Educator Professional Development

The Armory Center for the Arts builds on the power of art to transform lives and communities through creating, teaching, and presenting the arts. At the core of the Armory’s work is a deep commitment to social justice through arts education. A key goal of the Armory’s mission is to provide engaging, high-quality art classes and art experiences in the region’s lowest income neighborhoods in order to advance cultural equity. Over 80% of programming serves socioeconomically disadvantaged youth and families.

Beth Sussman is a Juilliard-trained pianist and Master Teaching Artist whose love of music has taken her from concert stages throughout Europe and North America to classrooms and schools across Southern California. She has worked with leading arts organizations including The Los Angeles Music Center, The Kennedy Center, and Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

The award-winning CalArts Community Arts Partnership (CAP), a co-curricular program of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), offers free, after-school and school-based arts programs for youth ages 6-18 in every discipline taught at CalArts. Programs are offered at public schools, community centers and social service agencies across Los Angeles County. With classes led by a teaching corps of accomplished CalArts faculty, alumni and student instructors, CAP participants learn to create original works of art and to experiment with prevailing conventions of artistic expression.

Create Now is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization that gives youth opportunities to find their voices through arts mentoring and education. We especially serve children ages 2-21 who have been abused, neglected, homeless, domestic violence victims, incarcerated, etc. by matching them with artists, writers, musicians, actors, dancers and others, including mentors who teach life skills. Create Now provides training and materials to implement therapeutic programs in music, writing, visual arts, performing arts, fashion and digital media at 100+ partner agencies, like shelters and group homes.

Dramatic Results is an award-winning nonprofit that makes learning real by engaging educators and learners through collaborative hands-on projects that impact the practice of education. Since 1992, the agency has delivered educational programming to historically excluded students using art, design, and culture as an entryway into STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) subjects. Over 32 years, the agency has served 35,000 students and empowered more than 450 classroom teachers.

As the nation's longest-running theatre of color and largest producer of Asian Pacific American (APA) creative work, EWP is committed to using the unique platform of theatre to tell multifaceted stories of the APA experience and develop new artists. The LA Times has described EWP as a model for organizations that generate support from a community, instead of relying on the success of a particular show.

Grand Vision Foundation (GVF) is a dynamic nonprofit arts organization dedicated to enriching San Pedro, the Los Angeles Harbor Area, and surrounding communities through live music, music education, and historic preservation. GVF drives community connections through two signature programs:

Inner-City Arts' mission is to engage young people in the creative process in order to shape a society of creative, confident and collaborative individuals. We provide arts classes and workshops for school-aged children, classroom teachers and school administrators. When budget cuts eliminated arts instruction from Los Angeles public schools in the late 1970s, it was up to local communities to fill the gap.

Johanna Smith is a Professor of Puppetry, Theatre Education, and Entrepreneurship at California State University, San Bernardino and the author of the award winning arts education text, Puppetry in Theatre and Arts Education: Head, Hands, and Heart (Methuen Drama). She has directed puppet shows that have taken her and her college students around the world, but she is just as happy playing with puppets in a room full of preschoolers. She believes in the power of laughter and creative re-use to inspire a love of learning.