PLU Information

Storytelling in and out of the Classroom

(5 PLUs)

This class is interactive, with study and performance of folktales & myths, fairy tales, literary stories, and personal narrative. Explore the history and significance of story in the development of human culture and experiment with ways of telling the stories that have come down through the oral tradition, as well as modern stories that reflect current society.

Teachers looking for an interesting, creative, and always fun way to earn 5 PLUs , this class will be a safe environment, offering skill development in storytelling in a nonthreatening, supportive and relaxed environment.

There will also be teaching methods for storytelling across the curriculum. The class will be useful for teachers in every subject: yes, even math! There will be a variety of theatre/storytelling games which will translate to skill development in the classroom.

Applications for teaching the skills learned in the class include:       

• Interactive class with study and telling of folktales, myths, fairy tales, literary stories, and personal narrative. Relaxed, non-threatening environment, inviting creativity.
• The human brain is hardwired to learn by turning new information into story form. Invaluable teaching strategy for critical thinking across the curriculum. Great idea to use in personal communication.
• Explore the shared skills of storytelling, acting, and movement. Learn to apply these skills in a diversity of settings, from classroom to comedy club, to business meeting, to storytelling festivals.
• Learn “games” (exercises, but don’t tell anybody) that enhance the confidence level and team building of groups.
• Experiment with a variety of styles telling the stories that have come down through the oral tradition, as well as modern stories that reflect current society.
• Those new to storytelling, Come, enjoy, learn! Experienced tellers, come, learn and share. Workshop new work.

For the storyteller who wants to hone his/her craft, there will be opportunity to learn new techniques, to practice telling to a small and focused audience, and to receive guided critique.

Feriel Feldman has had twenty five years of teaching, from colleges to primary grades, as well as teaching teachers. Currently President of the Southern Order of Storytellers, she is a director, actor, storyteller, and has had teenage storytelling troupes for the last twenty years. With Master’s degrees in theatre education and psychology, she offers a multi-focused approach to the teaching of storytelling.

Tuition: $350

July 2010

July 12 - July 16, 9:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. 

Puppetry in the Classroom

(3 PLUs)

Puppetry is an excellent art form for meeting performance learning standards while creating joyous and meaningful lessons. Learn how to integrate puppetry with language arts, social studies and science. During the week-long workshop, participants will learn how to make a variety of puppets and create units and lessons for them.

Each teacher will also build a classroom character puppet of their own design, and puppets will be built for a culminating performance.

Students remember lessons that they are fully involved in, and the hands-on ideas learned during this week will strengthen and deepen existing classroom lessons.

All supplies are provided. The week is busy, chock full of ideas, and energizing. Have fun, learn from other teachers and earn PLUs!

Instructor: Claire Ritzler, Alliance Theatre Teaching Artist

Claire has been involved in education and the arts for 30 years.  With a background in early childhood development, she became the director of a center in Michigan for children who were victims of abuse and neglect and later was a teacher and director of Ascension Lutheran Preschool in Ohio.  She was involved with national accrediting for the preschool and joined with the local developmental disabilities board to encourage the mainstreaming of preschool children.

Because of her work with children, Claire began exploring new and creative ways to teach through clowning, storytelling and puppetry.  Performing with Pam Clouse Puppets and the Alice Rhodes Puppet Theatre, she had the opportunity to broaden her puppetry skills.  Combining her two favorite areas – education and puppetry – became a focus when she later served as the Education Director at the Center for Puppetry Arts.  She developed educational puppetry programs for preschool, elementary, middle school and high school students.

Tuition: $250

Summer 2010

June 28 - July 2, 9:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. 

Drama in the Classroom

(3 PLUs)

Teachers will learn to use Theatre Arts to aid reinforcement of Natural Science and Social Science curriculum through original dramatizations illustrating the curriculum. Teacher will be able to facilitate student written, five minute stageplays, that illustrate, for example, volcano formation or the impact of the Battle of Atlanta on families caught in the middle of the Battle of Inman Park.

No playwriting or creative writing experience is needed.

