Last weekend the ITO gals got to invade the EdTA Home Office in Cincinnati, Ohio! We were all ecstatic to see one another again, and had fun reuniting with each other and with our ITO adult mentors, Staples and Swilz, and EdTA Director of Chapter and Communities, Diane Car, of course! The day started out with an informational tour of the GORGEOUS EdTA Home Office provided by EdTA Director of Strategic Initiatives and Technology and tour guide extraordinaire, Mr. Jim Flanagan. Afterwards we had fun meeting up with all of the EdTA staff members for planning and exchanging of ideas. The night ended with dinner in a beautiful downtown Cincinnati restaurant with the EdTA staff, ITO, and EdTA board of directors.
Saturday morning we were up bright and early in order to get downtown once more for a meeting with the EdTA board of directors, where we got to present the work we've done so far on Theatre In Our Schools Month; don't forget to register your troupe to participate today at https://www.schooltheatre.org/programs/tios! Afterwards we stopped by Graeter's for a delicious ice cream treat; being a Southern California girl, this was my first experience with Graeter's mint cookies and cream ice cream with whipped cream, and let me tell you that it was absolutely glorious.
After our ice cream break, we headed over to where a workshop for EdTA's JumpStart Theatre program was taking place. The ITO got the amazing opportunity to participate in this project for a day, serving as surrogate students for the middle school teachers who were being trained to build a sustainable theatre program at their schools for the first time. It was such an awesome experience watching adults discover the gift of theatre education for the first time; they participated passionately as they learned that day how to "act the song" and smoothly choreograph set transitions onstage. They were all trained math teachers, English teachers, and visual art teachers, but they all had in common the desire to bring the gift of theatre to the students at their schools.
That evening we filmed our ITO Application YouTube video (get ready, it's going live soon!) with the help of former ITO Chair Katie Ferchen; it was so awesome meeting such a sweet alumna and former ITO.
The next morning we left our mark in the ITO Clubhouse at the tip top of the EdTA Home Office:
We
spent the remainder of the day planning for Lincoln and meeting with more EdTA
staff before we said our goodbyes and headed back to the airport to head our
separate ways. It was a bittersweet ending to an amazing weekend, but
thankfully we won’t have to wait too long to see one another again, as we’ll
all be meeting up in early March for Arts Advocacy Day in Washington D.C. and
then again in June for Thespian Festival! We cannot wait to Act, Share, and Repeat
with you all in Lincoln this summer…