T2's Professional Development Initiative offers teachers support, ideas, collaboration

The research is clear: integrating theater arts into a regular school curriculum can have concrete benefits. According to the American Alliance for Theatre and Education, theater involvement improves academic performance and performance on standardized tests; increases student engagement and attendance; improves reading comprehension; builds self-esteem; and helps bridge the “achievement gap”. Given the research, are we doing enough in Arkansas to help fund the performing arts in our public schools? The national average for funding per student in public education hovers around $15,000, but the Arkansas average is just under $7,000—and many times, funding for the arts is the first casualty when it’s time for belts to be tightened. Once the dust settles, what’s left is a dedicated troop of education professionals determined to provide their students with as much exposure to the arts they can muster on meager budgets.

It’s this group that TheatreSquared and its education initiatives were created to assist, says Morgan Hicks, T2’s Arts Engagement Director. Hicks is a TheatreSquared co-founder who has been a driving force behind the company’s education programs—which include classes for adults as well as camps and classes for adolescents—since the theater’s inception in 2005. The summers at TheatreSquared are earmarked for the Professional Development Institute, a week-long program where around 30 educators come together to learn from Hicks and other theater professionals, as well as from each other.

“Every year, I just think how grateful we are that these people are doing this work, because the work they do is so, so hard, and they are so passionate and so invested and care so deeply for their students,” says Hicks. “That’s really inspirational for us. That’s yearly my takeaway—just kind of sitting in middle of all of these people that do such amazing work, day after day.”

“This was my third time attending T2's Professional Development Institute led by the always inspiring Morgan Hicks, and it continues to be one of my very favorite experiences of the year,” says Jonny Schremmer, Arts Director at The New School. “It's extremely special to spend several days with fellow theater teachers from around Arkansas, bonding over what works and what doesn't, learning new things to bring back to our students, and laughing over shared experiences with teenagers.”

Hicks developed the program around 2010, after traveling the state with T2’s Arkansas Schools Tour, a program that brings live theater and hands-on workshops to Arkansas high schools and reaches nearly 30,000 students and teachers. The tour gave Hicks an opportunity to talk to dozens of performing arts teachers, and one comment kept coming up, time and time again: Professional development opportunities, a certain number of which are required for teachers to keep their licenses, were not meeting the very specific needs of theater and speech teachers.

“We saw that as kind of a big gap in continuing education for theater teachers,” says Hicks. “We also include arts integration strategies, so it doesn’t exclude people who are not theater teachers. We’re primarily focused on people who are specifically teaching theater, and we try to give them an opportunity to share with other teachers, share their best practices and things they’ve learned along the way. We usually get a really good mix of early career teachers and really experienced teachers, so just being able to build that kind of community for them has been really important.”

Hicks operates the PDI beside her team: Chad Dike, Director of Education; Emily Tomlinson, Education Specialist; and Sarah Tan, Learning Programs Manager. In addition to learning from their peers, teachers at the PDI have sessions and workshops with theater professionals that offer hands-on training for directing and acting classes, as well as classes in the technical realm like costuming, lighting, and stage management.

“A highlight for me this time around was when T2's General Manager Shannon Jones showed us the promptbook for ‘Miss You Like Hell’ and was immediately mobbed by high school teachers as if she had just introduced the original cast of ‘Hamilton’,” says Schremmer, describing the marked-up script used by stage managers while managing a production. “I've never seen so much excitement over blocking and light cues as pictures and notes were taken for future stage managers in Arkansas high schools.”

The wide variety of workshops and sessions offered is indicative of how diverse and varied a theater arts educator’s job can be—and why it’s important to have targeted professional development opportunities. Performance-based classrooms require different classroom management skills. Theater teachers work a regular school day and into the evening when they’re working on a production. And those productions require a host of skills beyond classroom teaching. Depending on the size of school where the teacher works and the budget for the performances, a theater teacher may need to be a costume and set designer, carpenter, technical and musical director, and seamstress all rolled into one very busy, stretched-thin educator. That’s why T2’s PDI has earned a place on many teachers’ precious summer schedules.

“Theater teachers can feel a little on our own, at times, during the school year and having the chance to come together and work with highly skilled professionals from Northwest Arkansas filled our brains and hearts with what we need to make it through another year,” says Schremmer. “A lot of what I do with my students comes directly from T2's PDI, and I am forever grateful.”