This week is an exciting week at New York City Children’s Theater! Our new Education, Artistic, and Arts Administration Apprentices will be starting their year-long journey with us. As we prepare to welcome the next team of Apprentices, we wanted to give you an inside look at what it’s like to be an NYCCT Apprentice. We asked Lily, one of our incredible 2018-19 Season Education Apprentices, to tell us about a day in the life of an Education Apprentice.
9:00am
I wake up and look at my calendar. Being an NYCCT apprentice can mean going to meetings, professional development workshops, observing residencies, or teaching classes. Whatever my day entails, it usually involves going to a bunch of different places at different times. I have to make sure I have everything accounted for. This apprenticeship has taught me many different life lessons and it’s certainly made me a more organized scheduler and skilled navigator.
9:30am
I start my commute to the NYCCT office. The office is just close enough to Grand Central that I battle quite a few fellow commuters for a spot on the 4, 5, 6 train. As an educator and actor, I don’t usually get to dress up and go to an office, so whenever Wednesday rolls around, I get pretty excited to join the throngs of commuters. I pretend that I’m a bigwig in finance and I have an important meeting about stocks to attend. In actuality, a large part of my day might be reading picture books.
10:30am
I arrive at the NYCCT office. I share an office with Nicole Hogsett (NYCCT’s Communications and Marketing Manager) and Barry Hamilton (NYCCT’s General Manager). They are so fun! Whenever I enter, Barry greets me with a huge “LILY!” and Nicole always checks in to see how I’m doing. I am very lucky to share an office with such lovely, caring, and motivated people. We chat for a few minutes and then I go visit Sara and Alex in their office.
10:35am
One of my favorite things about office hours are my conversations with Sara Morgulis (NYCCT’s Director of Education) and Alex Delare (NYCCT’s Associate Director of Education). As an NYCCT Education Apprentice Sara and Alex are the people I work under the most frequently. They’ve also become mentors to me. When I let them know that I’m in the office and ready for work we usually end up chatting for half an hour. I tell them how my classes are going, ask them for advice on teaching artist career moves, and more…usually we chat about John Mulaney and Alex’s cats and other fun nonsense. Then we get to work.
11:00am
My work at the office can be anything from cataloging information in different sales programs, creating records of residencies, checking out other teaching artist’s lesson plans, or a variety of other work. Sometimes Alex and Sara will be attending a conference, a sensory-friendly performance, or seeing a rehearsal of an NYCCT show and they’ll invite me. A day at the office is always different and no matter what I’m doing I always leave in a great mood.
1:00pm
I say goodbye to the NYCCT office and head out. My scheduled office hours may have ended but my work as a teaching artist continues and NYCCT continues to play a big part in my day.
3:00pm
Next, I teach a class at one of the many art organizations I work with as a teaching artist. Usually, during my time at the office, I’ll ask Sara and Alex for some feedback on my lesson plans so I can implement their suggestions into my class that day
6:00pm
Finally, I finish my workday, but there may be a special event that I’m invited to. Maybe I’ll hang out with the other NYCCT Apprentices (we’ve all become pretty close and now have a group chat together). I may attend a professional development session or a teaching artist meetup with NYCCT. Maybe I’ll attend an event, like an applied theater thesis presentation at CUNY or a speaker on classroom management. No day is the same as an education apprentice!