TA’s Leading Professional Development for Teachers: What Teaching Artists say they Need
Rosalind M. Flynn
The Kennedy Center’s Rosalind Flynn takes an in-depth look at a unique program that prepares TA’s to train teachers in arts education practice.
As arts and education organizations that provide professional development opportunities for educators have found, teaching artists are a rich resource to tap into for teacher training. Amy L. Duma and Lynne B. Silverstein’s article “Achieving Greater Impact: Developing the Skills of Teaching Artists to Lead Professional Development for Teachers” (2008) detailed the Kennedy Center’s professional learning for teaching artists who lead workshops for teachers. This article builds on theirs by sharing the thoughts of teaching artists involved in learning experiences focused on building their capacity to develop and deliver effective teacher workshops. An examination of their perspectives on their own learning and development resulted in this article’s eight recommendations for other organizations and individuals who design similar training experiences.
In 2003, four Kennedy Center Ohio Partners in Education teams1 articulated the goal of developing a roster of highly-qualified teaching artists from their state to lead arts education workshops for teachers. The Ohio teams called their project the Ohio State Based Collaborative Initiative (OSBCI). As per a Teaching Artist Continuum developed by the National Conversation on Artist Professional Development and Training (Gradel 2001), candidates for the OSBCI would be artists who appeared ready to grow professionally into a role labeled “Master Instructional Artist.” One component of that role is providing professional development for educators, a next step for teaching artists “who excel at teaching young people, and who are also able to share their work with teachers and other adults so they can use the arts in their teaching” (Shepherd 2007, 253).
[Full Article in TAJ 7(3)]
