Chicago Shakespeare Theater Hosts
Education Forum Series in Continued Partnership
With Golden Apple and National Louis University
Beyond These Times: Reimagining School
March 18 and May 21, 2013
Chicago―February 28, 2013―Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) hosts the education forum series Beyond These Times: Reimagining School in a continued partnership with Golden Apple and National Louis University (NLU) on Monday, March 18 and Tuesday, May 21, 2013 from 6:30–8 p.m. in CST’s Courtyard Theater. The partnership will present a free two-part symposium that brings together leading futurists in education for conversation to address what school in the future must look like to prepare students for rapid advances in technology, globalization, and economy. The series will feature the country’s foremost leaders in education policy and practice, including: Arizona State’s Dr. James Paul Gee as the keynote guest on March 18 and internationally recognized thinker and speaker Tony Wagner as the keynote guest on May 21. Beyond These Times: Reimagining School will be moderated by WBEZ arts and culture reporter Alison Cuddy.
The first symposium, on Monday, March 18, will feature noted Arizona State Professor Dr. James Paul Gee, and Stephanie Pace Marshall, President Emerita of the Illinois Math and Science Academy. Gee is a futurist author whose books include Language and Learning in the Digital Age; What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, and his newly released, The Anti-Education Era: Creating Smarter Students through Digital Learning. Marshall is the author of The Power to Transform: Leadership That Brings Learning and Schooling to Life, and is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, a non-partisan core of “the world’s most influential leaders committed to strengthening the capacity of people throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence.”
The second symposium, on Tuesday, May 21, will feature Tony Wagner, the author of Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World and The Global Achievement Gap, and Constance Yowell, Director of Education at the MacArthur Foundation. Wagner is the first Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard, and founded the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Yowell leads MacArthur Foundation’s digital media and learning initiative which aims to determine how digital media are changing the way young people learn, socialize and participate in civic life.
“For too long the dialogue in Chicago has been mired in power terms: who holds the blame, whose solution is superior,” said Dominic Belmonte, Golden Apple’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “Lost in the argument to date is how the concept of school itself must change to help our students define the future rather than be victims of it. We need to hear from futurists to help us envision a far better tomorrow than our students currently receive.”;
Beyond These Times: Reimagining School will be presented on Monday, March 18 and Tuesday, May 21, 2013 in CST’s Courtyard Theater. Tickets are free and reservations are strongly recommended. All attendees receive a 40% discount on guaranteed parking in Navy Pier garages. For more information or to reserve tickets, contact Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Box Office at 312.595.5600 or visit the Theater’s website at www.chicagoshakes.com/beyondthesetimes.
About Chicago Shakespeare Theater:
Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) is a leading international theater company, dedicated to producing extraordinary productions, unlocking Shakespeare’s work for the next generation, and serving as Chicago’s cultural ambassador through the Theater’s World’s Stage Series. Recipient of the Regional Theatre Tony Award®, CST is under the leadership of founder and Artistic Director Barbara Gaines and Executive Director Criss Henderson. Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s year-round producing season features as many as 16 plays and 650 performances with work that engages 200,000 audience members in our two intimate theater spaces at our Navy Pier home, in culturally underserved neighborhoods throughout Chicago, in Illinois schools and communities, and across the globe. One in four CST visitors is under the age of 18, an important step in nurturing a lifelong appreciation of the arts and ensuring future audiences for the nation’s great cultural institutions. Annually, CST serves more than 40,000 students and teachers through the theater’s extensive education outreach programs, which include teacher workshops, professional development seminars, performance opportunities for local high school students, professional Shakespeare matinees for student audiences, and a five-week tour each spring to urban, suburban and rural schools throughout the Midwest. CST was bestowed with the Folger Shakespeare Library’s 2012 Shakespeare Steward Award for our innovative teaching of Shakespeare in American classrooms and twenty-year partnership with Chicago Public Schools. Visit www.chicagoshakes.com for more information.
About Golden Apple
Celebrating its 27th anniversary, Golden Apple began with founders Mike and Pat Koldyke and a shared inspiration—to offer outstanding teachers a level of recognition and engagement in the larger work of education reform. Golden Apple’s successful record of integrated, innovative programs and resources transform the quality, resiliency, and creativity of classroom teachers throughout Illinois. Visit www.goldenapple.org for more information.
About National Louis:
One hundred and twenty-five years ago, the visionary social reformer Elizabeth Harrison founded what is now National Louis University, and created a new paradigm of adult education. In training women of modest means to transform their home communities through the kindergarten movement, Harrison and her colleagues inaugurated National Louis’ mission of preparing talented individuals to lead and succeed regardless of background. Today National Louis graduates thrive in the fields of education, management, human services, counseling, and other people-centered professions where authentic leadership and stewardship of community benefit us all. At National Louis University we believe education has the power to democratize nations, to facilitate positive social change in communities, and to promote healthy economies. For more information, visit www.nl.edu.
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