About My Classroom

I teach at Young Audiences Charter School, an arts-integrated school located in Harvey, Louisiana. Young Audiences is a public charter school in the Jefferson Parish Public School System. Here is the school's website and here is the school's report card from the Louisiana Department of Education.

Arts-integration, our core value, means learning art skills in tandem with curriculum skills. In our class this has meant using puppet theater to retell a story, creating our own city as part of our social studies unit on neighborhoods and stores, and writing about art styles in different countries around the world.

I have co and solo taught lessons involving theater, visual arts, and music to teach core content. I believe that using the arts on a regular basis creates a exciting, inclusive classroom where students are happy to learn and try new things.

School Information

· We are a Title 1 school where 89% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Our population is approximately 57% African American, 28% White, 9% Hispanic and 4% multiple races. Close to 10% of our students have IEPs for diagnosed exceptionalities. Our population is typically culturally diverse for our district but does have mostly economically disadvantaged students.

· My school partners with its parent corporation, Young Audiences of Louisiana (YA4LA), to provide arts teachers for each grade level, and also hosts an extensive after school program which services students from our school Monday-Thursday each week from 4-5:30. The program is affordable and accessible to our students at $50 per year. The after school program includes a variety of dance, theater, visual arts, and music classes for students from 1^st – 9^th grade. Kindergarten students can also attend the after school program but do not usually focus on one specific art form while there. YA4LA also provides us with Wolf Trap visiting teaching artists who come to our K-1 classrooms for six session residencies where they help classroom teachers develop ways to integrate arts into lessons for young children. I have taken part in four Wolf Trap residencies.

· We use scripted lesson plans for math (Eureka Math), comprehension (Wit & Wisdom), writing (Being a Writer), and phonics (Fundations). I create my own lessons with team input for science and social studies following our Louisiana State Standards, and independently for guided reading. All lessons except for guided reading adhere to the timeframe laid out in their respective scope and sequences at the beginning of year. Our daily schedule includes 1.5 hours for math, 1 hour for comprehension, 30 minutes for phonics, and 45 minutes for writing or science/social studies.

· I am the kindergarten team lead and I lead weekly meetings involving the three other classroom teachers, our kindergarten arts teacher, and our grade level assistant teacher. As lead, I help promote communication between my team and the administration and I mentor one of my teammates. I also send out weekly memos to the team which outline our goals for the week. I attend team lead meetings once per quarter as the kindergarten team representative.

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