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The Mansfield Partners in Education Team, comprised of the Renaissance Performing Arts Association, the Mansfield Art Center, and Mansfield City Schools, will host a two-day professional development workshop on arts integration for elementary and intermediate educators, and administrators on July 29-30, 2021 in the Pioneer CTC Performing Arts classroom, located at the Renaissance’s Theatre 166 venue. The registration fee of $125 for the workshop has been covered for all participants through the generous support of the Ohio Arts Council and Charles P. Hahn, CFP.
Kennedy Center teaching artist Randy Barron will lead workshops entitled, “Math on the Move” for teachers serving students in grades K-2; and for those teaching students in grades 3-8. Through dance and creative movement activities, students become kinesthetically and visually engaged in creating number sense and developing an understanding of the important ideas underlying all of mathematics. In this activity-focused workshop, Mr. Barron leads teachers in a set of lessons that help students build their own mathematical understanding while making dances. Participants learn and practice the basic elements of dance and choreography in order to create movement solutions to mathematical problems. Teachers will leave with a comprehensive set of tools for immediate use in teaching mathematics and assessing student creative products, while helping students’ brains develop through movement.
Additionally, Mr. Barron will lead his “BEST Behaviors” Workshop, a skill-building workshop based in creative dance strategies. The workshop includes techniques for moving students from place to place, developing body and voice self-control, and managing space in the classroom. Using fun, fast-paced, and immediately useful activities make the workshop fly by, and teachers will leave with step-by-step instructions for making the classroom a safe and creative space for students to construct and demonstrate understanding through movement.
Primary grade workshops will be presented from 8:30 am until 11:30 am on both days for kindergarten through 2nd grade teachers; with intermediate grade workshops held from 12:30 PM until 3:30 PM for 3rd-8th grade teachers. Full schedule and registration is available at https://bit.ly/K-8ArtsIntegration.
Contact hour verification for CEUs are available for participants. For more information, call 419-522-2726 ext. 252 or email [email protected].
Randy Barron has classroom teaching experience dating back to 1980, and he has been a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist since 1995. Randy has led hundreds of professional development events for teachers and teaching artists, in forty US States, as well as in Singapore. Mr. Barron has danced and choreographed professionally with dance companies from Boston and New York City to the Midwest, and he served as a founding Artistic Director of City in Motion Dance Theater in Kansas City, Missouri. Randy has a wide range of experience in education. He has been a charter school founder, a charter high school director, a curriculum writer — and even a school bus driver. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology, and he is also a former volunteer firefighter and EMT.
Randy has received the Coll Award of Distinction from the New Mexico Art Education Association. He lives with his wife on the Santa Fe Trail in northeastern New Mexico, just an hour’s drive from their ten-year-old, identical twin grand-daughters.
Source, Photo: Renaissance Performing Arts Association