Kennedy Center Partners in Education
The Renaissance Performing Arts Association is extremely honored to be a part of the Kennedy Center Partners in Education program. As the fifth Ohio team ever to participate in this highly selective program, The Renaissance is partnering with Mansfield City Schools and the Mansfield Art Center to bring arts-integrated teaching to local K-12 students.
Read on to learn more about the Mansfield team, arts integration, and upcoming events!
2012-2013 Events* for Teachers
September 26, 2012: Hobey Ford presents "Folk Tales and Shadow Puppetry" Workshop
4:30-7:30 pm, Renaissance Theatre
Combining storytelling with shadow puppetry brings a variety of cultures to life in the classroom through folktales. During this Language Arts workshop, teachers will become familiar with folktales from many cultures and learn how to use the art of shadow puppetry in the classroom. This hands-on workshop will help teachers feel comfortable scripting a folktale into a play, constructing shadow puppets, and organizing a performance with students.
January 12, 2013: Peg Koetsch presents "Students as Curators" Workshop
9 am-3:30 pm, Renaissance Theatre
By creating exhibits, students not only demonstrate their learning but also draw on and strengthen their skills and knowledge in visual arts, performing arts, and language arts. Teachers will explore a process used by museum curators to create exhibits and apply this process to helping students develop exhibits of their own work that demonstrate their learning.
Participants will examine museum methodologies such as collecting, classifying, preserving, and displaying and consider how students can use these methodologies within their exhibits. In addition, teachers will construct their exhibits and examine ways to develop hands-on activities, arrange “artifacts,” and conduct exhibit tours to convey curriculum concepts and promote learning for exhibit visitors. Participants explore how technology (e.g., computer, videos) can enhance the teaching power of an exhibit and design assessment instruments to help teachers and students track the development of their critical thinking skills as well as visitors’ learning.
March 5th, 2012: Workshop: Sherice Ortman presents "Moving through Math" Workshop
4:30-7:30 pm, Renaissance Theatre
Looking for exciting ways to help students deeply engage in mathematics? Move math concepts off the blackboard and into students’ bodies and minds through active, experiential, arts integrated teaching. Participants discover how integrating music and movement with the teaching of math makes full use students’ aural, kinesthetic, visual, analytical, creative, and social intelligences. This workshop is offered with two mathematical focuses: number concepts or spatial and geometric concepts.
In Moving Through Math: Number Concepts, teachers explore the conceptual parallels between rhythmic movement and number concepts in mathematics. Participants learn about the critical relationships in grouping and addition concepts, repeating patterns, skip counting, multiplication, division, and fractions.
*All partnership events are: free, able to be used for CEU credits, and include refreshments. You must register in advance to attend workshops. To register, or for more information, contact Chelsie Thompson: chelsie@mansfieldtickets or 419-522-2726 x 251.
What is Arts Integration?
Arts integration is an approach to teaching in which students engage in a creative process that connects an art form, such as dancing or singing, with another subject area, such as math or reading. Since not all students learn the same way, the arts integration approach reaches students despite these differences-whether a child learns best by talking, seeing, singing, or writing, arts integration accommodates many diverse learning styles in one classroom. The Kennedy partnership offers a wealth of resources to Mansfield teachers, who will now have access to a variety of local, state, and national teaching artists in their own classrooms. A series of professional development workshops throughout the coming years will help teachers learn how to seamlessly integrate arts activities into lesson plans to not only help students be more engaged in school, but also retain information better and achieve their greatest learning potential.
The Mansfield Partnership
The Mansfield partnership team (a.k.a. the Ohio 2010 team) vied for a spot in the prestigious program against numerous other teams across the nation, and was inducted into the program in May 2010. Mansfield is one of only 100 partnership sites across the United States. The Kennedy Center Partners in Education program represents a great honor for The Renaissance, the Mansfield Art Center, and Mansfield City Schools, and the program looks to have a positive impact on the lives of thousands of Mansfield City Schools K-12 students and teachers over the coming years.
Team Members:
Mike Miller, President/CEO, The Renaissance
Chelsie Thompson, Symphony Operations & Education Manager, The Renaissance
Jody Nash, Principal of Spanish Immersion School, Mansfield City Schools
The Mansfield Art Center
