In 2016, professors representing Biology, Dance, Music, and Theatre and dance program students created "Dunes," a performance piece that depicts the ecological succession of Michigan's sand dunes. The process used to make this work is a direct representation of the steps that Team Hyena Puppet, a collective of teaching artists and…

This article provides a framework to assist evaluators, teaching artists, and program managers in working together.

A librarian and scholar discusses the burgeoning makerspace movement as a new context for teaching artist work.

The work of teachers and literacy specialists has a lot of potential overlap with that of teaching artists of visual and literary arts within early childhood education. When young people in preschools and kindergartens practice early art and literacy, these two areas build in a sort of symphony as youngsters tell stories, make drawings of their…

Andrea Faye Hart is a community journalist and teaching artist who experiments with citizen media to especially empower youth. She runs a civic media and a catharsis through media-making programs for Free Spirit Media, as well as a verse and investigative journalism program for Young Chicago Authors. In this article, as a teaching artist working…

An arts-based afterschool program is introduced in advancing children's democratic citizenship and a sense of community. The ARtS Initiative (Aesthetic, Reflexive thoughts, & Sharing) has reimagined arts and aesthetics for young people in urban settings, providing an unquantifiable experience focused on promoting pluralistic societies. The…

In a virtual space between nations, children can come together to learn about and appreciate each other's culture--and their own. As the Co-Executive Director of Blue Planet Writers' Room, a nonprofit writing center in West Palm Beach, Florida, the author was one of the creators of an international collaboration through which they taught…

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 entire…

Stories in the "ALT/Space" section of each issue of "Teaching Artist Journal" illustrate and document a wide variety of topics surrounding the work of teaching artists while simultaneously revealing some larger truths about what it means to be an artist who teaches. This particular section focuses on the process and realities…

When one says "writing about teaching artist practice," what exactly does that mean? In the first two sections (EJ1039315 and EJ1039319), the authors considered different ways to frame a story by either zooming in closely to a specific moment or zooming out to provide more context in an effort to address complex issues. The stories in…

It is definitely easier to write about work when things are going well, but it is even more important to write about what happens when things get challenging. The act of writing about the challenging times can be challenging in itself but can also provide invaluable insights into the process of teaching: important for the writer and just as…

In their work with various educators, artists, and learners around the world, the authors have been exploring what it takes to collaborate successfully across multiple technological platforms and cultural borders. In this article, the authors describe three international collaborations in arts learning that they facilitated and participated in via…

Mentorship is essential to teaching artists seriously committed to "learning to love this work more." For new(er) teaching artists, with little or no experience as teachers, the New Teaching Artist Mentorship Initiative is designed to inspire a life-long love affair with teaching and learning. This article describes the New Teaching…

Most everyone involved professionally in the non-profit arts comes in contact with a state arts agency. A person may be on the Teaching Artist roster, works for a grantee organization, or has directly received a grant or fellowship. The work that one does in the school is probably funded by the state arts agency. Or, at a more basic level, the…

In this article, the author describes a collaboration between The Actors' Fund of America and 12 schools in the South Bronx. The true purpose of the STARRR (Substitute Teachers for the Arts and 3Rs) program was to establish relationships between artists and schools. Three years later, the author sees the results of those relationships: so many…