August 26, 2008                                                                                                                                                     

CONTACTS:                                                                                                                                                             

Benjii Bittle, Deputy Executive Director – 253.591.5891 – bbittle@broadwaycenter.org

Lucas Smiraldo, Associate Director of Education and Community Outreach – 253.591.5341– lsmiraldo@broadwaycenter.org

Broadway Center Awarded

Prestigious Grant to Support Teacher Training

Tacoma, WA - The Broadway Center for the Performing Arts has been awarded a prestigious national grant to support its teacher training programs. 

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the nation’s performing arts center in Washington D.C., awarded $9,500 to recognize the Broadway Center’s leadership in providing local teachers with the opportunity to learn how to integrate the arts into their classrooms through the Broadway Center Graduate Series programs.

The Broadway Center’s award is the only one of its kind in the Northwest this year.

The Broadway Center Graduate Series responds directly to the need expressed by teachers in the South Puget Sound region for advanced training in integrating the arts into curriculum. The Graduate Series connects teachers to outstanding teaching artists, professional performances, and each other through a series of intensives in subject areas including dance, theater, and spoken word.

"We must continue to support classroom teachers and arts specialists in meaningful staff development sessions so we may close the achievement gap, advance literacy, and motivate students. As a former principal, I know the arts will contribute significantly in all subject areas," said Michael Sandner, Director of Arts Education for the Bethel School District. "The Graduate Series is a rich resource for our teachers to help them continue to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to help them exemplify what a professional educator must aspire to become as our society moves into the twenty-first century."

This year, the Theatre Series focuses on two performances: Tom Robbins’ rollicking counterculture epic Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (October 24) and August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, the second staged reading of a ten-play cycle of Wilson’s work that the Broadway Center will present in conjunction with partners. The Dance Series includes Color Fast: Dancing Outside the Lines (January 24), a performance featuring local culturally diverse choreographers, and Portland-based aerial dance troupe Do Jump! (May 8). The Spoken Word Series will include Rose Cano: Songs and Stories from Latin America (April 3) as well as Spoken Word and Jazz with Radical Jazz Uprising (April 4).

The Kennedy Center joins a long list of individual, foundation, and corporate sponsors for the Broadway Center’s Education Program. Local support, especially from teacher training program co-sponsor Rainier Pacific Bank, was critical to leveraging federal dollars, according to Benjii Bittle, the Broadway Center’s Deputy Executive Director.

“The Broadway Center is doing groundbreaking arts in education work, and it’s wonderful to see new dollars flow into the community to recognize that,” Bittle said. “We are grateful to the Kennedy Center for its seal of approval. It’s an important reminder to all of us that there is work of national significance happening here in Tacoma, and that we need to invest in these programs.”

For more information about the Broadway Center’s Graduate and teacher training programs, contact the Education Department at education@broadwaycenter.org or 253.591.5341. To add your name or your company’s to the growing list of Broadway Center supporters, contact Benjii Bittle at bbittle@broadwaycenter.org or 253.591.5891.

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