Course Description
Course Description: Join CraftStudies to explore how hands-on creative engagement meaningfully deepens and advances classroom-based learning and student agency, as it reinvigorates your own pedagogical practice! Through a series of hands-on workshops with the materials, tools and processes of craft, creative warm-ups, reflective journaling, and group discussion, participating educators will work to redesign an existing lesson or unit to integrate better creative engagement, as they gain comfort with their own creative practice, and build a diverse learning community among fellow Upper Valley Educators. This course is open to K-12 educators across any content area and grade-level.
Audience: K-12 Educators across grade levels and content areas. Must hold an earned bachelor’s degree.
Session Information
• Friday November 13th, 2026 (in person) 9am-4pm
• Tuesday January 12th, 2027 (virtual) 3:30-5:30pm
• Friday February 12th, 2027 (in person) 9am-4pm
• Tuesday March 9th, 2027 (virtual check in) 3:30-5:30pm
• Friday April 9th, 2027 (in person) 9am-4pm
Instructors
Lisa Brahms, Ph.D.
Lisa Brahms, Ph.D.
Lisa Brahms is the Executive Director of CraftStudies, a community studio and craft school in White River Junction, VT. Lisa has spent her career learning about how people learn through creative processes, and designing learning experiences and environments to support such engagement. Just before joining CraftStudies, she served as the Director of Education at the Montshire Museum of Science, sharing the joy of science through programs and partnerships with children and families across the Upper Valley. Prior to the Monthsire, Lisa spent nearly a decade as the Director of Learning & Research at Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, PA. There, she led a team of educators, artists, and researchers who worked together to make the creative process accessible and relevant to diverse audiences—from toddlers to teachers—through hands-on experiences with the materials, tools and technologies of arts and craft, as well as through artist and maker residency programs, and exhibitions. Lisa lead the research-based development of the Museum’s hands-on creative spaces, the Studio, focused on the fine arts, and MAKESHOP, the first museum makerspace designed for young children and families to explore at the intersection of handcraft and creative technology.
Additional Content Area
Course Goals:
• EXPLORE the fundamentals of hands-on learning and creative engagement
• REIGNITE one’s own creativity through engagement in hands-on learning through CraftStudies studios and core craft domains
• MAKE MEANINGFUL CONNECTIONS between creative engagement, student agency, and classroom/content-based learning
• ALIGN personal passions with pedagogical approach.
• BUILD a diverse learning community of Upper Valley educators.