This section is full of stories from teaching artists working to clarify what needs to change within their practices and moving toward solutions--whether it's supporting a classroom of learners in new and unexpected ways, reassessing one's approach in the classroom, shepherding an individual child toward success, or professionalizing an…

It is definitely easier to write about work when things are going well, but it is even more important to write about what happens when things get challenging. The act of writing about the challenging times can be challenging in itself but can also provide invaluable insights into the process of teaching: important for the writer and just as…

The Resource Exchange design team met in May 2013 to learn about and respond to a multifaceted collaboration between the Paramount Theatre & Visual Arts Center and Hands Across the World (HAW), a social service agency that serves the needs of new refugees and immigrants in St. Cloud, Minnesota. In recent years a significant immigrant…

In 2011, the author made the transition from teaching assistant to teaching artist. From 2007 to 2011 she was an assistant teacher at Marwen, an organization that provides free art classes for middle and high school students in the Chicago area. It was there that she began to realize how much she enjoyed helping people as a teacher, whether…

In this article, the author takes a multidimensional and personal look at creative writing work in an assisted living facility. The people she works with at the facility have memory loss. She shares her experience working with these people and describes a storytelling workshop that was modeled after Timeslips, a program started by Anne Basting at…

In the arts-informed teaching and learning spaces, knowledge is potentially produced and shared based on resonance that can involve a whole person. Concerned with educational processes enveloped in relational aesthetics, the authors designed a workshop to reconnect with green awareness, based as much as possible on the methodology that is located…

This article presents an artist-centered approach to thinking about teaching artist professional development. This framework is intended both as a concrete basis for actual workshops and courses and as a scalable concept for more in-depth curriculum for the development of TA practice. The author addresses it as much to working TAs (who are the…

This article is a personal narrative of a teaching artist reaching out to persons ill, elderly, and their caregivers because of his own experiences with cancer. As a teaching artist, the author serves schools and communities as an art critic, that is, one who facilitates discussions about works of art made by the learners or by established…

During discussions with students the author often says, "I ask questions because I wish to know what you think. I already know what I think." Recently, he has taken his own advice, in a way, and has carefully considered what he does think and how those beliefs shape and are shaped, by his practice. Several questions with the author's answers are…

MusicianCorps is the flagship program of Music National Service (MNS), envisioned and founded by singer-songwriter/social entrepreneur Kiff Gallagher, a one-time White House staffer for the Clinton Administration, a singer-songwriter, and a social entrepreneur who was involved in creating AmeriCorps. Over the past several years, Kiff traveled the…

In this article, the author describes a four-day teaching artist workshop at North Carolina's Penland School of Crafts. Led by Dr. Madeleine R. Grumet of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, participants of the seminar undertook the pleasurable job of examining the ins and outs of teaching visual art. Their morning was modeled on a…

This article offers eight recommendations for teaching artist training programs. These recommendations based on the findings of the Ohio State Based Collaborative Initiative report may be useful to arts and education organizations as they design training experiences for teaching artists developing arts-integrated workshops for teachers; they may…

In this issue of the Research Review, the author focuses on the importance of developing learning environments emphasizing the Arts. First, the author reviews a study concerning professional development and "artist-teachers", which is of particular interest since most readers of this journal are involved in various educational partnerships. Then,…

In this article, the authors describe the outcomes of a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) course that offered a pedagogical innovation called "Imagination Quest." This CPD course was a part of a 2-year project entitled Teaching to Reach Potential. Participants were all from Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools' (MCPS') Program of…

In this article, the reviewer focuses on a study of a professional development workshop and visual art studio workshops for adolescents. It is her hope that teaching artists will draw new ideas about curriculum and content from the discussion of this work and that the issues discussed here may provide inspiration for their own shift in thinking…