Joan Oates Institute

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2026 Summer Course

Monday, June 8–Friday, June 12, 2026

8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

This five-day course will be held in-person at the University of Richmond. Breakfast, lunch, and snacks are provided each day.

It's just good teaching

The Joan Oates Institute (JOI) trains PK-12 educators and community experts to engage and empower all students through creative and experiential methods, reflection, and collaboration.

Participants will experience hands-on workshops that integrate community and culture into your instructional practice through the arts and technology.

Who should attend?

PK-12 Educators

Current teachers, administrators, specialists, coordinators, and coaches can register for the course for graduate credit at our discounted PD rate, or as non-credit professional learning. Current degree-seeking students may enroll as an elective.

Community Artists and Experts

Individual teaching artists, arts and cultural staff, informal educators, community professionals, and subject matter experts should register for Professional Learning. Please inquire if you are interested in graduate credit or pursuing a degree.

Transformative Professional Development

This institute will transform how you teach. Educators will learn from and with regional and national-level artists and experts this summer, with time built in to each day for collaborative planning best practices.

The driving question of our training is, “How do we learn?” This informs the thinking tools we provide so that you can connect curricular content to real-world experiences for students, practicing place-based education and supporting social emotional learning.

Powerful Outcomes

You will discover a teaching and learning model designed to engage your students in deep and culturally responsive learning, both inside and outside of the school setting. View the modules in the drop down menus below for descriptions of each workshop and instructor.

In this course, you will learn how to:

  • engage and empower students by connecting their backgrounds and interests to community expertise and resources
  • integrate diverse cultures to help students contextualize curriculum in the real world
  • explore big ideas through lenses of multiple disciplines in an interactive, hands-on setting
  • provide a range of creative mediums to assess comprehension in authentic and innovative ways
  • develop interdisciplinary lessons and unit plans to use in your teaching
The course may be taken for up to 50 hours of professional development, or as a graduate credit course eligible for tuition reimbursement by many school divisions.

Course Details

Expand All

  • Objectives
    • Understand the philosophy, techniques, and impacts of a multimodal, interdisciplinary approach to teaching
    • Practice inquiry-based educational methods that incorporate arts, technology, culture, and community, and examine how they influence academic and social-emotional outcomes
    • Learn how to view and apply the arts to curricular instruction and assessment with students

  • Outcomes

    Participants will create an educational plan to integrate the arts into their local school curriculum, learn about arts integration resources, and join a network of professional colleagues interested in integrating creativity and sparking curiosity in classrooms. The innovative lessons and unit plans developed in this course can become the basis of a grant proposal, PBL, or IB project.

  • 2026 Modules

    Day 1: Integrated Learning 101

    • Foundations of Integrated Learning: Partners in the Arts Director Rob McAdams (ft. Dr. Lisa Donovan) will kick off the week modeling how we learn, how to build a learning community based on equity, trust, and candor, and how to objectively assess curricular content through creative collection strategies.
    • Sketchbooks: Make it your own and discover prompts and protocols for reflection.
    • Creativity is a Practice: Artist, author, and activist Noah Scalin will be the guide on an exploration of making things that activate your creativity and strengthen it like a muscle.

    Day 2: Integrating Culture

    • Teacher as B-person (Breakin’): B-Boy Rave “Seven” Williams teaches the fundamentals of breakdance culture, techniques, and house dance, and how to connect movement to your content area.
    • Telling Stories with Video: Briget Ganske, artist and producer, uses writing, photography, video, and sound tell help educators and students tell their stories through moving and still images while developing media literacy skills.

    Day 3: Exploring and Capturing Community Stories

    • Art as a Vehicle for Social Change: Mark Strandquist, multi-media artist and community organizer, will showcase a spectrum of collaborative projects, dive deep into the processes of his work, and provide a creative toolbox for teachers. This session will take place onsite in Mark’s exhibition at 1708 Gallery.
    • River City Project: Rob Andrejewski and Daniel Hart from UR Sustainability will share the River City Project and give an overview of experiential practices through the lens of sustainability while authentically connecting students to the environment.
    • Slow Journalism: Former National Geographic editor and reporter Don Belt shares his curriculum based on the Out of Eden Walk and will guide participants through close observation, mapping, photo/video basics, and interviewing processes.
    • Walk About: Practice Slow Journalism with your sketchbook in hand to capture close observations with open eyes, ears, and bodies.
    • Learning With ArcGIS Storymaps: Educators will be introduced to how we use the StoryMap data visualization tool for direct instruction, virtual field trips, independent learning, and e-portfolios.

    Day 4: Making the Connections

    • Tastes Like Music: Studio artist Nelly Kate Anderson guides participants in combining spatial audio and text to create a series of sensory translations by treating sound objects like landmarks through field recordings and audio arrangements. Explore and connect your senses by describing sonic and visual information in terms of flavors, aromas, and tactile sensations.
    • Teacher as Curator: Dr. Lisa Donovan brings her theater and assessment work together to build teacher efficacy in ongoing assessments of creative performance tasks.

    Day 5: Empower, Reflect, Share and Celebrate

    • Harnessing Spoken Word: Paula Gillian-Akinwole will harness spoken word with a process of performance and experimentation with the different ways performed poetry can engage, empower, and amplify student voice.
    • Curriculum Slam: Dr. Lisa Donovan leads a fast-paced sharing of your ideas on how to integrate what has been done during the week into your specific instructional practice, and connecting creative community expertise to your classrooms during the school year.