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The Educational Arts Team provides a range
of workshops to meet the needs elementary schools and high
school including:
TEACHER PROFESSIONAL
DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOPS
The Educational Arts Team is authorized to provide
State of New Jersey Professional Development Certificates
for their workshops.
STUDENT WORKSHOPS
K-12
The workshops use age-appropriate content and the arts as
strategies to promote learning and encouraging positive social
experiences and relationships.
Life Lessons
Pop-up Puppet Theatre
Storyteller's Hat
Television Productions
TEACHER
PROFESSIONAL
DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOPS
 Since
1974 the Educational Arts Team has worked with teachers and
young people developing and implementing drama, art and writing
activities to address curriculum goals. Our presentations
include practical, clear and creative exercises ideal for
helping teachers supplement their Language Arts and Character
Education curriculums.
The Educational Arts Team works directly with
teachers in workshops the can be incorporated into faculty
meetings or staff development days. The teachers taking
the workshops are awarded the State of New Jersey Professional
Development Certificates.
The Team has created a range of programs that address literacy
issues and ways to improve the classroom social environment.
Our programs, Life Lessons, Pop-up Puppet Theatre,
Storyteller's Hat and Bringing Literature to Life
strengthen student listening, writing and presentation skills.
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In the Professional Development workshops
The Educational Arts Team shares its expertise in helping
to improve the social environment in the classroom by
addressing the negative effects of teasing and bullying.
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We demonstrate techniques, such as Teacher-in-Role
and Writing-in-Role, which place teachers and students
in fictional and character situations taken from stories.
These techniques enable the teacher to explore with their
students situations and relationships from other perspectives.
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The programs help create a distinctive
pupil/teacher dialogue within which sensitive topics can
be explored, while at the same time providing activities
that improve literacy.
STUDENT
WORKSHOPS K-12
The Educational Arts Team provides a range of
workshops to meet the needs of elementary and high school
students. Our programs use age-appropriate drama, writing,
storytelling, puppetry, music, dance and visual art activities
as strategies for promoting learning, teaching basic academic
subject areas, encouraging positive social experiences and
promoting positive relationships. The workshops can be presented
as single workshop and as a program series.
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LIFE LESSONS
A Violence Prevention Workshop Series
Grade Level: Pre. K - 3
 Life
Lessons uses stories to teach important lessons about cooperation,
trust, and bullying. Through the use of such activities as
cooperative art, puppets, songs and storytelling children
learn about sharing and how to get along with one another.
Using children's stories, like the Rainbow Fish, Oliver Button
Is a Sissy and Rosie's Story, as catalysts to teach important
lessons, Life Lessons workshops target the earliest signs
of bullying which often take the form of teasing others for
gender, racial and size differences. Through storytelling,
affirmation art, role-playing, discussions, songs, drama and
cooperative arts, children learn about sharing and how to
get along with one another while taking part in these engaging
workshops.
Many researchers believe that from an educational point of
view teasing and bullying are harmful and can create a classroom
climate of fear that affects a child's ability to learn and
a teacher's ability to teach. Froschl and Sprung (1999) suggest
using a number of proactive activities to help teach children
how to deal with one another. For example, they suggest that
teachers and parents use books like Martine Gogoll's Rosie's
Story or Tomie dePaola's Oliver Button Is a Sissy to start
discussions. These kinds of discussions turn the classroom
into a place where children can talk about what makes them
feel welcome, comfortable, and safe in school. Other important
activities are noncompetitive games and quieting activities
that can help children cope with frustration, anger, and stress.
The Educational Arts Team believes in supporting the classroom
teacher's efforts to promote friendship across all lines of
difference, because any perceived difference (gender, race,
ethnicity, language, social class, disability, size) can become
fodder for hurtful actions.
Early childhood teachers work with children in a period of
great intellectual, physical, and emotional growth and learning.
They play a critical role in the positive socialization of
children during their formative years. Their work is important
in addressing teasing and bullying behavior at the beginning
of a child's educational experience.
References:
Froschl, M. & Gropper, N. (1999, May). Fostering friendship,
curbing bullying. Educational Leadership 56, (8) 72-75.
QUOTE
"My students and I have enjoyed the many values and
examples your program has taught us. We hope we receive this
program next year."
Karen M. Young,
A teacher at P.S.# 16 in Jersey City
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POP-UP
PUPPET THEATRE
Workshop Series
Grade level: 3 - 6
Click here for the
article on PPT that was published in the Youth Theater Journal
 When
is reading and writing fun and foldable? During Pop-up Puppet
Theatre workshops! This is a program about entertaining and
creative learning that has students experience writing and
reading in exciting, novel ways. It is an ideal 3rd and 4th
grade ESPA Language Arts development program.
Pop-up Puppet Theatre gives students opportunities to create
their own puppet stages and perform plays using scenery and
puppets they have designed and scripts they have written.
Pop-up Puppet Theater workshops develop students' interest
in story through drama, visual art, writing activities and
performance. In Pop-up Puppet Theater workshops, children
listen to a story told by a workshop leader and learn to re-tell
it in their own words. Each child makes puppets, designs scenery,
writes their own version of the story, creates a portable
puppet stage, and performs his or her play to a younger child.
