Arts Education

The Young Artist Arts Program provides high-quality instruction in dance, music, theater, and interdisciplinary performance for children and youth ages 4–18. Through joyful, culturally responsive, and developmentally appropriate arts education, students build artistic skills, confidence, communication, creativity, collaboration, and self-awareness. Our teaching approach combines established arts pedagogies with two central commitments:

1. Trauma-informed arts education: creating learning environments grounded in safety, trust, choice, collaboration, empowerment, and respect for each student’s lived experience.

2. English Language Learning Through the Arts (ELLTA): a pedagogy created by founder Joyce Laoagan that uses artistic practice as a meaningful, active pathway for developing English language skills, communication, comprehension, vocabulary, self-expression, and confidence.

The program is educational—not clinical. Trauma-informed teaching does not ask arts educators to act as therapists; rather, it helps them recognize how stress and trauma may affect learning and respond with supportive, predictable, and empowering practices.[arteducators][rmcad]

Our Shared Teaching Approach

Across all classes, students learn through movement, sound, storytelling, play, observation, imagination, repetition, and collaboration.

Trauma-informed practices

• Teachers establish a welcoming and predictable classroom environment by:

• Beginning and ending sessions with consistent routines.

• Explaining the schedule, expectations, transitions, and activities clearly.

• Offering age-appropriate choices in movement, music, roles, materials, and ways of participating.

• Inviting students to pause, observe, or take a regulated break when needed.

• Using strengths-based feedback instead of shame-based correction.

• Establishing community agreements around respect, consent, listening, boundaries, and confidentiality.

• Avoiding forced personal disclosure or requiring students to reveal traumatic experiences.

• Supporting students’ physical, emotional, and cultural safety.

• Referring significant mental-health or protection concerns to appropriate school, family, or professional support systems.

These practices support student agency and resilience while maintaining clear boundaries between arts education and therapeutic services.

ELLTA practices

• ELLTA is integrated into every discipline through:

• Modeling and repeating functional English vocabulary.

• Connecting words to gesture, rhythm, image, action, and sound.

• Using call-and-response, song, dialogue, storytelling, improvisation, and movement.

• Providing visual, verbal, musical, and physical learning cues.

• Encouraging students to communicate through multiple modes before expecting extended speech.

• Pairing language learners with supportive peers for collaborative activities.

• Building vocabulary through authentic artistic tasks rather than isolated memorization.

• Valuing students’ home languages, cultures, identities, and individual communication styles.

• Assessing both artistic growth and increased confidence using English.

• For example, in a movement activity, students may learn the words stretch, reach, balance, turn, and freeze by hearing the word, seeing it modeled, performing it, and using it in a short phrase.