Chautauqua Arts Education Professional Development for Teachers Program Serves Over 200 Local Teachers
Since 2016, Chautauqua Institution has partnered with the Jamestown Public Schools and Chautauqua Lake Central Schools to bring nationally renowned workshop leaders to provide teachers with professional development workshops to hundreds of teachers in Chautauqua County. During the 2024–2025 school year alone, over 200 teachers and hundreds of students have benefited from this program.
The arts are increasingly seen by the New York State Education Department as a valuable means to encourage and enrich learning for students. Through an arts integrated approach, students have not only learned core subject area skills alongside arts skills, but they’ve demonstrated their learning through the arts, encouraging them to develop important 21st century skills such as critical thinking, creativity and collaboration. This approach has proven to motivate students who are reluctant to engage, provide access points to knowledge development that address multiple modalities, and serve to elevate student skills towards the highest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy — to create.
“When teachers are supported to acquire new teaching strategies, it empowers them to address the evolving needs of their students with a fresh approach,” said Chautauqua Institution’s Director of Arts Education Suzanne Fassett-Wright. “Students are inherently creative and love to learn about their world through active discovery and self-expression. Arts integrated strategies encourage this type of engaged curiosity.”
This partnership is rooted in the Kennedy Center’s Partners in Education program, which provides support for schools and arts organizations with the goal of expanding arts learning experiences for all children. Fassett-Wright serves on the Partners in Education Advisory Board as the Northeast Regional representative, where she connects with similar partnerships across the country who are doing this work.