Pop-up Puppet Theater helps children explore their creativity
while strengthening their writing, public speaking, listening
and problem solving skills; an excellent way to enrich the
Language Arts program and support work in ESPA preparation.
Dr. Betty Jane Wagner (1998) explains that children respond
to a combination of reading and drama by taking the virtual
of the literature and making it actual" (Wagner, p.175)."
This idea is echoed in the work of Ohio State University researcher
Dr. Christine Warner. Warner (1994) writes that in dramatic
play, children create a play world; in reading, they create
a story world.
Jerome Bruner, a noted cognitive psychologist, has extensively
examined the relationship between play and the acquisition
of symbolic systems, such as oral and written language. Bruner
claims, "it is not so much instruction in either language
or thinking that permits the child to develop his powerful
combinatorial skills, but a decent opportunity to play around
with his language and to play around with his thinking that
does the trick."
References:
Bruner, J. (1986). Play, thought, and language. Prospects
16 (1), 77 to 83.
Wagner, B. J. (1998). Educational drama in language arts:
What research shows. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann publishers.
Warner, C. (1994). The nature of engagement in drama when
used as a methodology to augment literature in a middle school
language arts classroom. Ohio State University.
QUOTE
"You could see a difference in the children because
of the workshops. Pop-up Puppet Theatre improved their writing
and cooperation skills, gave them an ego boost, sparked their
creativity, and helped them to focus."
Diane Pallitto, Principal of P.S. #29 in Jersey City
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STORYTELLER'S
HAT
A Theatre Arts Workshop Series
Grade level: 4 - 8
 "Theater
works both sides of the brain...a potential vehicle for teaching
virtually all other subjects, along with incorporating all
of the arts." (NJ Department of Education)
The Storyteller's Hat, our fourth grade workshop series,
addresses the Performing Arts Standards adopted in 1996 by
the NJ Department of Education. The DOE stated that working
in the visual and performing arts provides opportunities for
students to develop expressive and creative skills and to
enjoy active participation. Our Storyteller's Hat workshops
incorporate theater techniques and activities: storytelling,
use of theatrical props, pantomime, improvisation, readers
theater and movement. The series culminates with the fourth
grade students presenting a story they have learned to younger
classmates.
In these workshops children are drawn into the world of story.
The child listens to the story, transforms the image's they
have heard in their mind into their own words and then retells
their stories to another listener. Next they re-work those
images into dramatic form and combine the oral, written and
physical into a final product, their performance.
Listening, telling and dramatizing stories does so much.
Storytelling and drama teaches story structure, new vocabulary
and good sentence structure. It creates a bond between teller
and listener. Combined with drama it becomes a powerful tool
for developing both language skills and literacy. Our workshops
also set up situations from the story so that the drama can
involve written language in a variety of forms and activities:
letter writing; reflective journals; creating announcements
and petitions; designing advertisements and brochures; inventing
questionnaires and important documents; and writing narrative
stories that are part of or that are conjured up by the drama.
QUOTE
"Educational Arts Team is a wonderful experience for
the children. It is an innovative approach to learning. You
are always welcome." Ms. Andrea DeLuca, teacher at P.S.#
23 in Jersey City.
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TELEVISION
PRODUCTIONS
A Substance Abuse & Violence Prevention Workshop Series
Grade level: 6 - 8
 The
Educational Arts Team has developed, Television Productions,
which uses drama, in the format of a fictional television
show, to help sixth through eighth graders reflect on how
violence impacts upon their lives and the lives of others.
It addresses the Core Curriculum Content Standards, NJ Department
of Education, 1996, by helping students "struggle with
challenging ideas and tasks, apply them to real life and problem
solve activities that stimulate reasoning and integrate knowledge"
In this workshop each class creates a magazine-style television
show called "How People Treat Each Other" in which
the students reflect upon real-life events from the news.
Working in pairs, students become reporters and guests for
a "magazine style" television show. Students are
given assignments and then, together, they will write, rehearse
and act out their own video production. Student dramatizations
are video taped and the participants view themselves and their
classmates on television in the roles of people affected by
the event.
The activities provide a foundation for discussions about
assuming personal responsibility, maintaining self-control,
and learning ways to control impulses. Responding to our series
ending surveys, 99% of the students told us that they understood
the importance of being responsible for their own behavior.
Ivan, a Jersey City eighth grader, wrote, "I learned
that it is up to me to control myself and my own problems."
Students also develop problem-solving skills by analyzing
the consequences of their actions and learn to respond to
difficult situations without violence. 87% believe that they
deal better with their classmates than they did before the
series began. Ashton wrote, "[The workshops] helped me
to get along with others and see each person's point of view."
Christian wrote, "Now I understand why sometimes my friends
are in trouble and when they need help."
QUOTE
"The workshops were helpful for the students both socially
and emotionally. It helped them socially because the segments
promoted tolerance. It helped them emotionally because the
topics broadened the students thought process and understanding
to a variety of real-life situations." Mrs. Paula Morris
and Mrs. La-Shay Wilson-Godfrey, teachers at P.S.# 41 in Jersey
City.
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