The Mansfield site of the Kennedy Center’s Partners in Education program will offer an arts integration professional development workshop for teachers on Tuesday, January 29.
Richard Jenkins, a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, arts and education consultant, published cartoonist, writer and illustrator, will lead the workshop, which is most beneficial for teachers of grades 3-6. Since 1997, Mr. Jenkins has worked extensively as a teaching artist, engaging students in drawing, cartooning, story making, and painting. His student-centered teaching includes gifted & talented, youth-at-risk, ESL, and special needs populations; and focuses on building students’ creative and cognitive capacities. He has served on the Teaching Artist Rosters of multiple states and, in 2009, for his exemplary work with special needs students, he was awarded the Teaching Artist Fellowship from VSA (Very Special Arts) International.
Jenkins has worked throughout the United States as an arts and education consultant, providing professional development training for teachers in arts integration strategies, as well as arts inclusion strategies, for students with disabilities. 2008 marked the release of Jenkins’ first teacher’s arts integration manual, “Comics in Your Curriculum.”
Jenkins’ Super Powered Stories: Character and Story Creation for Students with Disabilities workshop guides teachers through the process of building student’s expressive and cognitive capacities, and unlocking their story-making potential, by using the popular art form of cartooning as a tool to reach all students. With no previous drawing experience required, participants will learn to teach students how to combine simple lines, shapes, and patterns to draw their own super heroes and super villains; and to add story elements to create their own Super Powered Stories. The workshop is hands-on, and explores multiple options and entry points for students with learning, cognitive, and emotional disabilities.
The free workshop will take place at the Renaissance Theater from 4:30-7:30 PM on January 29 and dinner is included. Participants will receive up to three contact hours for professional development credit. There is no fee to attend, thanks to the generous sponsorship of Charles P. Hahn of Cleveland Financial Group, KeyBank Foundation, and additional support from the Ohio Arts Council. Registration for the educator workshop is available online at https://storydrawing.eventbrite.com/
This workshop was developed in association with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and is partially underwritten by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Committee for the Performing Arts. Mansfield was selected in 2010 to join the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in its Partners in Education program. Mansfield is one of approximately 100 sites across the country in the program. For more information on this professional development opportunity, contact the Education Department at 419-522-2726 ext. 252 or email [email protected].
Source, Photo: Renaissance Performing Arts Association
