Teacher Training

Theatre is a wonderfully transformative art form, capable of transporting audience and actors to new realms of understanding about people, events and the human condition. Drama can be used in the classroom, too, for the educational purpose of creating an exciting unit of study in the classroom. TPE specializes in training elementary and middle school teachers to plan and incorporate drama activities into their classrooms to teach subjects, such as language arts, social studies and science. Our lesson plans enliven and deepen a student’s understanding of these subjects. 

Art is the visible evidence of a child’s invisible growth. Well-structured drama activities propel students beyond the facts of history, the plot of a story or the ramifications of a scientific discovery. It enables students to learn through direct experience. The result is a memorable, transformative interaction with the material, which is better retained and more comprehensively understood than lessons taught by more traditional methodologies. Students own the knowledge that they’ve gained because they’ve processed it on multiple levels—intellectually, emotionally, kinesthetically and aesthetically.   

Interested in having Traveling Players Ensemble come to your school this year?

During your next in-service training session, arm your faculty with innovative teaching techniques, complete with a three-hour workshop and two excellent resource books for your school library.  To request a workshop at your school and for more information, please call 301.573.2521 or email me at info@travelingplayers.org. 

Master Teacher - Jeanne E. Harrison, M.A., M.F.A., is the Artistic Director of Traveling Players Ensemble and a master teacher for the company’s Education and Outreach Program: Traveling Educators. In her sixteen year teaching career, Jeanne has taught theatre for The Folger Shakespeare Library, Catholic University, John Moores University (England), Loyola College (Baltimore), The Chapin School (NYC) and Interlochen Center for the Arts (MI), where she directed the Shakespeare program. Jeanne has trained elementary education majors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to incorporate dramatic techniques in their classrooms. She has presented model lesson plans that adhere to the guidelines established for the National Standards for the Arts at several conferences, including the national conference of the American Alliance for Theater & Education. She has co-led workshops with the Center for Artistry in Teaching (CAT) for D.C. public elementary school teachers, encouraging teachers to use art as an effectively teaching strategy. Her lesson plans have been published in The American Girls Collection's Five Plays: Teacher's Guide and Scripts, which outlines how dramatic play can deepen a student's understanding of history.