Steppenwolf Theatre Co
Steppenwolf Theatre Company strives to create thrilling, courageous and provocative art in a thoughtful and inclusive environment. We succeed when we disrupt your routine with experiences that spark curiosity, empathy and joy.Steppenwolf Education celebrates the learner, maker and appreciator in each of us. We commit to breaking down barriers to ensure access and equity for all. We emphasize rigorous exploration, intentional mentorship and the cultivation of meaningful relationships in our work. We use theatre to promote compassion, encourage curiosity and inspire action as we work together towards a more empathetic tomorrow.
Steppenwolf is proud to have partnered with Chicago Public Schools for over 20 years through its robust in-school residency programs. A central part of our residency program is that all participating high school classroom teachers and Steppenwolf teaching artists receive free and extensive professional development opportunities with the department, logging between 15–50 hours of training with Steppenwolf Education & Engagement annually – all available for Continuing Professional Development Units (CPDU). This training takes the form of in-person day-long workshops onsite at Steppenwolf which offer a deep artistic dive into the world of the play that the students will be engaging with, provide practical and applicable arts learning strategies in the pedagogy of Aesthetic Education, and allow classroom teachers to build and brainstorm curricular ideas alongside teaching artists and their fellow classroom teachers in a creative and hands on environment. There are also asynchronous and specialty workshop materials provided throughout in more specific subject areas such as trauma informed care in relationship to engaging with works of art, antiracist practices in theatre education, and additional design/creative team/and artist interviews and insights into the productions on Steppenwolf stages. Steppenwolf Education & Engagement also offers occasional PD opportunities in the summer season that are open to any Chicagoland classroom teachers (as opposed to only residency partners).
All Steppenwolf Education PD opportunities are organized around objectives that align with our three core department values:
1) REBELLIOUS IMAGINATION: CULTIVATING TEEN AGENCY & INTRINSIC MOTIVATION
Steppenwolf Education and Engagement centers each student as an artist and as the expert of their own experience, which is reflected at every level of our programming including Teen Curator involvement in our curriculum design process. Through participation in Steppenwolf PDs, we expect educators to build skills of sequencing lessons in a way that meets students where their inspiration lies and adapts to their choices in real time. Teachers learn creative aesthetic education approaches to curriculum design that move away from depersonalized top-down skill-sharing models and toward models that actively engage students through cultivating their intrinsic motivation and encouraging bold choices in their art-making.
2) CREATIVE INQUIRY: MAKING CULTURAL & CURRICULAR CONNECTIONS BEYOND THE STAGE
The high artistic quality of Steppenwolf productions as well as the collaborative nature of our curriculum design and professional development inspire creativity in lesson planning and a deepening of creative inquiry tools provided to students. In learning how to customize our curriculum for their classrooms, educators will be able to make cultural and curricular connections between their student matinee performance and residency experience and the broader work that they are doing in their own classroom’s year long.
3) COLLABORATIVE ART-MAKING: BUILDING TOOLS OF ENSEMBLE ETHOS & AESTHETIC EDUCATION
Teachers will learn to utilize aesthetic education capacities for imaginative learning while also activating an ensemble ethos into their classrooms to enrich student engagement. We hope to inspire teachers to lead with joy, community, and connection – and expand their concept of what student art-making can look like, creating an environment with rich peer-to-peer collaboration. Educators will walk away from our professional development program with robust and replicable lesson plans around building an ensemble ethos in the classroom, responding to a work of art, unpacking dramatic text, and weaving artistic material into other classroom content (e.g. Civics, History, English).
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