Educator Online Course: Art and SEL

The North Carolina Museum of Art is offering an online course for educators on art and social-emotional learning, running from Tuesday, Oct 6, through Tuesday, Dec 8. It's a self-paced program, so you work through it on your own schedule rather than following a set class time. The course was developed with the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, and it takes an arts-based approach to social-emotional learning, moving through five themes: Mindfulness, Identity, Perspective Sharing, Community Building, and Agency. The goal is to model the growth of justice-oriented, global citizens.

It's a 15-hour course in total, and when you finish, you get a certificate of participation for those 15 hours. If your local school system approves it, that translates to 1.5 CEUs, which is a nice practical plus if you're looking for professional development credits. Because it's self-paced, you can fit the hours in whenever they work for you over those two months, rather than having to carve out a specific block of time each week.

For context, the NCMA is a huge part of the Raleigh arts scene, welcoming more than 1.1 million visitors to its campus every year and supporting arts programming across all 100 counties in the state. Its collection spans more than 5,000 years of arts and culture, and the 164-acre Ann and Jim Goodnight Museum Park adds 4.7 miles of recreational trails, public art, and gardens to the experience. This course is one of the ways they extend that reach beyond the museum walls.

Registration is $20 for general admission and $18 for members. The course runs from Tuesday, Oct 6, to Tuesday, Dec 8.