An Artist in Residence
Walk into one of our 2nd grade classrooms on a Wednesday morning and you might be surprised to see students developing their miming skills, performing a puppet show or drumming with rhythm sticks. It’s all part of a 10-week Montalvo Teaching Artist program, which partners a local teaching artist with Bay Area classrooms to help integrate students’ learning and curriculum with the arts.
This year, teacher and artist Linda Levine is working with our second grade students, using performance art and puppetry to reinforce and enhance their unit on fairy tales and folklore.
Right off the bat, you will notice Linda’s ‘stage presence.’ She has full command of the classroom and a natural gift for engaging people young and old. Her experience as a teacher, performer, motivational speaker and clown — yes, that’s right, she has performed as “Rainbow the Clown” for over 4 decades — enables her to engage even the most hesitant of young performers, encouraging them with her easy manner and exuberance to participate.
The Montalvo Teaching Artist program partners local teaching artists with Bay Area schools to design and implement multidisciplinary lessons, and to guide teachers in learning new strategies to integrate the Arts into their regular academic curriculum.
Q&A with Linda
How did you become involved with the Montalvo Teaching Artist Program?
A member of the Montalvo Board whose children I taught years ago knew that I was very interested in working with adults and children simultaneously and that I had skills in the circus arts. Charlee called me in to tell me about the program in 2013, and I expressed wanting to not only bring my circus skills to the teachers and students, but to bring my diverse interests and skills in the visual and performing arts to support curriculum integration. Charlee gave me that freedom, and I began working in Campbell and San Jose schools in 2014 and am enjoying it still.
How long will you be working with our kids?
I spend 10 sessions with the students. This is 10 weeks stretched out a bit for school vacations and conflicts.
Tell us a little bit about yourself. For example, where are you from originally?
I’m from Cincinnati, Ohio but have lived in California for most of my adult life.
What is your professional background?
I got my BS degree in Recreational Therapy and my masters in Education. Both helped me to look at an individual’s educational or therapeutic needs, and to design successful programming or curriculum to get [an individual] where they most want to go or learn what they have the potential to learn.
I have been faculty for 30 years at San Jose State University in the Department of Recreation. I also am a public speaker at schools, corporations and in the community. I am a personal coach and run a girls’ creativity and empowerment program. For 5 years, my husband and I led study-abroad programs to Paris on the theme of multiculturalism and in celebration of diversity. Montalvo found me as I am a professional clown and mime. I teach workshops of creativity and craft at birthday parties, at libraries and anywhere a life is being celebrated. I am most known, probably, for teaching courses on creating a meaningful life, in person and online.
Do you have any hidden talents, special hobbies or interests? What do you do for fun?
I love travel, creating art and engaging meaningfully with others. I’m a volunteer grief counselor which is an amazing way to be able to be with children, teens and adults when they are most broken.
What do you love about working with young children?
Everything! I think we all learn best when engaging our many senses and full bodies into the experience. My job at Village is to take the 2nd grade curriculum and core standards and to bring them to life through visual and performing arts. That may mean movement, music, puppetry, mime, collage, games and more. What I love about children is they are willing to go for whatever creative opportunity that I throw their way.
What has been your favorite part of this experience?
When I return to a school and learn that the teachers are using some of the activities and techniques we shared one year in the next year’s teaching after I have gone. Only a quarter of the students learn best through traditional education, so if I can inspire teachers to try new ways of engaging the students, then I have done my job. Village teachers already are amazingly hands-on, but perhaps I can do things a tad differently and it may be worth repeating for them.
What do you hope the children will take away at the end of this experience?
That learning can be fun, and to give them a passion for the content, be it folk tales of the world, the life cycle of animals, famous people, etc.
Learn more about…
- Montalvo’s Teaching Artist Program
- This year’s program at Village (PDF)
- Montalvo’s summer arts programs
- Linda Levine’s Girls’ Creativity Club — Girls’ Creativity Club is a private 1-week day camp (July 22–26) exposing girls ages 5-11 to the creative arts but equally to life empowerment skills such as active problem solving, speaking up for yourself and empathy towards others. Girls in the program live the motto, “It’s cool to be kind and creative.”
- Linda Levine
