Learning through Movement

Becky Valls

Picture a science class on insects where students act out the roles of honeybees or a lesson on the body’s circulatory system where students shape their bodies into a beating heart and a breathing lung. These are examples of children learning through their kinesthetic, visual, and music intelligence. The teacher is using movement to teach TEKS-based lessons in science. Learning Through Movement is a workshop for elementary teachers, K-5th*. The workshop is divided into three sections. First, teachers gain knowledge of the Elements of Dance (movement terminology). Second, Valls models lessons that use movement and music as teaching tools for instruction in science, math, literature, and social studies. Third, teachers create their own movement lesson for their grade level. The workshop culminates with teachers sharing and demonstrating their movement lesson plans. Other related issues addressed are time and space limitations in the classroom, the use of props and music, and behavior management. With a Master of Fine Arts in choreography from the Sarah Lawrence College in New York, Becky Valls has been active for more than 20 years as a choreographer for numerous dance companies, series, and universities. She has extensive experience as a teaching artist and as a performer in schools. Currently she is on the dance faculty at the University of Houston, and the director and choreographer of Becky Valls and Company.

Inclusion Strategies

Joseph Dixon

This knowledge-sharing session is a professional development training for teaching artists that introduces strategies for incorporating the arts in the inclusion classroom. Participants will explore best practices for utilizing the arts, classroom management, and understanding developmental levels when working with students with learning differences. 

Mindfulness for Teachers 

Sarah Gish

Sarah Gish is an igniter, intuitive guide, artist, enrichment expert, teacher, speaker, writer, marketer, business leader, and Certified Veriditas Labyrinth Facilitator. She is the owner of Gish Creative (www.GishCreative.com), a personal, family, and business enrichment company founded in 2000 whose goal is to ignite lives, champion culture, and create connections.  Sarah’s work can be summed up in two words:  she’s a CONNECTOR and an IGNITER.  She helps people connect to themselves, to others, to information out there in the world, to art, and to a higher power. It is her greatest joy to encourage everyone around the world to be the artist of their own life and to connect with each person she encounters in some way. This session for teachers can assist in mindfulness practices and basic meditation. Sessions are designed for specific teacher needs and can range from a variety of activities including: labryrinth walks, beginner meditation, guided meditation, or visual arts. Teachers learn mindfulness strategies to apply in grade level classrooms and participate in hands-on activities during this professional development. 

The Telltale Tale of Telling Tales

Dan Gordon

This dynamic workshop encourages educators to develop creative communication skills by practicing techniques of pantomime, voice fluctuation, gesture, eye contact, body language, and timing, bringing the art of teaching to a new level of creative expression. The activities in this workshop offer new insights that connect any content area of TEKS to storytelling. Dan Gordon is a graduate of the University of Michigan with a degree in Drama and Creative Writing. As a professional storyteller, he has toured the U.S., Israel and Australia, educating and inspiring audiences of all ages with his adaptations of traditional folklore and original personal narratives.

Sweating the Social Stuff 

Soulliaa Rae

Often, we neglect the social things (relationships, community, inte(a)r-personal communication, etc.) that significantly impact workplace and classroom culture. This Professional Development (PD) is designed to support and empower professionals and other supports as they journey with their youth to social and emotional (SE) wellness.  Sweating the social stuff aims to shift culture, explore equity, teach practical self-regulation and grounding techniques, build community, and proactively plan for SE wellness inside and outside of our respective classrooms. This is done through the utilization of grounding/mindfulness practices, bias assessments, reflection, and feedback protocols, and deliberate practice.

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​Soulliaa holds a Master's of Social Work from Tulane University, a Master's of Science - Disaster Resilience Leadership from Tulane University, A Master's Degree in Education, Secondary Science, and  Bachelor's Degree in Psychology and Africana Studies from The University of Houston.

The Power of Puppetry

Greg Ruhe

Capture your student’s attention with the power of puppetry. This hands-on professional development workshop shares creative ideas for adding the excitement of several styles of puppetry into any lesson plan. Explore the ancient world of shadow puppetry, a fast, easy, fun and affordable way to create endless puppetry possibilities. Also, learn techniques for making and teaching with puppets using recycled and found objects. Turn trash into treasure and help save the planet! Greg Ruhe is the director of Puppet Pizzazz, a company dedicated to providing quality educational puppet performances and workshops around the world.

Just Add Drama

Hope Shiver

Hope Shiver helps teachers discover simple ways to give a dramatic twist to math, language arts, social studies, and science. She shows that any lesson can use drama to address topics such as phonics, analysis, vocabulary, sequencing, physical landforms, culture, problem solving, computation, physical and chemical properties, systems and the food chain. Hope Shiver has a Master of Music Degree from the University of Oregon, and is a winner of the Madame Rose Vocal Competition and George Hawkins Playwriting Award. She enjoys a diverse career performing as an opera a musical theatre singer, actress, writer and music educator.

