Professional Development for Classroom Teachers
Child’s Play NY’s Professional Development is designed to support classroom teachers, school administrators and students. The PD involves dynamic instruction in dramatic arts-based modalities that integrate the existing curriculum and respect the standards while deepening a school’s commitments to social-emotional learning and equity in the classroom.
Through our sessions, teachers learn how to support students to:
- Activate agency, identity and belonging
- Feel of value in their school community
- Grow in self-esteem
- Develop their authentic voice
- Forge an academic identity that is uniquely theirs.
Professional Development sessions are adaptively designed with the needs of each partner school in mind. The work is collaborative, responsive and begins with a listening session between Executive Director, Jocelyn Greene and the school leadership.
Whether you are hoping to re-imagining a unit of study, or learn games that foster inclusion, we look forward to connecting. Set up a call with Executive Director, Jocelyn Greene to discuss bringing Child’s Play NY to your school.
“Activated Curriculum” Professional Development
Curriculum in Play
Teachers learn drama games that nurture student voice, and foster excitement around the core curriculum. This PD is built around grade-level standards, specific to ELA, Social Studies and STEM. Lauded techniques from the theater arts inspire learning while advancing students’ academic achievement.
Theater Arts in Project-Based Learning
Update a current unit of study to incorporate inquiry, choice and student voice. Final arts-based projects will make learning public so students have opportunities to “show what they know” and speak with passion and eloquence. Teachers learn new skills as their class builds toward a satisfying culmination that demonstrates mastery, invigorates learners, and is authentic to the school community.
English Language Arts Integration
Classroom educators learn exercises that are directly integrated with grade-level English Language Arts (ELA) standards. This inspires students to deepen their academic agency. Student-generated work includes narrative and persuasive prose and poetry. Additional emphasis is placed on comprehension, analysis, points of view, sequencing, story structure, and vocabulary. Additionally, these activities bolster emotional intelligence and social connections between students.
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) Professional Development
Team Building for School Community
Opening and closing circles, transitions, celebrations – all this calls for the spark of play. Educators get inspiring classroom resources from the canon of theater games that enliven routines and develop SEL for their students. In addition, the exercises and routines create a more harmonious classroom dynamic and serve to prevent peer conflict, exclusion, and bullying.
Building Emotional Literacy Through Drama Activities
Support young people’s emotional literacy through exercises that create a “feeling intelligence”. Educators learn games for their classrooms that strengthen students’ empathy and responsiveness. This blueprint for adaptable activities aims to spark compassion, self-awareness, and transformation – at both individual and community levels.
Executive Function and Dramatic Play in the Early Education Classroom
Master ways to scaffold dramatic play and imaginative games for early learners. Establish routines around play and create structures from which students’ imaginations can flourish. Educators also are given clear language to articulate the games to parents for repeated practice and engagement at home.
When doing a semester-long residency, the first session is for Professional Development to align teachers with the practices they will see in their classroom.
