FAQs

• What is a teaching artist?
  Answer:

  Teaching artists are individual practicing artists who specialize in teaching both in the classroom and in the community. The passion and commitment, experience, knowledge and skills that teaching artists bring to the classroom and to the community help to engage students (of all ages) in authentic arts and arts integrated learning, advance creative and critical thinking; and help classroom teachers discover new ways to energize their instructional practice. 

  For the purpose of K-12 schools and the Arts Learning grant program – teaching artists are juried into one or both of the following categories:  

  • Connecting/Correlating
    An individual artist who provides opportunities that enhance learning through arts experiences and/or link ideas between disciplines. Artists in this category may have a well-tuned program(s) that can be provided repeatedly, with or without minor adjustments, to meet a presenter’s needs in a variety of settings.  
    
    
  • Integrating
    An individual artist who provides sequential arts learning experiences that weave ideas and concepts between and among arts and non-arts disciplines. Artists in this category work interdependently with the presenter to conduct, through a collaborative, in-depth planning and implementation process. They are familiar with the National Core Arts Standards adopted by the Connecticut State Department of Education and the Common Core State Standards and will be experienced in setting goals and assessing progress.
      
  • Access
    Artists in this category provide experiences such as classroom visits, performance(s), “informance(s),” and/or lecture demonstrations that expose students to the Arts.All artists in COA’s Directory may provide an Access experience and may be engaged to work in after school, summer, or community settings. The categories above are specific to K-12 school day curriculum.
• Are all teaching artists certified teachers?
  Answer: While Directory teaching artists are teaching partners, there is no requirement for teaching artists to be certified teachers. 
• How do I find, learn more about, and engage a Directory Teaching artist?
  Answer:

  The Directory provides one page for each artist that may include a photo, contact info, main arts discipline type, short description of artist’s offerings, general requirements, appropriate audience, fee structure, work sample, links to social media and web sites, etc. What is included depends on how much information the artist has provided.

  You may access the Directory in several ways:

  1. Teaching Artists listed Alphabetically - coming soon.  
     
     
  2. Teaching Artist by Discipline
     If you know the type of artist you’d like to hire but don’t know their name or want to check out offerings you can select one of the discipline categories below.

  • Dance
  • Literary Arts (includes literature, writing and poetry)
  • Music
  • Theatre (includes storytelling, puppetry and circus arts)
  • Visual Arts 

  For more information, contact Bonnie Koba at bonnie.koba@ct.gov.