Workshop Goals

• Objective in Natural Science: Teachers will be able to use Theatre Arts to aid students building references through dramatizations that illustrate the curriculum.
• Example: Teachers will facilitate student written, five minute stage plays that illustrate science curriculum, such as volcano formation and volcanic activity.
• Objective in Social Studies: Teachers will use Theatre Arts to aid student understanding of the Social Studies curriculum.
• Example: Teachers will facilitate student written stage plays that demonstrate the impact of the Battle of Atlanta on a Freedmen family, caught in the middle of the Battle of Inman.

Teachers will learn 1) to communicate in theatre terms, 2) to discern what each student Playwright is trying to communicate, and 3) encourage rewrites that achieve students and the curriculum objectives, 4) lead student performance of scripts by directing student Actors.

Workshop Covers:

• Pre‑Planning for GPS
• Materials Needed
• Playwriting Process
• Daily/Weekly Strategies
• Handouts
• Suggested Reading for Classroom Teacher

Instructor: Valetta Anderson, Alliance Theatre Teaching Artist

Valetta Anderson is currently a Teaching Artist with Atlanta’s Alliance, Fox and Horizon Theatres and former Adjunct Drama Professor at Spelman College. Full productions include “Hallelujah Street Blues” by Horizon Theatre, “Leaving Limbo,” by Essential Theatre, “She’ll Find Her Way Home” and “Today” by Jomandi Productions, “Dr. Love And The Fabulous Diamond Jubilee” by Clark-Atlanta University Players, and “Sisters And Other Christmas Turkeys,” by 7Stages Theatre (all in Atlanta). “She’ll Find…” was also produced by Nashville’s Fisk University Little Theatre and by Pittsburgh’s Kuntu Repertory Theatre. Her awards include AT&T: Onstage; Cultural Olympiad of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games; Essential Theatre’s Power Plays; Hermann Kesten Stipend in Nürnberg, Germany; Rockefeller Foundation’s New Play Development Grant; Rouse Company National Humanities Award; and Serenbe Institute’s Artist-in-Residence Award. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Georgia Writers Registry, and Working Title Playwrights, serves on the Advisory Boards of Essential Theatre and Good Moves Dance Company and is former Board Member of the Decatur Arts Alliance and Working Title Playwrights.

Tuition: $250 

June 2010

June 21 - June 25, 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. 

The Dramatic Magic of Eric Carle: Creative Drama in Early Childhood

(3 PLUs)

In this course, Claire Ritzler, Master Puppeteer extraordinaire, and Nancy Meyer, Master Wolf Trap Teaching Artist and Kim Bowers-Rheay, Alliance Theatre Resident Teaching Artist, lead you through a variety of ways to incorporate the stories of Eric Carle into your pre-K and K curriculum. 

Create Eric Carle inspired paper and puppets, learn unique ways to dramatize several of the stories, and create new ways to set stories to sound with song and instruments. 

This course will pay close attention to curriculum standards to show how Eric Carle's stories work for more than just language arts!  Walk away from this course with many weeks' worth of lessons to use in your classrooms.

CLAIRE RITZLER has been involved in education and the arts for 30 years.  With a background in early childhood development, she became the director of a center in Michigan for children who were victims of abuse and neglect and later was a teacher and director of Ascension Lutheran Preschool in Ohio.  She was involved with national accrediting for the preschool and joined with the local developmental disabilities board to encourage the mainstreaming of preschool children. Because of her work with children, Claire began exploring new and creative ways to teach through clowning, storytelling and puppetry.  Performing with Pam Clouse Puppets and the Alice Rhodes Puppet Theatre, she had the opportunity to broaden her puppetry skills.  Combining her two favorite areas – education and puppetry – became a focus when she later served as the Education Director at the Center for Puppetry Arts.  She developed educational puppetry programs for preschool, elementary, middle school and high school students.

