A Look at RAISE: The Responsive Arts in School Education Project
- Arts for Learning
- Sep 11, 2025
- 5 min read
Now in its fifth year, RAISE is a multi-state, five-year project designed to meet the urgent needs of young learners by forging a new model of collaboration between Teaching Artists and school support teams. Together, they create in-depth, customized, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive arts-in-education residencies. The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Education and led by Young Audiences, Inc., with Arts for Learning WNY as one of 19 affiliate organizations.
Through this initiative, Arts for Learning WNY has partnered with BPS # 95 Waterfront Elementary School to provide arts-integrated residency programs for two grade levels. Led by Master Teaching Artists Melissa Kate Miller, Kristin Brandt, and Cassondra Argeros, each residency weaves social-emotional learning and healing-centered engagement into the core curriculum.
The program also offered professional growth opportunities, allowing our Teaching Artists to develop their skills and build connections with peers at the RAISE Conference in Denver, CO.
Read on to hear more about Master Teaching Artists Melissa Kate and Kristin’s experience with the RAISE Program!
"I’ve had a few transformative experiences as a Teaching Artist - working at Gateway Longview strategically in order to become better at navigating students with special needs and behavioral challenges; watching other Teaching Artists at work through the Lincoln Center Institute; and twenty-plus years of actual practice, most of which have been spent with Arts for Learning WNY. But over the last few years, the RAISE program has done more for me than nearly any other program. What I had right, it made better, and what I wanted to learn, it taught. More than knowledge - which was substantial - it gave me the confidence to be more flexible, the ability to understand the deeper impact of my lessons, and the humility to embrace who I am in the face of some very deep questions about who we are together in a multicultural environment.
Key takeaways included:
Using trauma-informed care to increase sensitivity to the receptiveness of students to any particular activity and why they may struggle with, and benefit from, engaging in the arts.
Using healing-centered engagement to reframe the concept of “oh poor students, look at your trauma” to “look at what is amazing about you and what you are capable of accomplishing,” and to dive deep into how the brain works.
Using cultural awareness to examine our own internal concepts of culture, or lack thereof, and to understand how embedded culture is in our genetic and personal make-up and why it might be critically important to our students. It helped me discover a new pride in my own heritage, which I now talk about as an opening for students to feel pride in theirs.
I’ve worked at BPS # 95 Waterfront Elementary School for nearly all of my Teaching Artist tenure doing a program on the Erie Canal, so when we had the opportunity to use RAISE to build out the program and try some new work in different grades, I knew we had the best partnership with the teachers there, especially my long-term acquaintance with fourth-grade teacher Ms. Dawn Hill. For eighth-grade, we used Women’s History Month to research women in the arts and generate theatrical monologues about these women, which students performed for each other in class. For fourth-grade, we transformed our standard Erie Canal program using technology and had students create their own newspapers, reminiscent of those from the early days of the Erie Canal.
Lastly, I watched the vast landscape of individual Teaching Artists, who often work in isolation, become a national community. Through the RAISE trainings, we met dozens of working artists across the country and built relationships together. This culminated in a conference in Denver, CO, where we were able to meet in person, exchange knowledge, be inspired by our stories and expertise, and experience each other’s work. I now have colleagues I can turn to, work with, exchange ideas with, and problem-solve alongside - something that for nearly two decades I had done primarily on my own. My Teaching Artist colleagues and I have started to build new educational opportunities as co-teachers and collaborators, using today’s technology to expand our reach to new global audiences and students of all ages. The RAISE program made me a better teacher and a better person in every way. I am grateful to Arts for Learning WNY for making it possible with their support and encouragement. It has been life-changing.”
"As a multi-passionate Teaching Artist approaching 20 years, I have a lot of tools in my kit. I thought these tools were enough, and that I was already embedding social-emotional learning into my practice - and I was - yet the RAISE program introduced me to countless ideas and truly, a new sensibility regarding my personal bias and best practices. Getting to learn the struggles and successes of other Teaching Artists nationwide has been invaluable - it’s like passing down a great recipe to the next generation!
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