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Creative Classroom Institute

Supporting Tulsa's Teachers

Every summer, ahha Tulsa provides a week-long professional development for Tulsa area educators and administrators that centers around meaningful methods of arts integration that cultivate creative classrooms and school campuses. 

Professional Development for Educators

About the Creative Classroom Institute

The Creative Classroom Institute (CCI) is a week-long professional development institute for Tulsa area educators and administrators that occurs every summer. The institute is free of charge to participants who are able to receive required professional development credits for their participation. The objectives of the CCI are as follows:

  • Participants will expand their view of what creativity is and understand the value of creative thinking.
  • Participants will learn practical and applicable strategies they can use in their classrooms and schools to cultivate student creativity. 
  • Participants will feel confident and inspired to use what they have learned in their classrooms and schools. 
  • Participants will become familiar with ahha Tulsa and see the organization and its staff as a support system and resource for the vital work of arts education. 
Three teachers stand and gesture with their hands like they are wearing glasses.
An aluminum foil sculpture of a person sits on a table.
Guest Facilitators

MINDPOP

MINDPOP is a nonprofit consultancy and incubator out of Austin, Texas, that connects individuals, organizations, and communities with the insights, tools, and resources they need to increase student access to the arts and to the benefits of creative learning. The MINDPOP approach combines empirical research, a strong theoretical base, and decades of practical experience. Using the tools of collective impact, MINDPOP brings equity and access to quality arts education to schools and communities, and builds the instructional skills of teachers to lead creative classrooms. The MINDPOP staff are leaders in designing and implementing creative learning systems nationwide. 

MINDPOP is the lead partner organization of Austin’s Creative Learning Initiative, a collective impact program in Austin Independent School District. The Creative Learning Initiative provides extensive professional development for teachers and builds a strong community network of partner organizations in order to increase creative learning and arts-rich environments for all students.

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What You'll Learn

Institute Content

Throughout the week, CCI participants attend workshop sessions that focus on two content areas: creative teaching strategies and creative classroom conversations.

Creative Teaching Strategies are ways of teaching students that are rooted in artistic methods and processes, are easy to learn and implement, and are flexible across curricula and lesson cycles. The strategies cultivate creative thinking by requiring students to:

  • Generate multiple ideas.
  • Make creative choices.
  • Construct mental and/or physical models.
  • Analyze and synthesize content.
  • Translate symbol systems and transfer understanding.
  • Contribute points of view.

The strategies are divided into categories based on artistic discipline – visual and media arts, music, theatre and drama, and dance and movement. Educators can use the strategies to integrate the arts and artistic thinking into everyday curriculum in meaningful ways to establish routines and rituals, assess learning, and teach procedures and academic subject content. 

Creative classroom conversations also occur throughout the week that encourage teachers and administrators to brainstorm what a creative classroom looks like and what building blocks need to be in place to create an arts-rich school campus. Participants spend time working in-depth to collaboratively create rubrics for an arts-rich school, giving them a solid understanding of why the arts matter for a student’s well-rounded education and fulfilling life. 

A group of teachers talk and gesture around a table with sticky notes.
Two teachers sit at a table talking. On the table are papers, random objects, and a bucket of colored pencils and crayons.

Due to COVID-19, plans for a Summer 2021 Creative Classroom Institute have not yet been made. Check back in April for an update!

Thank you to our partners:

The MINDPOP logo in red and white.
TPS Logo

Contact Us

learn@ahhatulsa.org