Teaching Artists: Visual Art, Design, Music, Music production, Theater, Poetry, Dance, Entrepre

The Organization

Dream Yard Vision:

Building Artists
- Building Community
- Building Dreams
- To change the world.

Job Description

Dream Yard is currently accepting applications for Teaching Artists in Visual Art, Design, Music, Music production, Theater, Poetry, Dance, Entrepreneurship, Career Readiness, and more for the 2023-24 school year. We are looking for passionate, experienced candidates with a strong practice in teaching for social justice and racial equity for in-school, after-school, and summer residency opportunities at our Bronx partner schools and the Dream Yard Art Center.

TAs must have demonstrated previous experience teaching in their discipline, in NYC public school settings or youth-centered spaces.

About Dream Yard

Dream Yard Project is committed to being an anti-racist organization. We lead with race because we operate in a country founded on the genocide of Indigenous people, the enslavement of African people, and the oppression of countless others. We acknowledge the role this history plays in perpetuating inequity and dominant white culture. We are intentionally building a path toward racial equity by:

• Challenging oppression and its intersections
• Using art and education as a platform to offer a hopeful vision of the future
• Identifying and uplifting the power and cultural assets that exist within our community of educators, artists, dreamers, young people and life-long learners
• Encouraging the principles of justice, unity, equity, creativity, and joy
• Transforming policies, procedures, practices, and programs (for example: striving for transparency and equity in pay and compensation structures regardless of race, culture, gender, ethnicity, creed, etc)
• Understanding our staff, community members and partners are at different levels on the anti-racist continuum and embracing that we all have a place in this work

As a Dream Yard employee, we invite you to join us on this journey.

Teaching Artist Position

Dream Yard’s Teaching Artists are a powerful force in moving our educational system towards racial equity. Dream Yard Teaching Artists are highly skilled artists and educators, committed to creating equitable learning spaces through collaborative teaching practices and social justice pedagogy. They report directly to the Program Director and are supported by Dream Yard Department Heads and Program Coordinators.

Qualifications

• Expertise in an arts discipline exhibited through an educational degree and/or professional accomplishment (published writing, exhibited artwork, performance experience etc.).
• Minimum two years full-time (or the equivalent, e.g. 4 years part-time) teaching an arts discipline in a school and/or community-based setting. Teaching experience in NYC public schools preferred.
• Bachelor's degree and/or Masters degree in arts discipline or related area.
• Department of Education fingerprinting (PETS) will be required (cost partially covered by Dream Yard).

Responsibilities

Instruction:

• Design and facilitate robust project-based learning through a social justice lens.
• Residencies can include up to 9 hours of weekly planning meetings (with classroom teachers for In School residencies);
• Providing instruction in the arts (development of skills in arts disciplines consistent with NYC Blueprint) and through the arts (the achievement of academic goals as outlined in a school’s curriculum) by:
• Teaching and planning for 2-8 in-schools per week and/or possibly as many as 4 after schools per week;
• Developing long-term project-based unit designs (in collaboration with classroom teachers for In School residencies)
• Assessing participant learning based on learning goals and residency objectives;
• Organizing at least 2 sharings of student work.

For In-School Residencies:

• Working in close collaboration with classroom teacher partners to:
• Plan lessons and projects during one in-person 45-minute planning session per week (and via email and phone as well, when necessary);
• Share skills with the teacher to build capacity for arts instruction at the school;
• Co-teach lessons in which both TA and teacher partner have clear roles and responsibilities for generating student learning;
• Coordinate at least one trip to an NYC…