Intuit’s Teacher Fellowship Program is an award-winning professional development program for teachers from the Chicago Public Schools. Each year, we provide professional development for 20 teachers from 10 Chicago Public Schools. The program is comprised of five Saturday training sessions in the Fall, which are designed to inspire ideas for innovative curricular development based on the characteristics of self-taught art. The training sessions include: lectures, artist workshops, tours of outsider art collections, and teacher field trips to museums. The teachers in turn create lesson plans that are implemented in the classroom during the Spring, with the support from Intuit staff members. The program ends with an exhibition of selected student artwork where family members and friends are all invited to attend.
The goal of Intuit’s Teacher Fellowship Program is to bring self-taught and outsider art to the classroom. The core value of the program is enabling teachers to give their students an opportunity to translate their personal vision to art-making using non-privileged materials. By participating in the program, teachers can make an informed decision for their lesson planning and help their students extrapolate the characteristics of an outsider artist, or a group of the artists in their own artwork.
Participating teachers will receive 2 Lane Credits (or 30 CPDU’s) and $500 for classroom supplies. They will also have access to our Robert A. Roth Study Center, which is full of rare and interesting books to help generate lesson ideas.
Intuit’s Teacher Fellowship Program received the Superior Achievement Award from the Illinois Association of Museums in 2011, the Distinguished Service in the Profession of Art Education Award from Illinois Art Education Association in 2009, and the Appreciation for Contribution to and Support of Arts Education from Illinois Alliance for Arts Education in 2001. The program is sponsored in part by generous grants from the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, the Polk Bros. Foundation, the Field Foundation of Illinois, and Crown Family Philanthropies, as well as through donations from Intuit’s members. In an effort to continue providing distinguished service, Intuit partners with Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) (www.capeweb.org) to assess and improve our Teacher Fellowship Program. Learn more about this assessment here.
Apply
The program is open for Chicago Public Schools teachers only. Teachers apply in teams of two from the same school. Educators who specialize in subjects other than art are welcome to participate. If you are not an art teacher, we do ask that the teacher you partner with is.
Application for the school year of 2011-2012 has passed. Our next round of application will be for the school year of 2012-2013. The deadline is June 1, 2012. Apply early in order to ensure a spot for your school!
Download the Teacher Fellowship Program Application
Learn More
- Download free lesson plans from Intuit’s Teacher Fellowship Program.
- View our exhibitions and educational events on our Flickr page.
“Teaching in relative isolation, with few supplies and getting by, by hook or by crook, is very common in a low-income neighborhood high school. That was pretty much how teaching art at Wells Community Academy was before we became part of the Intuit Fellowship Program. The program owes a great deal of its success to how accommodating, gracious and invested the staff are with teachers. The fellowship rejuvenated my love of art and passion for teaching through viewing art collections, collaborating with other teachers, and meeting and making art along side of artists…”
— Susan Mullen, Wells Community Academy
