Professional Development

The Interchange model emphasizes intensive professional development for classroom teachers and teaching artists. For classroom teachers, Interchange builds capacity of teachers to teach in and through the arts with or without a partner teaching artist. For artists, Interchange builds understanding of pedagogy to improve effective use of arts media to enhance lesson plans.

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;
• Documentation of collaborative residencies so all teachers can benefit from the lessons developed and new ideas created to engage students in the classroom.
• Establishment of a network of professional learning communities among teachers, teaching artists and professionals in schools and arts and cultural institutions.

Professional Development 2011-2012

In the 2011-2012 school year, Interchange is providing the following professional development opportunities.

Rhythm, Rhyme, and Repetition:
A Recipe for Satisfying Storytelling (September 29, 2011) Award-winning storyteller/musician/poet/actor and educator Dr. David Gonzalez led this interactive “playshop” focused on basic skills in storytelling using the folk tale The Fisherman and His Wife.

New Teaching Artist Orientation (October 6, 2011)
Nine teaching artists joined Janelle Brooks and Susan Grigsby for 3 hours of orientation as an introduction to working with Interchange. The session covered the brain dance (introductory warm-up activity), a segment on integrating dance and math (what is arts integration?), and a mock planning session.

Fall Workshop for Interchange Teaching Artists "Gaining a Fresh Perspective through Arts Inquiry" (October 24, 2011):
Interchange artists joined with CoLab teachers to explore the special Monet exhibit at the Saint Louis Art Museum. The hands-on, in-gallery workshop was led by Mike Murawski (School Services Director, SLAM).The workshop explored ways in which inquiry can occur across artistic disciplines, considering productive ways to bring musical, kinesthetic, visual, and linguistic modes of thinking to the act of interpreting a work of art. Using Claude Monet’s panoramic Water Lilies triptych, Interchange artists and CoLab classroom teachers engaged in an experience that began with multiple ways of looking, and continued through a series of thinking routines that encourage creative responses through movement, sound, and writing.

Winter Workshop – Sean Layne and Acting Right (February 7, 2012)
Sean Layne, actor and Kennedy Center artist, will lead a three-hour workshop for classroom teachers and artists called Acting Right. Acting Right is a classroom management approach for artists and teachers. Sean has taken the foundational elements of acting such as cooperation, concentration, and collaboration and created a structured process which can become the basis for effective classroom management every day.

Spring Music Workshop (April, 2012)
Interchange partner, the Saint Louis Art Museum, will host this workshop for teaching artists and teachers, combining music and art in several of its galleries. Mike Murawski, Director of School and Community Programs, and Matthew Von Doran, jazz guitarist and Interchange teaching artist, will lead the workshop.

Interchange Summer Institute (week of May 29, 2012)
Interchange will present a two-day Summer Institute called “Preparation and Practice.” The first day of the Institute will focus on the critical skills and knowledge needed for a successful collaborative residency. The 2nd day of the Institute, at the Missouri History Museum, will provide space and time for teachers and artists to practice the skills learned on day one.

Professional Development Archives

Image to Word: Art and Creative Writing (November 2010)
Hosted by and at the Saint Louis Art Museum, this workshop was led by Kathleen Walsh-Piper, author of “Image to Word” and Director of the Art Museum at the University of Kentucky, with the assistance of Interchange artist Janie Ibur. Participants developed ways to use visual arts on display at the Saint Louis Art Museum as prompts for student writing, emphasizing how the visual works can enhance the creative writing process. To read poems written by teachers and teaching artists click here.

MathDance (Winter 2011)
Erik Stern led this workshop on the use of dance to improve math instruction. Erik used dance to introduce the concepts of symmetry and factorials to 15 teaching artists and classroom teachers. He also led two classroom demonstrations at Jefferson Elementary on symmetry.

Meaningful Movement, (Spring, 2011)
Dancer Mimi McDonald of COCA led this workshop at the St. Louis Art Museum called Meaningful Movement. For Mimi’s lesson plan on the workshop click here.

The Brain Dance—an introductory warm-up for residencies
Dancer Alice Bloch of COCA worked with ten Interchange teaching artists in October on ways to use the brain dance as a warm-up activity for a collaborative residency. If you would like more information on the brain dance please click here.

Interchange Summer Institute June 3 and 4, 2011
Lois Hetland, a co-author of “Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Art Education led over 60 participants at COCA and the Saint Louis Art Museum in two full days of exploring the Studio Habits of Mind, arts integration, and responding to paintings through writing and drama. Other presenters included Mike Murawski, Director of Community and School Programs, Janie Ibur and Susan Grigsby of the St. Louis Poetry Center and Carol North, Emily Kohring, and Roxane McWilliams of Metro Theater Company. For photos of the two-day Institute, click here.

Professional Development Archive 2009/2010

The Art of Collaboration (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.

Race: Are We So Different? (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.

Saint Louis Art Museum Education Resources (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.