Professional Development Workshops

Part 1: Friday, March 6th 2020 From 12:00pm to 2:30pm  

Part 2: Friday, March 13th, 2020 From 12:00pm to 2:30pm

“The Art of Recycling: Bring on the Animal Kingdom”

An OSSE Certified Professional Development Workshop for Early Childhood Educators

Location: Project Create Studios 2208 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave SE Washington, DC 20020

What do a paper tiger, a cardboard fish, and an egg carton turtle have in common?  They are all ways to assess student’s social-emotional and cognitive development!  During this next installment in our Naptime U.™ professional development series, Artist Karen O. Brown will explore how visual arts can enhance your early childhood classroom.  In this 2-part workshop, we’ll deepen your students understanding of animals and the Earth by using everyday recyclable materials to create animals and their habitats. 

Of course this would not be an Inner City-Inner Child workshop if we weren’t up and moving while we learn, so please be sure to wear comfortable clothes and shoes.  Participants are also asked to bring at least 3 of the following items:

•         cereal, cookie, cracker, or tea boxes,

•         flat cardboard

•         cardboard boxes

•         egg cartons

FREE admission!  Lunch will be provided!

This two-part workshop will continue on Friday, March 13th.  Receive 4 OSSE clock hours for attending both part 1 and part 2.

Dates and Times:

Part 1: Friday, March 6th 2020 From 12:00pm to 2:30pm

Part 2: Friday, March 13th, 2020 From 12:00pm to 2:30pm

Karen O. Brown is a professional artist and experienced arts educator. She conducts workshops and residencies for organizations such as The Kennedy Center, Class Acts Arts, Washington Performing Arts, the Smithsonian museums, and numerous public libraries. Her international travels in Asia, Europe, and Central and South America inform and enrich her teaching residencies, workshops, and public art projects. Karen’s graduate work is in textiles, ceramics, sculpture, 3-D and surface design, bookmaking, and photography. She specializes in differentiated instruction to meet the needs of children with varied learning styles.

Part 1: Thursday, January 9th, 2020, and Part 2: Thursday, January 16th, 2020

“Preventing the Preschool to Prison Pipeline with Arts Integration”

With Presenter: Dr. Bweikia Steen

Location: Project Create Studios 2208 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave SE Washington, DC 20020

In this 2- part, interactive workshop, participants will reflect upon and discuss the causes of the preschool to prison pipeline and will analyze the role arts integration can play in the early childhood curriculum to counter the achievement gap among children of color.  Dr. Bwekia Steen, Professor of Early Childhood at George Mason University, joins Inner City - Inner Child, to discuss how arts can help promote social emotional and academic achievement for children of poverty.  Participants will gain developmentally appropriate strategies they will be able to use immediately in their classroom.  

The learning objectives are: 

1. Participants will examine and discuss related research about the preschool to prison pipeline 

1. Participants will analyze the role arts integration plays in helping to narrow the academic achievement gap and promote social, emotional development.  

1. Participants will obtain relevant strategies about ways to integrate the arts into the early childhood curriculum.   

FREE admission!  Lunch will be provided!

This two-part workshop will continue on Thursday, January 16th, 2019.  Receive 4 OSSE clock hours for attending both part 1 and part 2. 

Dates and Times:

Part 1: Thursday January 9th, 2020, 12:00pm – 2:30pm

Part 2: Thursday January 16th, 2020, 12:00pm – 2:30pm

Bweikia Steen is an Associate Professor of Education at George Mason University.  She has taught at Trinity Washington University as an Associate professor and as the director of the early childhood programs, and at NYU in the early childhood program. Dr. Steen received her doctorate from the University of San Francisco in International and Multicultural education. Her research deals with promoting social-emotional and academic excellence among children of color and children of poverty during the early years. 

Part 1: Thursday, November 7th, 2019, and Part 2: Thursday, November 14th, 2019

“Dancing with Babies: Using Sound, Movement, and Rhythm to Nurture Cognitive and Social-Emotional Development in Infants & Toddlers”

With Presenter: Dr. Jessica Phillips-Silver

Location: Project Create Studios 2208 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave SE Washington, DC 20020

The time from birth to 2-years-old is a crucial period to establish foundations that will shape children for the rest of their lives. In this two- part professional development series, Dr. Jessica Phillips Silver joins ICIC in an innovative, unique, research-based program that weaves the arts, brain science and human connection to produce positive developmental outcomes for infants and toddlers.

In this interactive workshop participants will learn how Sound, Movement & Rhythm nurture infants optimal brain development and provide the basis for lifelong learning by building a foundation for bonding, cooperation and empathy.

PART I: Learn about the importance of and the brain science behind integrating sound, rhythm and movement into your infant classrooms. Practice music and movement-based strategies you can try in your classroom the next day.

PART II: After trying the technique in your classroom, comeback for further coaching, problem- solving and practice.

FREE admission!  Lunch will be provided!  Receive books to take back to your classroom! 

This two-part workshop will continue on Thursday, November 14th, 2019.  Receive 4 OSSE clock hours for attending both part 1 and part 2. 

Dates and Times:

Part 1: Thursday November 7th, 2019, 12:00pm – 2:30pm

Part 2: Thursday November 14th, 2019, 12:00pm – 2:30pm

Jessica Phillips-Silver, Ph.D., is a researcher in the Department of Neuroscience at Georgetown University Medical Center and served as adjunct professor in the Faculty of Music, where she developed Georgetown's first course on Music and the Brain. Jessica is also the founder of the company Growing Brains®: A brain-based approach to raising children and communities. The mission of Growing Brains is to empower families and institutions with a model for raising children and educating communities, integrating evidence from brain science with core values from the arts, medicine and advocacy for social justice. 

Jessica earned a Bachelor of Humanities and Arts in Cognitive Psychology and Music from Carnegie Mellon University, a Ph.D. in auditory development and music perception at McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind in Ontario, and she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the International Laboratory of Brain, Music and Sound in Montreal.

Jessica's original research examines how 'feeling the beat' in music is a multisensory experience from infancy through adulthood, and she documented the first case of the musical disorder 'beat deafness'. She currently studies the musical processing and cortical plasticity in blindness, and the development of musical rhythm and executive functions in Deaf and hearing children. Jessica’s work has been featured in USA Today, Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Men’s Health, the Atlantic, NPR and The Discovery Channel, and in popular books including The Body has a Mind of Its Own, and Welcome to Your Child’s Brain.