance, The 5 Browns on April 13th to thank them for their unyielding commitment and support of the Kravis Center’s extensive educational programs. A meet-and-greet with the artists will follow the performance.
Sponsored by  Suzanne G. Reis Arts Education Fund

The Kravis Center for the Performing Arts and the School District of Palm Beach County are members of the Partners in Education program of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.  Selected because of their demonstrated commitment to the improvement of education in and through the arts, the partnership team participates in collaborative efforts to make the arts integral to education.