Professors provide drama-based teacher training
Department of Education grant to fund development of drama-based teaching techniques
Education professor Michael McCambridge will provide individualized coaching in active, collaborative instruction to teachers, who in turn will become trainers for their colleagues in the district.
Photo: Brian Stethem(THOUSAND OAKS/MOORPARK, Calif. – Sept. 29, 2008) The U.S. Department of Education has awarded a $999,000 grant to Moorpark Unified School District to work with California Lutheran University to create a model program where teachers utilize drama techniques as a teaching strategy in all subject areas.
Over the four years of the Project ACT – Active, Collaborative Teaching grant, CLU education professors Michael McCambridge of Sherman Oaks and Michael Cosenza of Moorpark will provide individualized coaching in active, collaborative instruction to teachers, who in turn will become trainers for their colleagues in the district. The program is designed to help teachers incorporate drama into their lesson plans throughout all curriculum areas.
Project Director Nema Pierce with Moorpark Unified is organizing a kick-off for the program on Wednesday, Oct. 15. Pierce has worked for the last decade as an arts specialist at Walnut Canyon, an arts and technology magnet school. McCambridge and Cosenza will demonstrate the teaching method to all of the elementary school teachers. Representatives from each of the six Moorpark elementary school sites will be selected as part of the first training team. In addition, CLU students preparing to become teachers will intern with Moorpark instructors to help them incorporate arts-based instruction in their lesson plans.
Moorpark Unified will partner with CLU to host a series of summer institutes for teachers at Moorpark’s six elementary schools. The training will focus on using process drama, a style of teaching where teachers and students explore ideas or themes through unscripted acting.
Another component of the grant brings live theater to all elementary students in Moorpark Unified. CLU theatre arts professor Michael Arndt and the professional Kingsmen Shakespeare Company in residence on the campus will take the group’s Shakespeare Educational Tour to the schools each year under the grant’s funding.
The project will embed arts instruction throughout Moorpark’s elementary curriculum. The educators hope to increase teacher effectiveness and student achievement in math and language arts and create a practical, replicable model of quality arts integration. They plan to share the results through articles, training materials and conference presentations.
In another professional development collaboration, the U.S. Department of Education recently provided Moorpark Unified with a $938,000 “Teaching American History” grant to work in partnership with CLU and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.