Mitch Harris
educator . writer . performer
educator
Mitch has been teaching students for more than 12 years. From afterschool programming, summer camps, direct classroom instruction, tutoring, mentoring, curriculum development, teacher training, and more, Mitch loves meeting students where they are and help them get where they want to go. With a pedagogy based in Brain-Targeted Teaching, Mitch aims to engage students through whole-body learning and proven arts-integration strategies.
Baltimore Arts Integration Project
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Mitch is currently a Resident Teaching Artist Fellow with the Baltimore Arts Integration Project. This initiative, a partnership between Arts Every Day and Baltimore City Public Schools, aims to infuse the arts into core subject areas in ways that are easy for teachers and provide academic results for students.
As a fellow, Mitch partners with classroom teachers around the district to design arts-integrated Science, Social Studies, and Math lessons paired with teacher training, instructional videos, and standards-aligned overlays.
Whether it's teaching 1st grade science about animal adaptations using Pokémon, studying 11th grade world history by writing a national anthem for your classroom, or exposing 6th graders to strong research skills through a music video, BAIP aims to take students' learning out of the textbook and into their daily lives.
Literacy To Life
From 2013-2022, Mitch served as the Program Director of The Paramount Story Wranglers - an arts-integration education program run through the historic Paramount Theatre in downtown Austin, TX. Students in the program would write original
A 2013 analysis of the program found that students who went through the Story Wrangler program showed significant improvement in the areas of literacy, creativity, self-efficacy, and even school attendance.
In the nine years under his direction, the program grew three-fold and attracted more than $1 million in grant funding. The Story Wranglers now serve nearly 1000 students directly each year. Additionally, they have been featured at Austin City Limits, SXSW, the National Guild for Community Arts Education, and more!
Mitch's other teaching experiences include teaching theatre afterschool with the Lyric Theatre, spreading science to students through Maryland with the Science Guys of Baltimore, founding an arts education student group known as Conqui-Story-Dores while at St. Edward's University, teaching artistry at Creative Action, a writing instructor for Chicago's youth development program She Crew, tutoring through Chicago's Inner City Teaching Corps, leading writing and acting workshops through After School Matters, training Austin ISD teachers on how to more effectively use the drama-based instruction in their own classrooms through the Creative Learning Initiative, teaching leadership and volunteerism workshops with Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership, and teaching English abroad in both India and Peru.
