Teaching Artists and Teaching Assistants

Part time / $25-50 hourly / Ping Chong and Company / New York, NY

Mission of PCC
Ping Chong and Company (PCC) creates theater and art that reveal beauty, invention, precision, and a commitment to social justice.

About the Organization
Founded in New York City in 1975 by leading theatrical innovator and National Medal of Arts recipient Ping Chong, Ping Chong and Company engages multigenerational interdisciplinary artists to build on and expand a prolific catalog—at the root of which is Ping Chong and his singular and visionary body of work. The company’s work centers innovation, collaboration, community engagement, and amplifies underrepresented voices. Spanning nearly five decades, the company has created over 110 original theater productions, reaching audiences throughout New York, the United States, and the world. Across PCC’s performance, arts education, and community engagement work, the company transcends boundaries, exploring interconnectedness of cultures and the ways intersectional identities are addressed in society.

This season marks a major organizational transition for the company, as founder Ping Chong and longtime Executive Director Bruce Allardice retired at the end of 2022. PCC’s three-year leadership transition plan aims to support the next generation of interdisciplinary artists and expand the company’s long standing Undesirable Elements community specific program. In the next three years, PCC will formalize its decade-long evolution from a company identified with a single artist into one that supports, through an adaptive organizational infrastructure, a new generation of interdisciplinary artists of color.

About their in-school arts education program:
Ping Chong and Company (PCC) offers residencies on creating storytelling/theater performance from our own personal histories, using peer interview techniques, writing exercises, and drama activities to help youth explore senses of identity, place, and belonging. Work occurs in elementary (grade 3+), middle, and high schools. Residency goals include fostering community, empathy, ensemble skills, and cross-cultural understanding, as well as the development of confident self-expression for each individual student, particularly in their writing and performance/public speaking skills.

Position Description
PCC Teaching Artists deliver meaningful arts engagement experiences for students in grades 3-12, based on PCC’s methodologies in interview-based theater & devised performance. PCC Teaching Artists will be aligned with PCC’s artist-centered, community-oriented, experimental approach to the creation of new works, excited by working in community settings, and committed to supporting social justice and equity in making the arts accessible to all. Most TAs in our cohort lead 1-3 residencies in a given school year. Residencies typically involve approximately 20 teaching hours & 20-30 prep hours over 10-12 weeks in the winter & spring months. Compensation includes: hourly rates at $50/hr (1st year solo TA’s), $40/hr (1st year co-TA’s), or $25/hr (Teaching Assistants) plus $25/hour prep rate (all) & generous travel subsidy.

Requirements

Responsibilities

-Guide student participants through a creative process in which they:
-Identify key memories that have shaped their sense of self,
-Script their stories into a collective work of art,
-Explore and deepen their performance skills (voice, movement, expression) for a final performance of their original theater piece.
-Thorough preparation of lesson plans
-Prompt arrival to class sessions and other scheduled events
-Timely completion of associated residency tasks (delivering scripts, reflections, timesheets, and other paperwork when due.)

-Responsive and timely communication with company staff, and dogged pursuit of open communication among school teachers and administration over the course of a residency
-Engagement in reflective practice and (provided) opportunities to enhance your teaching skills through trainings, including in the areas of trauma-informed practice, differentiated instruction, and working with ESL & multilingual learners

Core Competencies

-Passion for unlocking young peoples’ potential through self-expression
-Commitment to equity, inclusion, and liberated, anti-racist learning environments, and appreciation of the value of diversity across intersectional identities
-Self-awareness and the ability to balance holding space, taking space, and giving space in a classroom setting
-Boundary awareness and the ability to establish, maintain, and respect healthy emotional and physical boundaries
-Organized and reliable
-Flexible, adaptable and comfortable working in a rapidly changing/responsive environment
-Excellent verbal communication skills
-Proficiency in Spanish and/or Mandarin a plus
-Note: Teaching Artists must pass a NYC Department of Education fingerprinting process/background check.

Desired Experience

-For Teaching Artists, 2+ years of experience teaching theater, spoken word, or movement-based arts education programs to youth. (For Teaching Assistants, less teaching experience is permissible, with demonstrated interest in the relevant art forms.)
-Background in theater, spoken word, or devised dance/theater performance
-An active art-making practice of your own
-Experience working in multicultural community environments
-Experience working in/with NYC schools is a plus.

Training & Support

If selected to join our training cohort this year, PCC provides potential Teaching Artists & -Assistants with paid training in our curriculum & methodology, and the opportunity to demonstrate their teaching skills for consideration in determining residency placements. Attending the training does not guarantee a placement in a school residency, as there are many factors to be considered in matching classrooms with TAs including schedules, skill with certain grades or languages, specific needs or requests from the school, etc, but not attending the training would prevent someone from teaching for them in that given school year.

After the training, if a Teaching Artist is matched with a school residency, PCC also provides:

-Clarity on schedule and location of residency
-Assistance with initial planning meetings and goal-setting in schools
-Access to education staff throughout residencies, as needed, to process/brainstorm ideas and challenges
-Mid- and post-residency observation, feedback, and reflection
-Support in arranging culminating school performances
-Periodic additional professional development workshops for our roster of TAs, on specific topics of interest.