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…

The author is a teaching artist. Most of her previous experiences as a teaching artist have afforded her the opportunity to create and facilitate a lesson or an arc of lessons through a residency in a school. She was the "expert" artist in the partnership. The author longs to have a deeper, more fruitful impact on classroom learning. What might…

Since 1999, when the author first started teaching creative process-based dance programs in public schools, she has struggled to find the time to teach children the basic concepts and tools of dance while teaching them to be deliberate with their choreographic choices. In this article, the author describes a process that helps students and…

In this article, the author shares her experience working on a multimedia project with her students. The project creates a context for students to reinterpret space and ethos in an elementary school. It allows students to poetically enter physical spaces and the written word through collaborative observation, contemplation, and remixing.

In this article, the author describes an innovative collaboration with an elementary school math teacher that leads to original student choreography and engaging mathematical thinking. Using a tool the author created called Jump Patterns, students at Fox Hill Elementary School in Indianapolis, Indiana, engage in a robust, creative, choreographic…

The Ethiopian Orphanage Project was the brainchild of a prominent pediatrician who, through her foundation and private practice, has been saving the physical and emotional lives of children for years, both in the United States and abroad, with a focus on HIV+ orphans in developing countries. Three years ago, after introducing ARVs (antiretroviral…

In this article, the author, a poet and teaching artist, shares how he successfully brought slam poetry to College Hill Middle School in Texarkana, Arkansas. In 2001 he discovered slam poetry--a poetry-reading format in which poets compete in dramatic readings of their works--and went to Slam Nationals in Seattle on the Arkansas slam team. He…

In this Research Review, the authors first look at a recent study of online content creation by teens in America conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project ("Teens as Authors of Web Culture," Review by Keidra Chaney). The study both confirms and challenges some common beliefs about teens and technology, and raises questions about how…

For nearly 25 years, the author has driven the highways and back roads of Illinois, teaching dance to school children, leading family programs, performing lecture/demonstrations, and choreographing technically simple, conceptually complex pieces with and for young dancers. The author's home base is Champaign/Urbana (C/U), twin cities with a…

This article looks at an inner city playwriting project that brought professional writers and artists into inner city classrooms to help students explore the cultural history of their community and begin to find their own voices as writers. This project was set up by Larry Hunter, an African American playwright who worked as a writer-in-residence…

The residency about which the author writes was with students at The Roeper School in Birmingham, Michigan. This school is unusual in its support for a liberal arts and process-based education. In this article the author, an accomplished director and Teaching Artist, recounts the many engaging dimensions of a student production of "Henry V."

In this article, the author asserts that if Teaching Artists "must excel both as educators and artists, mastering the theory and practice of both fields, as well as the unique theory and practice that lies at their intersections" (Larson 13), then teachers who embrace the arts must master the creative process and experience what it is like to be…

A leading TA and writer speaks to the human importance of art making in schools, prisons, and beyond. This article attempts to demonstrate that, as human beings and as artists, we should speak up for nourishing the art-making instinct at its core, and not only for placing this gift in the service of other laudable goals.

Teaching artists have techniques for keeping play alive and vital in their work. But how do they think of play as TAs? In this article, the author examines the role of play in the work and life of teaching artists.

All teaching artists have taken unexpected detours that lead to miracles. They have all created magical experiences in which people are too engaged to notice the incredible amount they are learning. As a TA, one searches for "serious play"--purposeful fun that stimulates exhilarating work and genuine learning. But how does it happen? How do TAs…