Attend VMFA teacher workshops and seminars to gain innovative ideas and activities for interdisciplinary learning. All teacher programs are aligned with Virginia SOLs and model strategies for integrating works of art across the K-12 curriculum.
Energize your teaching practice—and yourself—in these innovative, practical sessions.
Online Resources for Educators
Creative & Critical Thinking with Art Course Developed by VMFA and hosted on Virtual Virginia, this course uses VMFA collections to empower creative and critical thinking across different content areas. Participants will explore how inquiry-based engagement with art objects might serve as a laboratory for honing the creative and critical thinking skills crucial to the discipline they teach. Sign up today!
VMFA Resource Center A free and comprehensive online learning database of classroom and gallery teaching resources. Find guided looking exercises, lesson ideas, thematic object sets, engagement strategies, videos, and more. This resource features content for our permanent, rotating, and even past collection objects. Learn more!
For any inquiries regarding teacher programming at VMFA, please contact Macy Pniewski, Teacher and School Partnerships Coordinator, at macy.pniewski@vmfa.museum or 804-204-2662.
Upcoming Programs
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Teacher Tuesdays at Two
Tuesdays, Jun 11, 25, Jul 9, 23, Aug 6, 20 , 2–3 pm |Meet at the Visitor Services
Let's look at art together—through the teacher's lens. On select Tuesdays, practicing K–12 educators across disciplines are invited to join VMFA faculty for an education-centered conversation in the galleries. Come spend an hour with us to share your perspective, elevate your practice, and enjoy some summer afternoon playtime! We can't wait to see you and learn together. This tour is limited to currently practicing classroom educators.
Free, registration required.
Teacher Program: To "Look" is to Love: Social and Emotional Learning through Art
Thu, Oct 10, 2024
6–7:30 pm
Free (registration required)
Conference Room 1
Can art build empathy? Emotional vocabulary? Relationship skills? Using core competencies of Social and Emotional Learning, this workshop will utilize select objects from VMFA’s collection to demonstrate the potential of art to develop students’ social and emotional skill set. This session will use art objects as catalysts for instructional insights and is applicable to K-12 educators of all subject areas.
Light snacks will be provided.
Teacher Program: A Lens for Learning: Using the Art of Photography Across the Curriculum
Thu, Nov 14, 2024
6–7:30 pm
Free (registration required)
Conference Room 1
Practicing photographers do much more than press a shutter trigger to produce the perfect shot. They observe, interrogate, challenge, and truly capture the world around them. Before the bell rings, practicing teachers do the same. They dig into their subject matter, modify, enhance, and truly capture content as a learning experience. This workshop aims to illuminate an educator’s autonomy of perspective in their own classroom by using the photographer’s mindset and augmenting the “frame.” This session will use art objects as catalysts for instructional insights and is applicable to K-12 educators of all subjects.
Light snacks will be provided.
Teacher Program: Process, Position, and Point-of-View: Thinking like an Artist
Thu, Dec 12, 2024
6–7:30 pm
Free (registration required)
Conference Room 1
Every day, educators teach with art, about art, and through art. But what if the teaching itself is the art? Join us for a workshop that will dive into the artistic pockets of the instructional design process and inspire educators to infuse artistic habits of mind into their practice. Educators will study the art-making processes of featured contemporary artists in VMFA’s collection and let their discoveries reveal methods of artistic enhancement in their teaching practice. This session will use art objects as catalysts for instructional insights and is applicable to K-12 educators of all subjects.
Light snacks will be provided.
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Teacher Program: The Art of Argument
Thu, Jan 16, 2025
6–7:30 pm
Free (registration required)
Conference Room 1
In this workshop, educators will learn how to use objects from VMFA’s collection to design learning experiences for students that inspire, enhance, and hone their argumentative skills. Art implies and imposes a meditation on point-of-view. Using art objects, educators will learn how to support their students’ development and defense of novel points-of-view. Argumentative discourse is an essential feature in all disciplines, and the use of art as a catalyst for this discourse can transform its curricular potential. This session is applicable to K-12 educators of all subjects.
Light snacks will be provided.