The image depicts a Caucasian person in a button-up shirt holding a paintbrush in one hand and a pencil in the other. Their hands and work surface are covered in many colors of paint.Regional Arts Education Day: Artist as Teacher

Several sessions at Regional Arts Education Day will address practicing artists as teachers. If you are a practicing artist or interested in bringing teaching artists into your school, these sessions are for you!

Artist and Teacher: My Quest

with Michael Fratangelo

Being a successful artist and a full-time teacher is quite a challenge. If you truly are an artist, however, you have no choice. This session will demonstrate how to achieve the successful integration of art and teaching. Participants will be able to formulate an approach to practicing and sustaining their own artistic craft, while maintaining a vibrant teaching career.

Michael Fratangelo has been teaching for 13 years at West Jefferson Hills School District while maintaining a career as a practicing artist in Pittsburgh. His path as a visual artist began at Penn State University. During studio classes, professors pulled him aside asking, “Is that what you see? You really have something.” He has come to understand his painting as a gift. It is guided painting. Each work is quest to puncture through the visible reality into the deeper mystical realm. The colors and shapes in his portraits tell the story of the spiritual essence of the people.
fratangelo.com

What Teaching Artists Bring to the Classroom

with Mary Brenholts, Lisa Leibering, and Maggie Negrete

This active, participatory session focuses on the relationships between arts specialists and teaching artists as well as resources for, and challenges to, the development of classroom collaborations between these two communities of arts educators. In this session, participants will identify similarities and differences between certified arts specialists and teaching artists; consider and discuss professional development needs for all arts educators; and explore how arts specialists and teaching artists collaborate in the classroom and discover how such collaborations might take place in their classrooms and schools.

Mary Brenholts has 30+ years of experience in the arts, education, arts in education, and community artmaking with children and adults. She is Director of Artists in Schools & Communities at Pittsburgh Filmmakers/Pittsburgh Center for the Arts where her department provides high quality arts in education services, programs, and resources to over 20,000 participants each year as the regional Arts in Education Partner for the PA Council on the Arts serving Allegheny, Beaver, Greene, and Washington counties. She holds a BA in Liberal Arts from the Pennsylvania State University and an MS Ed. from Duquesne University.

Lisa Leibering is Manager of School and Community Programs for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. Lisa has more than 25 years of professional experience as both a working artist and a teaching artist. Throughout her career, she has taught in a variety of settings, both formal and informal. In Charlotte, NC, she designed and implemented a pilot program for violent youth offenders that used puppetry and personal narratives to help inmates tell their own story. She developed and taught a service-learning course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that guided pre-service teachers in authentic arts integration practices at community-based centers. She holds a BFA in Puppetry/Children’s Theatre from West Virginia University, a MA in Theatre for Youth from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a MA in Theatre from the University of Pittsburgh.

Maggie Lynn Negrete is a SWPA native who makes art, teaches art and helps others make and teach art. At the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, Negrete assists with graphic design, social media, and facilitating events including the CreatorsMakersTeachers Salon in partnership with Gateway to the Arts and the PF/PCA. Outside of her position at GPAC, she writes and illustrates zines, is an organizer of the Pittsburgh Zine Fair, and active community member in her neighborhood of Allentown in Pittsburgh, PA. Negrete holds a BA in Latin American/Latinx Studies from Vassar College and a NAEYC Certificate in Early Education.

Don’t miss out on these opportunities and more, register for Regional Arts Education Day!