Vermilionville to offer educators free folklife workshop

The Vermilionville Living History Museum Foundation has announced that it will offer an engaging, hands-on, professional development workshop, free for educators, on Monday, July 28, and Tuesday, July 29, from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Vermilionville as part of a $30,000 NEA grant.

Participants will learn invaluable skills in folklife, interviewing, documentation and design of folklife-integrated lessons across disciplines and classroom residencies. The workshop is for teachers of grades 4-12, both in regular classroom settings and in French Immersion pathways (workshop resources will be available in English as well as French). Participants are required to attend both workshop days. 

Educators who participate in the folklife workshop will receive professional development credit and a jump drive filled with extensive educational resources including new field-tested lesson plans in addition to: 

• Training in folklife and arts integration with folklorists, folk artists, teaching artists and museum educators;

• Practice in interviewing, note taking, mapping, sketching and photography - skills transferable to classroom instruction;

• Applying skills through interviews of folk artists and fieldwork documentation in the Vermilionville village;

• Investigating the presence and meaning of the arts, history and culture in their own lives, families and communities, including the school communities; and

• Participating in lessons merging the Common Core State Standards with folklife, fieldwork and construction of arts-based products and performances.

Educators who are interested in participating in this free folklife workshop can register through the Lafayette Parish School System’s CourseWhere management system at http://solutionwhere.com/lpss/cw/main.asp. The title of the workshop is “Folklife Workshop #6391.”

The workshop is limited to 25 participants, and the deadline to register is July 23. For more information about the workshop or questions about registering, contact Peggy Feehan at (337) 233-4077, ext. 206 or education@bayouvermiliondistrict.org. 

The folklife workshop is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts Folk and Traditional Arts Program and is part of an ongoing folklife education initiative supported by the Vermilionville Living History Museum Foundation to deepen Vermilionville’s ties to local educators and students.