Supporting Teachers. Strengthening Students. Building Lasting Impact.
Every day, teachers are asked to do more with fewer resources, less time, and increasingly diverse student needs. Through our Tools for Teachers professional development program, we are proud to stand beside local educators all year long, providing practical, research-based training that transforms classrooms and expands opportunities for students.
LBC’s Tools for Teachers professional development series offers the essential resources local educators need to provide arts education opportunities in their classrooms. Through the support of LBC donors and members, we can make these workshops affordable, removing barriers so that more educators can access this training. We offer scholarships for most workshops and ensure Continuing Education Units (CEUs) are available, giving teachers tangible, professional value for their time and learning.
This spring, our professional development programs illustrate how strategic investments in teachers ripple outward, improving student engagement, academic outcomes, and classroom culture.
Introducing Educators to the Power of Arts Integration
Through our Arts Integration Sampler workshop, educators gain a clear understanding of arts integration – an instructional approach that intentionally combines arts disciplines with core academic subjects, allowing students to construct and demonstrate understanding through creative processes.
Arts integration strengthens critical thinking, deepens conceptual understanding, and improves long-term retention of material. For teachers, it also increases instructional flexibility and confidence, making it easier to reach students with different learning styles.
“Learning through the arts engages students’ whole bodies and multiple senses,” said Ashleigh Worley, Director of Education & Community Engagement. “These approaches help all students, but they are especially powerful for learners who need alternative entry points into academic content.”
In the workshop, educators also learn how arts integration can be applied in the classroom and leave with classroom-ready strategies they can implement the very next day.
Arts Integration Sampler serves as an introduction to deeper subject-area learning, including our advanced series focused on mathematics.
Helping Students Reimagine Math Through the Arts
Many students decide early on that they “aren’t good at math,” a belief that can follow them throughout their education. In partnership with Windsor Unified School District, we are addressing this challenge head-on through a co-created professional development series called Arts Integration: Math and the Arts.
This three-part training invites educators to explore the natural connections between math and dance, theatre, visual art, and music. Teachers learn how movement, rhythm, visual design, and storytelling can make abstract math concepts, such as fractions, geometry, patterns, and ratios, concrete and meaningful.
Research shows that arts-integrated instruction improves student understanding and retention of academic content while increasing motivation and engagement, especially for English learners and students who struggle in traditional instructional settings.
Creating Stronger Classrooms Through Drama-Based Strategies
Another way we support teachers is by addressing one of the most persistent challenges in education: Classroom management. Our Acting Right: Drama as a Classroom Management Strategy workshop uses foundational acting techniques, such as concentration, collaboration, and self-awareness, and creates a structured process that empowers students to be responsible for their own behavior.
Drama-based strategies have been shown to improve student self-regulation, social-emotional skills, and peer collaboration. When students actively practice cooperation and accountability, classrooms become more focused, inclusive, and productive, freeing teachers to spend more time teaching and less time managing behavior.
Support Local Learning
When you support the LBC, you are helping strengthen the entire local learning ecosystem. Teachers gain confidence, creativity, and practical tools that support them throughout the year. Students benefit from more engaging lessons, deeper understanding, and inclusive approaches that honor different learning styles. Schools and communities see lasting impact as effective teaching practices spread from classroom to classroom.
Through Tools for Teachers, offered in partnership with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, your support helps ensure that arts-based learning is not an extra, but an essential part of education.