The Moving Classroom

Jalia Movement Arts 

Does your institution strive to decrease your failure rate? Are you struggling to reach all learners? Are your classes full of wiggle worms who have a hard time getting focused?  Moving Classrooms, a documented system to engage elementary and middle school students by using movement to stimulate learning, is the answer you seek! Teachers meet in a large group and then break out into smaller PLCs. Virtual Option available, 1-3 hours.

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Moving classrooms professional development program that is designed to:  

• Increase academic success 

• Reach all learners 

• Touch on all learning styles 

• Differentiate instruction  

• Increase student engagement 

• Build self-esteem

This Sounds Like Fine Art

Jean Donatto

Participants experience using music, fine art and literary forms to enliven curriculum and make learning more meaningful to students. Learn specific strategies for connecting language arts, music and fine art. Utilizing a variety of music styles, participants will discern mood words that best define what they are hearing or feeling. Thus begins a vocabulary list that is then added to one derived from the viewing of one or more pieces of art in varying media. Working in small teams, participants choose one or more literary forms to create using the generated vocabulary. Jean Donatto bridges the world of modern singers and classical composers and visual artists by showing that both, in the past and the present, live exciting and varied lives while contributing positively to world culture. Add meaning to curriculum through the music and art of your student’s generation and find the connection between classical and modern artists.

Utilizing Setting to Harvest Creative Vocabulary

Jean Donatto

With the understanding that school districts are strongly addressing the literacy deficit possibly brought about by the grammatical shortcuts almost demanded by electronic media, (IMHO), this workshop provides a method of gleaning creative writing using setting as the subject. The workshop uses familiar young people’s stories or commonly recognized characters in unorthodox settings to discover verbs, adverbs, alliteration, onomatopoeia, and motivation in composition. Participants will be provided the opportunity to act out scenes from stories that adhere to the storyline but use characteristics of the alternative place. Vocabulary is then discovered through audience observation. For instance: If Red Riding Hood were on the Moon, would she skip through the trees to Grandmother’s house or bounce buoyantly over craters to Grandmother’s module? This is just one example of where the fine art of theatre joins the art of language instruction to promote better understanding of literacy and grammar.

Dancing Through the Classroom

Open Dance Project

Open Dance Project is a contemporary dance theater company whose highly stylized performance experiences break down conventional barriers between artist and audience to make dance more accessible and meaningful for both. Professional development workshops, led by ODP Artistic Director Annie Arnoult, explores the boundaries of dance education to deepening the learning process through integration dance across the curriculum. Topics include STEAM dance, Building Transitions in the classroom, Exploring Creative Dance Education, and more.

Arts Integration Unlimited: Every Classroom is an Arts Classroom

Troy Scheid

Arts integration is an approach to teaching and learning through which content standards are taught and assessed equitably in and through the arts. Students engage in a creative process that connects an art form and another subject area and meets evolving objectives in both. This professional development can be presented as an introduction to Arts Integration or a more in-depth approach for the seasoned staff and is for core and specials teachers in PK-12 education. Arts Integration Unlimited empowers teachers by providing tangible resources for direct implementation in the classroom.

Benefits of Arts Integrated Instruction:

·      Improves Test Scores

·      Positive effect on Student Attendance

·      Improvement of Student Thinking Skills, Reasoning Abilities, and Organization Levels

·      Decreases the Achievement Gap

·      Creates Equity

·      Increases Cultural and Community Awareness

·      Enhanced Social and Emotional (SEL) Skills

Music Integration 

Tom Wilbeck

Tom Wilbeck is a Licensed Professional Counselor, trainer and performer who has been delivering therapeutic and educational intervention since 1995.  He is currently in private practice as a child and adolescent therapist, licensed by the Texas State Board of Examiners and specializes in play therapy.  Tom has also been a trainer for groups ranging from Exxon, Coca Cola, and NASA to early childhood education audiences in the greater Houston area. Participants will explore the developmental, behavioral, and emotional readiness of the students we serve. Participants will explore the practice of integrating music in the classroom through multidisciplinary cooperation, the use of recorded music, and the use of performed music. Topics include: Brain Development, Behavioral Science, Emotional Readiness, Multidisciplinary Cooperation, Using Recorded Music, and Using Performed Music. This PD is presented utilizing lecture, discussion, activity, implementation, and informal assessment and is tailored to either core and specials teachers or specialists only who teach grades ranging from EC-5th.  This PD is available as a 2 hour, 3 hour, and full day session.

TEAMWORK with Tom 

Tom Wilbeck

This professional development for teachers focuses on teamwork and communication and includes hands-on activities for teachers of all content areas. Tom Wilbeck is a Licensed Professional Counselor, trainer and performer who has been delivering therapeutic and educational intervention since 1995.  He is currently in private practice as a child and adolescent therapist, licensed by the Texas State Board of Examiners and specializes in play therapy.  Tom has also been a trainer for groups ranging from Exxon, Coca Cola, and NASA to early childhood education audiences in the greater Houston area. Participants will explore the developmental, behavioral, and emotional readiness of the students we serve.  This PD is available as a 2 hour, 3 hour, and full day session.