“PUTTING DRAMA TO THE TEST” - A HANDS ON WORKSHOP FOR TEACHERS ON USING DRAMA IN THE CLASSROOM

Registration now open for workshop with Washington, D.C.-based teaching artist Sean Layne

Opera House Arts, working in partnership with the Deer Isle-Stonington Schools, is proud to return Sean Layne, Education Consultant and senior teaching artist for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, to Deer Isle for a second professional development workshop for teachers and residency. On Monday, March 12 from 3 to 6 p.m. Layne will lead a two-part workshop, for which teachers are eligible for CEU’s and contact hours, on using arts-integrated learning strategies as a daily part of classroom teaching to improve student performance and results.

Layne will particularly focus on simple drama exercises as the foundation of an innovative, engaging approach that prepares students for testing, develops vocabulary, and deepens comprehension without sacrificing the principles of how children learn best: through playful, interactive, cooperative activities. Piloted with students in classrooms over the course of a year, this work capitalizes on the collaborative, differentiated nature of drama to build students’ understanding of the type, structure, and recurring vocabulary regularly included in questions on standardized tests. To the delight of administrators, teachers, and students, these strategies are fun, engaging, and have resulted in higher student test scores in the pilot sessions.

“Sean is one of the most dynamic teaching artists we’ve ever experienced,” said Michele Levesque, Education Director for Opera House Arts at the Stonington Opera House. “With multiple national studies showing that students learn more effectively when they are actively, kinesthetically engaged with subject materials, this type of professional development is really helping teachers to improve student performance.”

Sean Layne is an actor, director, and the founder of Focus 5 Inc, a national arts education consulting company. He leads residencies and designs and presents workshops for teachers nationwide for The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Layne is also a Master Artist with the Wolf Trap Early Learning through the Arts program. He has worked in the field of arts integration for over 20 years.

The Deer Isle-Stonington schools and Opera House Arts were named one of 14 new Kennedy Center partnership teams in 2007. There are now more than 100 teams in almost every state in the nation participating in the 20-year-old program. The local partnership received acclaim February 17, 2012 at the program’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C. for its presentation of “Dear Fish,” the classroom learning and performance project that premiered at the school in April 2011. The Kennedy Center Partners in Education program was established in 1991 to assist arts and cultural organizations throughout the nation develop and/or expand educational partnerships with their local school systems. The purpose of the partnerships is the establishment or expansion of professional development programs, focused on integrating the arts into standard curricula, for all teachers.

This program is funded in part through a Schools Make Arts Relevant Today grant from the Maine Arts Commission, an independent state agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. This workshop was developed in association with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and is partially underwritten by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Committee for the Performing Arts.

The registration deadline is Wednesday, March 7. The workshop fee is $30. To register, email Michele Levesque at education@operahousearts.org or call the Stonington Opera House at 367-2788. For more information on the partnership and program, go to http://www.operahousearts.org/kcpe.html.