As the Theatre Specialist,
now Elementary Arts Coordinator, in the Arts
Education Branch of the Los Angeles Unified School District,
ROBIN LITHGOW has
worked to implement theatre into the core curriculum
of all LAUSD schools. She is a principal designer of the Arts Program Schools
program, placing
dance, music and visual arts teachers in LAUSD elementary
schools.
One exciting out-growth of the Arts Program in LAUSD
is the comprehensive,
standards-based K-6 Arts Instructional Guides, outlining
instructional
modules that will guide educators of the future in
building a substantive
curriculum in the arts. The theatre portion of the
Guides, directed and
edited by Robin, has been a collaborative process with
valuable
contributions from her amazing team of elementary theatre
teachers.
Before joining the Arts Education Branch, Robin taught
and did theatre with
students from kindergarten through high school for
twenty-five years,
producing a Shakespeare play every year and teaching
an improvisation class
that produced full-length improvisational plays.
In addition to several local boards of programs that
promote theatre in
education, Robin is on the College Board's Advisory
Committee for the Arts,
where she is the advocate for an Advanced Placement
Exam in Theatre and a
greater role for theatre in education across the nation.
Robin was born into a theatre family and raised backstage.
She and her
brother are probably the only two people on the
planet to have seen every
play by William Shakespeare at least four times
by the age of thirteen. She
believes, quite simply, that theatre is the best
way to teach all things.
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