Professional Development
The Interchange model emphasizes intensive professional development to help teachers teach in and through the arts even when a teaching artist is not present in the classroom. Professional development is adaptable to each classroom and each school to meet the needs of teachers and students.
Professional development includes:
- Orientations to arts integration for teachers and artists new to the approach;
- A Summer Institute bringing together teachers and artists for a one-day intensive on pedagogy, standards, practice and assessment;
- School-Year Workshops that typically involve visits to arts and cultural partner institutions to learn about teacher resources available in the community;
- Collaborative Residencies pairing classroom teachers with teaching artists for data-driven lesson planning and arts-integrated lesson implementation; and
- Documentation of collaborative residencies so all teachers can benefit from the lessons developed and new ideas created to engage students in the classroom.
Professional Development Offerings 2009/2010
Fall workshop in October, 2009. Our fall workshop focused on the art of collaboration in a residency. Five pairs of artists and teachers shared thoughts and ideas about their collaborations. For photos, click here and for handouts from each pair click here.
Winter workshop in March, 2010. For this workshop, Interchange artists and teachers were invited to explore the Missouri History Museum’s temporary exhibit entitled “Race: Are We So Different?” For a link to the online exhibit, click here.
Spring workshop in April, 2010. The topic of this workshop was how to use resources from the St. Louis Art Museum to teach writing. For a description of the two concurrent workshops led by Mike Murawski of SLAM and Susan Grigsby of the St. Louis Poetry Center, click here for a PDF. To view the handouts from Mike’s session click here and to see some photos click here. Susan’s handout (PDF format) is available here and some photos are available here and poems from the session are available in PDF format here.
