Events
Saturday, November 5 , 12:00 noon
The Southern Nevada Wolf Trap Family Performance
Drumming and moving to the beat of the book Zero by Kathryn Otoshi
For parents and their preschoolers ages 3-5, family-friendly integrated art performance.
Vegas Valley Book Festival
Historic Fifth Street School
401 S. Fourth Street, Las Vegas, NV 89101
In partnership with the Vegas Valley Book Festival, Award-winning children’s book author and illustrator visits with students from West Prepatory Institute, Robert E. Lake Elementary, Gwendolyn Wooley Elementary, and William E. Ferron Elementary, demonstrating her art and delivering her message against bullying.
Kathryn Otoshi is a children’s book author and illustrator living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Prior to this, Otoshi worked at Disney’s ImageMovers Digital (Christmas Carol) as well as George Lucas’s Industrial Light & Magic (Star Wars) as the Graphic Design and Multimedia Art Director.
Otoshi’s first book as author and illustrator was “What Emily Saw”, a Borders Original New Voice Nominee. This was followed by “Simon & the Sock Monster”, short listed as a USA Book News Honoree, and “The Saddest Little Robot” (2004), a BookSense Pick. She teamed up with author Liz Hockinson and created the illustrations for “Marcello the Movie Mouse”(2005). Marcello garnered the Writer’s Digest Award for Best Children’s Book, the DIY Best Children’s Book, the Hollywood Book Festival Award, and the Eric Hoffer Notable Award.
Her book “One”, winner of 15 awards, including the E.B. White Read Aloud Honor Book and the Teacher’s Choice Award, is an anti-bullying which book introducing colors, numbers, and counting while playing on larger themes of acceptance, tolerance, and the power of one voice. Her upcoming book, “Zero”, is about finding value in ourselves and in others.
Visit, www.vegasvalleybookfestival.org, to learn more about the Vegas Valley Book Festival.
Workshops
The 2011-12 school year is off to a great start for Education and Outreach. The fall calendar has been filled with professional development workshops and classroom residency sessions.
“Standing in a Character’s Shoes: Deeper Meaning Thorough Monologues”
Award winning playwright and Kennedy Center Teaching Artist Mary Hall Surface presented her arts integration workshop – “Standing in a Character’s Shoes: Deeper Meaning Thorough Monologues”.
Mary Hall Surface is an internationally recognized, award-winning playwright and director who specializes in theater for youth and family audiences. Her plays have been produced at major professional theaters, museums and universities throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, Taiwan and Canada, including fifteen productions with the Kennedy Center’s Theater for Young Audiences and the National Symphony Orchestra. She has been nominated for 9 Helen Hayes Awards, Washington, DC’s professional theater awards, receiving the 2002 Award of Outstanding Direction of a musical, and has published 12 plays, four cast albums and 2 books of scenes and monologues for middle school actors.
Her stay included a three-hour professional development workshop for K-5 classroom teachers followed by classroom residencies demonstrating art strategies at Von Tobel Middle School, West Prep – Arts and Humanities Academy and K.O. Knudson Middle School. Her visit is in partnership through the School-Community Partnership Program, with space provided by Vegas PBS.
**This project is funded, in part, by a grant from the Nevada Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency
“The Power of Chant: Building Oral Fluency and Reading Comprehension, for Early Childhood Educators”
Arizona Master Wolf Trap Artist and Kennedy Center Teaching Artist Cynthia Elek presented her workshop “The Power of Chant: Building Oral Fluency and Reading Comprehension, for Early Childhood Educators”.
Cynthia Elek lives in Phoenix, Arizona, where she conducts grade K-5 residencies through the Arizona Commission on the Arts as a Music/Education Artist. She leads Pre-K residencies as a Master Teaching Artist for the Wolf Trap Institute, with a primary focus in music and a secondary focus in drama. She holds a Master’s of Music in Opera Performance from the University of Maryland’s Opera Center and a BA in Art History from Oberlin College, where she also studied voice and piano in the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
Ms. Elek visits includes three-day classroom residencies in Title 1 preschool classrooms at Jack Dailey Elementary and Ruby Thomas Elementary. Her three-hour workshop was presented twice for more than 50 pre-school teachers.
***These workshops were presented in partnership United Way Southern Nevada, Success By 6® with funding from Citi Nevada