What we do

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Our goal is to help teachers, therapists, and faculty better serve the dynamic students that comprise their classrooms. The work of teaching has evolved and now demands more creative approaches. We also believe that the arts can help all teachers be more creative in their classrooms.

• First Step: Come into your school - or schools - and get to know the teachers themselves. What types of students are in your class? Are you a mainstream classroom or an inclusion room?  Are you a self contained room?  Are there student IEP's? What types of classifications are your working with?  

• Establish a Relationship: We remind all teachers, and aids that they are highly creative individuals. We discuss how learning is a playful and enjoyable process (yes, even for middle and high school students) and we do this by first playing music and arts based games with teachers, faculty, and staff themselves. Games are a great way to not only relax staff, but begin to open them up to their own ideas as well as joy of learning.

• Classroom Dynamic: Next, we take the information we gathered on students and use it to come up with creative classroom management strategies that will help address specific student goals - and we do this together. The workshop is a group design effort. We use the momentum from our introductory games and take it a step further by demonstrating related games and exercises. These allow teachers further insight into student's personalities, and character traits - all important to the process. Many of our games are designed specifically to help teachers understand their students better. We then use them as a launching pad to help teachers begin creating games and/or lesson plans on their own.

• The Arts are More Than Extra Curricular: We see the arts as a way to help teachers and students open up. The arts, like the students in today's classrooms, are dynamic and draw on multiple approaches. Bringing this type of mindset encourages creativity, socialization, and expression. And while we do work with music educators, we also make ourselves available to all teachers and therapists. We like to think of our sessions and workshops as a combination laboratory/art studio/design studio/rehearsal space where ideas are conceived and tried out. Our ultimate goal is to provide teachers and staff with strategies that will better serve the developmentally, socially, emotionally, and economically students they now teach. 
• One of our specialty areas is working directly with your music educators to not just help them better understand diverse learners, but how they can be an asset to inclusion classes; self contained classes; therapists; and classroom teachers. We show them creative strategies that go beyond music education and allow them to see and use attributes of music to help the entire school.

In addition, we are always engaged in practice and research. We actively seek funding and grant opportunities to help expand our programming and bring it to more teachers, therapists, and entire districts.  It is this research and practice, after all, that we believe will ultimately better serve the education community as a whole. When we come to your school we come updated and aware which means we are in tune with what teachers, administration and faulty are looking for.