Engagement with the arts, and with theater in particular, helps build better communicators and more emotionally literate young people. The empathy, introspection, and adherence to the structure required to create a play or write a song offer young people the opportunity to try out the skills necessary to navigate life’s most difficult moments in a fun, creative, and rewarding setting. Studies have shown that engagement with the performing arts expands perspectives and interpersonal skills, strengthening teamwork by 55%. Whatever segment of the population we serve, the arts-engagement modalities we use help New York City Children’s Theater build students’ literacy and social-emotional well-being week over week, month over month.
We began several long-term residencies this month with returning and new shelter partners. Thanks to the generosity of The Howard Gilman Foundation, The Ford Foundation Good Neighbor Committee, and NYC Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, we can expand both the number of shelters to which we provide programming and extend the length of these residencies to serve young shelter residents more consistently over time. It is such an exciting leap.
When we first began working in shelters, we were one of many arts partners in a now-defunct NYC Department of Education program. The program and partnerships were funded and primarily managed by the DOE. In early 2021, we made the decision to keep the program running by starting short virtual residencies with two partner shelters. Together with an increasing number of shelter partners and with our funders, we have more than quadrupled our shelter reach in number and length of residency over the last three-plus years. We pledged never to start a shelter residency we cannot consistently support. Thanks to you, we are living up to that pledge.
Consistency is key.
As the sole theater partner to the DOE program, we quickly realized the students we encountered used so much emotional capital just getting to and through school that asking them to take creative risks in an after-school program required more targeted support. We also realized that many of these same students, and others navigating homelessness, populated the classrooms we served during the school day. We researched trauma-informed teaching and joined with experts Christopher Causey, Heidi Landis, Kendra Pollidore-Mulzac, Dr. Jessica Pesantez, and Allison Finder to train ourselves and our teaching artists in trauma-informed pedagogy. Consistency, transparency, and agency emerged almost immediately as benchmarks of a supportive environment for traumatized young people. Not surprisingly, the same modalities that make up trauma-informed pedagogy promote learning and social-emotional wellness in every classroom we encounter. We created our Trauma-Informed Toolkit for Educators specifically with that in mind.
It is a recurring theme that modalities adopted to help us serve one population often serve many populations. When we incorporated Universal Design for Learning strategies into our curriculum to provide better support for students with disabilities, the multiple access points those strategies provided promoted deeper and broader engagement across each of our programs.
At this month’s Arts for All Abilities conference, New York City Children’s Theater’s Associate Director of Education, Andrea Palma, and Education Coordinator, Frank Ruiz, presented both action research and a demonstration of practical engagement strategies which showed that the training we offer our Teaching Artists to help support multilingual learners, has been useful to increase engagement for Students with Disabilities.
In order to prepare our Teaching Artists to support multilingual students in the Music and Theater for Multilingual Learners permutation of NYCCT’s signature Literature At Play program, NYCCT hires an expert in language acquisition to train Teaching Artists to use effective support in the classroom. These supports promote the use of home language and access to English, which is generally the dominant language taught in the school. Because these teaching tools amplify, not simplify, a story, lesson, or art-making process, they offer more readily apparent roads into a class, expanding students’ ability to engage with and contribute to a class project. This is especially useful for Multilingual Learners and Students With Disabilities, who are often pulled out of class art activities to receive supportive services. Often, students who generally eschew class participation suddenly find themselves at the center of a project and move from feeling like an outsider in the class to a full-on participant.
More engagement. Expanded perspectives. More opportunities to creatively risk and grow in a supportive environment. We’re building teams of creative problem solvers and empathetic thinkers in every borough.
Thank you for all the ways you help us serve New York City’s children. We cannot do it without you.