Partnerships
Working to create long-term partnerships with schools, HSDC’s Education & Community Programs annually collaborates with more than 30 schools and community organizations. Supported by our research initiatives, these distinctive programs are a living laboratory for dance education, constantly changing and adapting as we learn together with our partner schools.
Through our signature programs, Movement As Partnership (MAP) and Focus Schools Initiative (FSI), HSDC brings together all aspects of our programming. Each school partner receives:
- A unique combination of sequential and integrated dance instruction.
- Extensive professional development opportunities for teachers, through classroom residency participation and workshops led by arts education specialists, HSDC staff and veteran classroom teachers.
- Teaching Artist training, including a two-year, paid, teaching artist assistantship program to assist new graduates with an interest in teaching in making the transition to a career.
- Dance Informances, which give students a chance to learn directly from Hubbard Street dancers during interactive performances in their schools and at the Harris Theater for Music & Dance.
- Family Workshops, which allow parents and children to create dance together. By engaging parents in the learning strategies implemented during our residencies, we seek to encourage them to take an active role in their child’s learning, fostering an environment of exploration and creation both in and out of school.
With great thanks to our funding partners, both MAP and FSI are offered at very low cost, through a competitive grant process, to our partner schools.
RELATED MATERIALS
The Movement As Partnership (MAP) Program is the signature initiative of HSDC education programming. P.C.P.R. (Prepare, Create, Perform and Respond) is at the core of the MAP program, from management and school-level planning, to teacher and artist professional development, to student curriculum. The MAP program provides teaching artists and educators the opportunity to plan, teach and learn together to create exciting integrated curriculum that challenges students and takes learning to new levels. The MAP program works with 32 classrooms in seven CPS elementary schools and three Oak Park elementary Schools.
RESEARCH:
HSDC has seen a clear pattern of growth in the partnerships it has with its MAP schools.
Click here to visit our Research page and read Dr. Louanne Smolin's report on the results seen during the 2007-2010 school years.
The Focus Schools Initiative (FSI) is an intense program that allows select K-8 schools in low-income neighborhoods to craft multi-year dance programs, taking the partnership from a short-term residency model to one where HSDC is considered part of each school’s faculty. This innovative extended partnership program, unique to HSDC, is a national model for dance education, as well as arts organization and school partnership. HSDC supports this work through extended, weekly professional development for the classroom teachers, monthly professional development for HSDC teaching artists and bi-monthly school planning meetings, as well as annual program evaluations.
MAP (Movement As Partnership)
Chicago Public Schools
Burley Elementary
Clark Elementary
Faraday School
McDade Classical School
Sawyer Elementary
Shoesmith Elementary
Talcott School
Oak Park Public Schools
Beye School
Hatch School
Whittier School
FSI (Focus Schools Initiative)
Greeley Elementary School
Mitchell Elementary School
Additional Partners
New Field School
Drummond Elementary
Lycée Français Chicago
Chicago Children’s Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago Botanic Garden
Center on Halsted
CPS Office of Arts Education