Like all our teaching artists, Eddy Villalta Guillen and Nidia Morales are first and foremost artists who have also been trained to excel at teaching in a variety of ways. In two wonderful interviews I learned a whole lot to share about both these teaching artists and what they bring to YALA that’s unique. In the words of Nidia Morales, “I love kids and teaching, but I'm a better teacher if I do art myself.”
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Like all our teaching artists, Eddy Villalta Guillen and Nidia Morales are first and foremost artists who have also been trained to excel at teaching in a variety of ways. In two wonderful interviews I learned a whole lot to share about both these teaching artists and what they bring to YALA that’s unique. In the words of Nidia Morales, “I love kids and teaching, but I'm a better teacher if I do art myself.” In a similar way, Eddy Villalta, a professional ballet dancer, sees arts integration as a “tool for life” for the students he works with in the YACS network.
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Young Audiences of Louisiana (YALA) will hold the 2nd Annual YALA Fa La La festive on Thursday, November 30th from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.
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Roscoe Reddix has a stillness about him. He thinks carefully before he speaks. And he speaks from a deep well of New Orleans culture, art, history, self determination and expertise. An HBCU-educated theater and dance professional, and current Director of Arts Integration at YACS Kate Middleton, Reddix was among the first Louisiana Wolf Trap trained Teaching Artists. In many ways, his story also offers an essential piece of YALA’s development as an organization. We wouldn’t be who we are without him.
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When combined with the unique benefits of having children engage with visual arts, music, dance, and poetry, the ways that homeschooling families integrate the arts into their curriculum offers ideas and strategies for achieving academic success as well as the social emotional learning so vital to education.
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As the Louisiana Affiliate of Wolf Trap, YALA supported one of the first Louisiana Wolf Trap trained educators in New Orleans, Ms. Giselle Scott, who is now the Education Supervisor at Educare New Orleans. In 2011, as a new early childhood educator, she noticed that many of her students struggled to recount the sequence of events in stories they read or were told.
When she realized one of the Louisiana Wolf Trap offerings included storytelling, she decided to participate as a teacher in the first Teaching Artist residency. She asked the Resident Teaching Artist Giselle Nakhid to help her integrate storytelling into her regular lessons. Ms. Scott was astonished by how art was used to teach all subjects. "We even had math stories! So not only did it help them with retelling the story, but it helped with simple math concepts."
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Young Audiences of Louisiana (YALA) received a combined award of $350,000 towards arts education programming to benefit children in the Greater New Orleans Area and beyond. The funding provided by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and The Price Fund, singer Lauren Daigle’s global foundation, will support YALA’s Louisiana Wolf Trap Early Learning and After School Arts Enrichment Programs. YALA, Louisiana’s largest provider of arts education programs, served 40,000 children in 2022 alone. The awards will help the organization continue providing quality arts education programming to children of all ages through partner schools, early learning centers, and community centers.
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Young Audiences of Louisiana (YALA) was founded in December of 1962 with one simple goal: bring chamber music to New Orleans children in order to expand access to the arts. Sixty years later, YALA is still working to increase student connection to the arts, but in a variety of ways and through multiple art forms.
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Young Audiences of Louisiana (YALA) will hold in-person YALA Baby Artsplay! and Artsplay workshops at at Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Newcomb Art Museum, and New Orleans Museum of Art, among other locations. The 30-minute arts education workshops use song and dance to promote cognitive development in preschoolers. Thanks to the generous support of The Helis Foundation, admission to the workshop and the partner museum is free for program participants. Attend one workshop or all six! Families can register at www.ya4la.org/events.
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Last October Young Audiences Arts for Learning (Young Audiences), the nation’s largest arts in education learning network, received a federal grant award of $9.2 million through the US Department of Education’s (DOE) Assistance for Arts Education (AAE) program. This May, Young Audiences of Louisiana (YALA) and Young Audiences will pilot the five-year arts education program in Jefferson Parish Schools.
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Young Audiences of Louisiana (YALA) is excited to announce its intent to apply for a competitive 21st Century Community Learning Centers grant through the Louisiana Department of Education. The grant will fund afterschool and summer programming at five partner schools in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes.
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After a two-year hiatus, Young Audiences of Louisiana (YALA) is holding the second ever YALA Art Live fundraiser in partnership with the Krewe of Rolling Elvi. The event is scheduled to take place on April 1, 2022 from 4:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. at Urban South Brewery. Art lovers of all ages are welcome to join the festivities, where talented art students from Young Audiences Charter Schools will collaborate with professional New Orleans area artists in a type of visual performance art: live painting.
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Young Audiences of Louisiana returns with their fourth Teaching Artist Institute (TAI) this winter, December 8th - 10th, 2021 at Broadmoor Arts and Wellness Center. TAI is a three-day training intended to prepare professional artists to deliver high quality arts education in a classroom setting.
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