GIVE Programs & Initiatives
GIVE Workshops and Professional Learning
The GIVE team has facilitated professional learning workshops for a wide range of arts educators including Teaching Artists, Classroom Teachers, Paraprofessionals, Arts Education Administrators, and Artists. In these workshops, participants use the GIVE guide, an extensive library of resources that support educators in creating inclusive learning spaces and liberated learning environments for students with and without disabilities, as a basis for learning. GIVE workshops are designed, planned, and facilitated by experienced GIVE Trainers who aim to model inclusive practices in their facilitation and center participant voice, experience, and peer to peer collaboration. Participants leave workshops having identified barriers to access in their practice and with specific goals to center inclusive practices utilizing GIVE resources.
The GIVE Team has facilitated workshops for organizations including:
- New York City Public Schools – Arts Office
- New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
- Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
- City Lore Inc.
- Coalition for Hispanic Family Services, Arts & Literacy Program
- Connected Arts Network
- Educational Theatre Association
- Marquis Studios
- Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden
- Studio in a School NYC
- USDAN Summer Camp of the Arts
- Young Audiences of New Jersey
Interested in a workshop? Please complete our workshop inquiry form.
We believe fundamentally that the principles of an ICT environment are what benefits all community members. A learning environment that increases inclusivity is one that builds humanity, supporting diverse thought and innovation. We hope to deepen alignment with ICT principles, increase our knowledge of best practices, and learn how to better serve our community.
– Snug Harbor
Grow with GIVE
দ্য Grow with GIVE Program was a year-long professional development initiative that partnered GIVE with fiveNew York City-based arts and culture organizations to train their teaching artists and administrative staff on the GIVE Guide.
Officially launched in Fall 2022, Grow with GIVE provided specialized programming to each participating organization led by a team of specialized GIVE Trainers – many of whom collaboratively developed the GIVE resources – from partnered institutions New Victory Theater, ArtsConnection, and Community-Word Project.
Each organization participated in an introductory workshop for their full staff, and had a learning cohort of up to ten Teaching Artists and administrators participating in a bespoke professional development program. Across the 2022-23 academic year, the learning cohorts engaged in four multi-hour training sessions, a lab-style sharing session for coaching and reflection supporting the implementation of GIVE practices in the classroom.
The participating Grow with GIVE organizations were:
Coalition for Hispanic Family Services, Arts and Literacy Program
GIVE Programming with the NYC Department of Education
The Teach with GIVE Team collaborates with the NYC PS Arts Office to design and facilitate inclusive professional learning for visual arts, music, dance, and theater educators, paraprofessionals, principals, and collaborating arts organizations across all five boroughs.
These workshops engage educators in authentic arts experiences, tangible strategies, artist talks by artists with disabilities, collaborative planning, and reflective discussion focused on inclusive curriculum design, accessibility, and representation.
Starting in 2022 the Teach with GIVE team has successfully delivered full-day, multi-session, and virtual professional learning that builds educators’ capacity to respond to student needs, interpret behavior as communication, and implement strategies that increase access and participation in arts classrooms. Their work consistently reflects an understanding of the instructional realities of NYCPS schools and aligns closely with our goals for inclusive and equitable arts education.
FY25:
Teach With GIVE: Disability Awareness in Performing Arts Classrooms:
A full-day dedicated to making music, theater, and dance classrooms more flexible and supportive spaces for learning. This workshop included a performance and artist talk by an artist with a disability and time for educators to consider how disability is represented in their curriculum. Participants engaged in art making experiences and collaborative discussions around planning for inclusion in their art form. This workshop offered strategies and tools for responsive teaching to make lessons more accessible when challenges arise.
