Weaving
Your Classroom
Into
Your Community
Project Design Lab
June 22-26
Creative Campus at Goddard / Plainfield, Vermont
Generating Creative Community-Engaged Projects With Your Students
This course explores how a creative community-engaged project can form lasting learning partnerships within your community, strengthen student voice and agency, and build a classroom culture of creativity and collaboration.
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Through hands-on workshops with master teaching artists we will model the building blocks of a creative community-engaged project together.
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You will leave with a community-engaged project plan ready to launch.
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Who Should Attend?
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Middle and high school educators in any content area who want to strengthen their teaching practice in community-engaged learning.
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Individuals or teams
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What To Expect
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CREATE a project plan, ready to implement in your classroom, that guides students from site visits, research, collaborations, and creative engagement – making things they care about – to a culminating event for the whole community.
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FIND INSPIRATION through exploring highly effective and field-tested community-engaged projects.
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EXPLORE how to weave community experts into your curriculum to engage students and enliven their learning.
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STRENGTHEN your confidence in building a creative project that weaves your classroom into your community.
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LEARN alongside expert teaching artists with decades of experience in designing and implementing creative community-engaged projects.
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HAVE FUN – guaranteed!
Workshop Themes
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From Classroom to Community: How creative community-engaged projects help us understand ourselves and strengthen our relationships with each other and our greater community.
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Asset Mapping: Identifying community assets and partners that will enliven your students' learning, and how to make that process fun and effective.
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Keep it Manageable & Meaningful: Nurturing and sustaining a right-sized project so that you, your students, and your community partners feel inspired, supported, and have fun!
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Organizing Strategy: The step-by-step process to organize and manage a multi-site project that bridges your classroom and your community.
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Creative Engagement: How to activate your students' creative capacities to make things they care about and build a classroom culture of creative and deeper learning.
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Make it Dynamic: Build your toolkit of a wide-range of instructional practices to activate student creativity, rich learning opportunities, and meaningful experiences in your community.
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Culminating Events: Shaping exhibitions of learning – the cool things your students make – to strengthen student voice and agency, and celebrate your community.
Faculty
Erin Maile O'Keefe (she/her)
Course Co-Leader
Erin is a educator, trainer, and community artist/activator who develops projects that are community-focused, arts-based, and owe their success to rich and diverse local collaborations.
Amber Paris (she/her)
Course Co-Leader​​​​
Amber is a Southern Vermont-based visual and social practice teaching artist. Discovering and asking the elegant questions in life and then expressing those answers in beautiful ways is central to her practice.
Amber's website​​​
The Details
Weaving Your Classroom Into Your Community
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​June 22-26, 2026 / 9am to 4pm
Tuition
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$2,100 - Three graduate credits
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$1,850 - Certificate of Participation for 40 hours relicensing credits​
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$100 late registration fee after May 1.
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Tuition includes lodging/breakfast (optional), lunch, and snacks. Lodging is available on the Creative Campus in air conditioned private dorm rooms. There is no reduction in tuition if you do not stay overnight.
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Attend Solo or as a Team
Teams are encouraged to design a project together. Teams can be composed of any combination of educators (classroom teachers, councilors, paras, special educators, staff, administrators) and can be from the same grades and content areas, or mixed.
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Teaching Artist Residency - OPTIONAL
Teaching artist residencies are optional. If you would like information on selecting and scheduling a teaching artist to co-lead with you the implementation of your project, please complete the PDL Questions Form and we'll be in touch.​
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Project Snapshots
See examples of previous projects created at the Project Design Lab here.
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Questions?
Complete the PDL Questions Form and we'll be back in touch soon.
We invite you to let us know about specific accommodations you may need to participate in the Project Design Lab when completing your Registration Form, and we will make every effort to honor your request.