Teaching our students about wellness and developing their social and emotional needs is becoming more and more necessary. The ARTS can be an integral part of this learning for them. During our time, we will explore SEAL strategies and techniques that can be integrated into what we do with students to promote their well-being and build their social-emotional competencies.

As always, this PD is Teacher-Centered, meaning we will experience these art forms for ourselves and how they can develop our own Social-Emotional Competencies. After all, our motto remains that we need to GET Inspired in order to BE Inspiring!

Workshops & Instructors

Overview

Each year, other teachers and artists join Elizabeth to bring amazing SEAL workshops starting on Friday evening.  Later that night, you are invited to enjoy the company of others with a glass of wine and take advantage of the retreat center’s hot tub and sauna.  And if you want even MORE SEAL fun, be sure to join us for a “Night Owl” workshop.

Dinner is included on Friday evening and breakfast and lunch are prepared for us on Saturday.  Weather permitting we will have a special outdoor drumming circle.

Saturday will be filled with great SEAL experiences that you will want to bring back to your school, classroom or office.  Not to mention, you will get so much out of this for yourself!

We will end our time together as we reflect on the SEAL activities that developed both arts skills and social-emotional competencies. Discussions will be had about how this all plays out in our schools and classrooms: how our experiences with Teacher-Centered PD will feed what we do with our own students.

Workshops

I Am – Using the books by Susan Verde, illustrated by Peter Reynolds, retreaters will explore their emotions and talents through artistic expression.  Activities will include the integration of drama, movement and sound.  We will end our time creating collaborative pieces.

“Night Owl” Workshop – Want more fun?  Late at night, we will share some materials and create together.

Morning Aroma-Yoga – Start the next day with Yoga with Essential Oils, a 60 minute class that begins and ends in Savasana.  We will use 3 different oils in the class that will be optional to put on, and will go through a yoga flow that will activate the energy in the body and allow you to truly connect your breath to your body and mind.

Exploration of Color and Emotion –  After a color-inspired warm-up, we will look at student literature that ties feelings in with color and integrates art vocabulary including primary, secondary, warm/cold colors, tints and shades.  Retreaters will then explore colors matched with emotions through a mini art-making experience inspired by Kandinsky’s Color Study: Squares with Concentric Circles.

Emo Portraits with Color – Starting with copies of their own photo, retreaters will create variations of themselves using color and patterns.  Four modified photos will be put together in the loose style of Andy Worhol. Reflections and artist statements will finish off the experience.

Artist Statement: “With this, I explored various emotions and states that I find myself. Working through this process, I discovered that I gain an odd sense of balance: overwhelm with creativity and grief with health. Life’s journey continues…”

Instructors

Elizabeth Peterson, C.A.G.S. (Arts, Leadership and Learning) arts integration specialist, elementary teacher and founder of The Inspired Classroom has been designing Teacher-Centered PD for years.  Her philosophy is steeped in the idea that teachers need to be inspired in order to be inspiring to their students.  She will lead the retreat from the beginning to the end, intertwining the ideas of wellness and the social-emotional competencies into all the SEAL activities.

Renee Schneider  has a BFA in Graphic Design, and a Master’s of Education in Creative Art & Learning. She worked as a graphic artist and then as a kindergarten teacher for several years incorporating her belief in tapping into a child’s creativity through integration of the arts in the classroom. Now, combining her love of art, and teaching, she owns and operates Colorful Kids, providing private art lessons to children while she continues to develop her own art. Her latest endeavors include writing and illustrating Swing Time, her first published children’s book.

Tuesday Orluk, is a certified Aromatherapist with the American Naturopathic Medical Board holding a certification in Aromatherapy, 200-hour Yoga teacher Training, Reiki Teacher Master and Shamanism.  She specializes in helping people who feel overwhelmed, unbalanced, exhausted and health depleted to regain control of their health and life.  Tuesday believes that the bottom line is that your body is a complex operating system and that an individualized, personal approach to bring all its parts into balance will offer the greatest opportunity for healing and happiness.