Goals: Arts teachers will:
- Consider the representation of disability in the arts curriculum
- Consider what needs student behaviors might communicate and discover strategies that support students’ needs
- Participate in two different performing arts experiences that model these strategies in arts instruction & collaboratively debrief these lessons
- Understand how to use the GIVE Guide as a resource and have time to explore and apply a resource to their own teaching practice
- Bronx: January, 2025
- Queens: December, 2024
- Brooklyn: December, 2024
- Staten Island: January, 2025
- Manhattan: January, 2025
Teach with GIVE Visual Arts Workshop
A full-day dedicated to making visual arts classrooms more inclusive spaces for learning. This workshop included an artist talk with an artist with a disability and time for educators to consider how disability is represented in their curriculum. Participants engages in art making experiences and collaborative discussions around planning for inclusion. Learn strategies and tools for responsive teaching to make art lessons more accessible when challenges arise.
Goals: Art teachers will:
- Have authentic arts experiences
- Consider the representation of disability in the arts curriculum
- Explore ideas around disability, inclusion, and access in society, the arts and in education
- Consider what needs student behaviors might communicate and discover strategies that support students’ needs
- Participate in arts experiences that model these strategies in arts instruction & collaboratively debrief these lessons
- Understand how to use the GIVE Guide as a resource and apply a resource to their teaching practice
- April 2025
- March, 2025
- April, 2025
- March, 2025
- March, 2025
FY24:
GIVE DOE Full-Day PD Workshops -Visual Arts
Supporting Students with Disabilities in Visual Arts Classrooms
A full-day dedicated to making your visual arts classrooms more inclusive spaces for learning. Attend an artist talk by an artist with a disability and consider how disability is represented in your curriculum. Participate in art making experiences and collaborative discussions around planning for inclusion. Learn strategies and tools for responsive teaching to make art lessons more accessible when challenges arise.
- March 2024
Supporting Students with Disabilities in Performing Arts Classrooms
A full-day dedicated to making your music, theater and dance classrooms more inclusive spaces for learning. Consider how disability is represented in your curriculum. Participate in art making experiences and collaborative discussions around planning for inclusion. Learn strategies and tools for responsive teaching to make art lessons more accessible when challenges arise.
- March 2024
Teach with GIVE: Trauma-Informed and Healing-Centered Practices in the Arts
Participants focused on learning how to recognize trauma in students and how to incorporate Trauma-Informed, Healing-Centered teaching techniques into their classroom. Together we explored ways we can support our students’ ability to express and process emotions through visual arts, theater, dance and music. Discover rituals, routines and strategies that support students’ (and teachers’) healing.
- May 2024
FY 23:
Teach with GIVE: Redefining Classroom Management (SERIES A)
This two-part series explored collaborative approaches to classroom management. Together, we activated teachwithgive.org resources to create and support dynamic arts classroom culture. Engaged with peers on strategies for co-generating classroom communities with students, and responses to common classroom management challenges.
- February and March 2023
Teach with GIVE: Designing Activities for an Inclusive Classroom (SERIES B)
In this workshop participants got familiar with the GIVE Activity Bank and its short activities or skill-based tasks that already include supports and accommodations to meet a range of students’ needs. Together, we unpacked the process of developing and leading activities that support students with disabilities. We explored case-studies of implementing these activities and discussed the challenges that may and do come up.
- March 2023
Teach with GIVE: Exploring Artistic Equity
As a culmination for our workshop series, we came together to celebrate artists and educators from the disability community and think about how we can embrace disability as a central part of artmaking and education.
- April 2023
Teach with GIVE – for Principals & Arts Liaisons
Hear from educators who’ve applied GIVE: Growing Inclusivity for Vibrant Engagement to support all students in inclusive arts spaces. We’ll each have the chance to try some of the ideas and practices in The GIVE Lab—a place to play, to experiment, to imagine — and we’ll look ahead to the ways each of us will carry the knowledge, strategies, and tools out into our classrooms and the world.
Teach with GIVE: Arts Residency Classroom Partnerships
Supporting all of the learners in a classroom is a collective effort that requires skilled and thoughtful partnership. In this workshop, you’ll come together with other Arts Partnership Grant recipients to explore TeachWithGive.org resources focused on topics such as collaborative goal setting, co-planning and teaching, and supporting all of the students in your room. Together we’ll address questions including: What are our separate and shared goals in the classroom? What collaboration skills and techniques do we want to model for students? How can we collaborate to create inclusive and supportive spaces for all? When you leave the workshop, you’ll be equipped with additional tools and conversations to deepen your partnerships, arts residencies, and support inclusive instruction.
