Arts Integration Workshop: Creating Characters—Shape/Size/Line/Color

The Kennedy Center Partners in Education Mansfield Team, comprised of the Renaissance Performing Arts Association, the Mansfield Art Center, and Mansfield City Schools, will host a professional development workshop on arts integration for elementary and intermediate educators, and administrators on Tuesday, November 2, 2021. The workshop is an in-person session, and will be led by teaching artist and cartoonist Jerzy Drozd. The registration fee for the workshop has been covered for all participants through the generous support of the Ohio Arts Council and Charles P. Hahn, CFP, of Cleveland Financial Group.

Teaching artist Jerzy Drozd will lead his workshop entitled, “Creating Characters: Shape/Size/Line/Color,” for teachers serving students in grades K-8. Learn how a cartoonist uses drawings, panel size, and crazy sound effects to immerse their readers in the story! Cartoonist Jerzy Drozd will lead teachers in an interactive workshop exploring some of the fundamental comics storytelling principles, and connecting those principles to ELA standards and content. The workshop appeals to a variety of learning modalities, while exploring how shape, size, line, and color are used to convey meaning in comics.

The professional development workshop will be presented from 4:30 until 7:30 PM, and dinner is included.  The location for the workshop will be the Ballroom of the 2nd floor of the Renaissance Theatre, located at 138 Park Avenue West in Mansfield, Ohio. Registration is available at https://jerzydrozd2021.eventbrite.com. Contact hour verification for CEUs are available for participants. For more information, call 419-522-2726 ext. 252 or email [email protected].

About Our Teaching Artist

Jerzy Drozd is a member of the Ohio Arts Council’s Teaching Artist Roster, and has over a decade of experience in classroom management and arts/curricula integration. In addition to his professional development workshops, he leads cartooning workshops for children, teens, and teachers who want to bring comics to their classroom.  Jerzy wrote and drew Science Comics: Rockets with his wife, Anne Drozd, and is one of the artists of The Warren Commission Report.

Jerzy began his work as a teaching artist in 2007 when he served as the lead teaching artist for the ArtServe Michigan’s Literacy Arts Comic Book Project, in which he visited 10 Detroit public schools to teach students how to make comic books.  He has since led workshops and classes throughout Michigan and and across North America, as well as at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.