Teaching Roster

Laurie Melnik Allen

Contact Name: Laurie Melnik Allen

Email: Click to email

Phone: (904) 708-6382

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Website:
https://www.utc.edu/health-education-and-professional-studies/arts-based-collaborative

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Laurie Melnik Allen is the Lyndhurst Chair of Excellence in Arts Education and Executive Director of the Arts-Based Collaborative and Challenger STEM Learning Center at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC). She facilitates arts-based learning across multiple fields and disciplines by aligning artistic elements and processes that encourage interdisciplinary connections, creative thinking, and social-emotional learning. She embraces an asset-based approach to program development that draws upon existing strengths when cultivating partnerships. Her workshops are highly engaging and embrace a philosophy that we are never too young to play.

Artist Work Samples


Sample Programs Offered

Program Title: Off the Digital Canvas: A Character Development Exercise

Program Type: Arts Curriculum

Program Description:

Visual art from digital museums can serve as great source material for character development while helping students strengthen visual literacy skills. This program can be facilitated as a teacher workshop where educators actively learn character development strategies based on a work of art or an artist residency that help upper elementary students further develop their craft. While this was developed with grades 3rd-5th in mind, this can be scaffolded her secondary students who may be new to acting. The sample lesson plan guides participants through a still image exercise based on George Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1884) where physical character choices (e.g. facial expression, gesture, pose, and posture) are practiced in isolation.

Lesson Plan Example: Download File

Program Title: Activating Poetry: A K-5 Strategy for Communicating and Interpreting Meaning Through Still-Image

Program Type: Arts Integration

Program Description:

This arts integration program can be delivered as a classroom residency or a professional development workshop. This program focuses on creative drama as an improvisational and process-centered form of theatre that focuses on expressing ideas and conveying meanings through guided explorations. These guided explorations take on many forms while encouraging students to contextualize their mind, body, and voice through a guided drama experience  based on a given situation or in response to selected literature. The sample lesson shares an example of integrating creative drama in poetry through the use of still images (aka frozen tableaus).

Lesson Plan Example: Download File

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