Teach with GIVE: An Intersectional Approach to Supporting Students in the Arts – for Paraprofessionals
Explore strategies and enhance how we respond to student behavior in arts experiences. When you leave the workshop, you’ll be equipped with tools, resources, and adaptive materials that can be utilized to empower students to feel seen, heard, and participate in a supportive environment from designing a presentation in science class to singing in choir. Let’s activate Teach with GIVE to imagine—and build—an even more inclusive, more vibrant future for education.
FY 22:
Professional development pilot workshops for DOE Arts Specialists in these three key GIVE content areas:
- Planning an Inclusive Lesson
- Intersectional Approach to Classroom Behavior and Culture; and
- Collaborative Goal Setting, Reflection, and Adjustments
To add your name to our GIVE DOE Workshop email list click here.
“Everyone needs to have this resource and should be incorporating these resources/ approaches into their teaching no matter what environment they are in. It will help us all become better teachers and best serve any student!”
– Pre-K and Elementary Music Teacher, Brooklyn
Conferences
- Cultivating Inclusivity in Theatre Education. (September 2023). 2023 Educational Theatre Conference: The Power of YOU, St. Pete Beach, U.S.A.
- From Casting to Curtain: Centering Inclusion Throughout the Theatre Education Experience. (September 2023). 2023 Educational Theatre Conference: The Power of YOU, St. Pete Beach, U.S.A
- Teach with GIVE. (May 2023). NYCDOE Arts and Cultural Education Services (ACES), New York City, U.S.A
- Teach with GIVE: Tips, Tools, and Strategies for Inclusive Educational Theatre. (April 2023). NYU Educational Theatre Forum 2023: Collective Visioning, New York City, U.S.A.
- Teach with GIVE: A Toolbox for Transforming Challenges into Possibilities in Inclusive Arts Education. (April 2023). ABLE Assembly Conference, Boston, U.S.A.
- We’re Better Together: Paradigm Shifts in Inclusive Arts Education in NYC and Beyond. (April 2023). Face to Face, NYC Arts in Education Roundtable, New York City, U.S.A.
- Explore resources designed to support the creation of Liberated Learning Environments in the classroom. (March 2023). Whole Girl National Conference, New York City, U.S.A.
- Can You “GIVE” Me a Hand? Creative Approaches to Micro- and Macro-Collaborations for Inclusive Arts Education. (October 2022). Arts for All Abilities, New York City, U.S.A.
- Art As A Catalyst For Change. (September, 2022). The Sixth International Teaching Artists Conference (ITAC6), Oslo, Norway.
- Teach with GIVE. (May 2022). NYCDOE Arts and Cultural Education Services (ACES), New York City, U.S.A
- Bridge, Build, Belong. (May, 2022). The NYC Museum Educators Roundtable 2022 Conference, New York City, U.S.A.
- Inclusive Practices & Developing Real-Time Resources for Teaching Accessible Arts. (November, 2020). Grantmakers in the Arts, New York City, U.S.A.
- The GIVE Day of Learning. (November, 2021). NYC Museum Educators Roundtable Conference, New York City, U.S.A
- GIVE: Growing Inclusivity for Vibrant Engagement. Defining a Partnership. (November, 2019). Arts for All Abilities, New York City, U.S.A
- GIVE: Growing Inclusivity for Vibrant Engagement. (April, 2019). Face to Face, NYC Arts in Education Roundtable, New York City, U.S.A.
Research & Program Evaluation
Preliminary GIVE research, conducted in Spring 2021 by WolfBrown, showed that Teaching Artists who participated in training to use the GIVE resources improved in creating a welcoming and inclusive classroom more substantially than a control group of Teaching Artists working in similar environments. There is also evidence that Teaching Artists who engaged with the GIVE materials taught students to use digital tools and platforms more effectively than their untrained peers. For more information about our preliminary research, visit the About GIVE page.