NANCY L. MEYER  (MAT) has taught every age group from pre-K through senior citizens.  For over 20 years, Nancy has been a schoolteacher and/or a teaching artist for several respected arts organizations in Connecticut and Georgia.   In the Greenwich (CT) and Gwinnett County (GA) public schools, she has taught acting, language arts, special education music, study skills, voice and social studies on the middle school and high school levels and served as the Artistic Director of the Greenwich High School Theatre Department.  As a teaching artist, Nancy has worked with the Alliance Theatre, Pinckneyville Arts Center, Young Audiences of Atlanta, the Atlanta Workshop Players, and has been an independent arts education specialist. Nancy was the Education Director for Young Audiences of Atlanta, coordinating theme-based programs in the Atlanta Public schools as well as developing artist and teacher training in curriculum based arts education.  She has been an Education Associate of the Alliance Theatre for many years, conducting arts for literacy programs as well as improvisational comedy and drama workshops for students, teachers, and adults simply wishing to expand their horizons. Currently Nancy is the Education Director for Laughing Matters, Atlanta’s Premiere Improvisational Comedy Troupe, and the lead player and coordinator for educational youth performances and workshops.  She is the founder of the No Name Players, an educational improvisation duo that performs through the Alliance Theatre. In Connecticut she founded and directed “Tag Team Improv,” an improvisation troupe for high school students that performed and conducted workshops in schools and the community.

Tuition: $250 

June 2010

June 14 - June 18, 9:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. 

Technical Theatre

(3 PLUs)

A hands-on workshop using scenery ideas from aluminum to automation, CAD to cardboard to casters, painting to printing, welding to wood, and all the letters in between.  An opportunity to work in a regional theatre scene shop.

No prior technical theatre experience required – just an open and inquisitive mind.  Bring your ideas and your questions.  Wear your best work clothes and be prepared to get dirty.

Lead by Victor W. Smith, Alliance Theatre technical director.  Victor’s education includes a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from GA Tech and an MFA in Technical Production from Boston University.  He has worked as a technical director in high schools, community theatre, college and professional theatres from Boston to Atlanta.

Tuition: $250 

July 2010

July 12 - 16, 9:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Dynamic Learning for the Classroom

(3 PLUs)

This workshop will use process drama to guide you in creating exciting and meaningful experiences for learning in your classrooms, across age levels and subject matters. We will explore the points of view held by Patriots, Loyalists, Pacifists, Native Peoples, and African Americans at the time of the Revolutionary War. But you will also learn how to identify dynamics within other subjects for teaching as we do so. 

You will participate in stories and drama experiences. Through these, your authentic responses will connect you to the human dimensions within the subject. You will learn to identify the vital dynamics within any subject you wish to bring alive for your students, giving them a desire and reason to learn more. 

At the end of the course you will have created a drama structure you can put to use with your own students. 

For greatest relevance, we request participants bring a subject you will be teaching. If you have an outline or text you wish to use for reference that might be helpful in your planning. It is not required.

Ruth McRee is a professional actor, an educator and a Teaching Artist with PLAYWORKS, in Seattle, Washington. She is pleased to return to the Alliance to work with the teachers in the Atlanta area. Her workshop “Metaphoric Games for Learning” was enthusiastically received at the International Conference on Imagination in Education, in Vancouver BC. She conducts workshops for educators wishing to learn to use drama processes for the classroom. She is currently touring Arthur Miller’s “I Can’t Remember Anything” in the Northwest.  

Tuition: $250

July 2010

July 12 - July 16, 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. 

Integrating the Arts

(3/5 PLUs)

Explore the power of the arts in action through this exploration into visual arts, music, puppetry, drama and movement and the important role they play in providing an engaging and enriching classroom curriculum. In this interactive, hands-on course, participants will have the opportunity to engage in a wide variety of arts activities designed to expose them to how to integrate the arts into curriculum.

30 Hour Course (3 PLU)
Tuesday 9-12:30 and 1-4:30
Wednesday 9-12:30 and 1-4:30
Thursday 9-12:30 and 1-4:30
Friday 9-12:30 and 1-6:30 (Afternoon would be presentations and a culminating pot-luck dinner together)

50 Hour Course (5 PLU)
Those enrolled in this would have an online journal component with me and an additional project to incorporate in their classroom

Tuition: $250/$350

June 2010

June 8 - June 11, 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. - 30 Hours

June 8 - June 11, 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. - 50 Hours