Hello! My name is Rebecca Cardenas, I am a Program Manager for P.S.ARTS working with teaching artists in our Classroom/Studio and Educator Development department. My responsibilities include working with our in-school programs in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District and LAUSD, I also serve as a Turnaround Arts Regional Coach for Washington Elementary School in Lynwood Unified and Florence Griffith Joyner Elementary School in Watts.
In addition to our Turnaround Arts work, we are excited to continue providing Joyner with programs through our multi-year grant with the Len-Hill Foundation. This year, we have partnered with reDiscover Center to provide a fully integrated Tinkering Toolkit Program which includes standards based learning in visual arts, engineering, ELA, and math. Targeted for 3rd-5th grade, this 10-week program references the work of influential Black artists, activists, and scientists as inspiration for a community-centered design project. Using Design Thinking as a framework, students will build a class train out of reusable materials using their provided reDiscover toolkit and P.S. ARTS art kit.
The collaboration with reDiscover and P.S. ARTS has yielded a truly rich program, and we’re looking forward to seeing what the students create this year!
