This summer, teachers and graduate students in education will be able to experience a new program at Accademia dell’Arte. From August 3-15, Western New York’s Canisius College and Southtown Teacher’s Center are hosting a Tuscan Retreat centered around professional development, personal rejuvenation, self-discovery, and social interaction.

Faculty and staff of the Accademia dell’Arte enjoy a lively discussion
over a table of Tuscan food and wine

Entitled  “Expanding Teaching an Learning Through the Imagination” this two-week immersion in Italian culture and art uses the Renaissance as inspiration. Participants will live, eat, and learn at Accademia dell’Arte and take advantage of what the surrounding communities and rich local history has to offer. Local excursions will include a tour of Arezzo and nearby Florence, a hike to St. Francis’s La Verna Monastery, and a Tarantella Concert and Dance. Participants will also have a moment every day for self-reflection, and their weekend will be open to travel to other parts of Italy on their own.

In addition to these group trips Accademia founder Scott McGehee, will give seminars on Self-Creation from Ancient Greece to the Renaissance and participants will be introduced to Italian language and cinema. Each day, Kali Quinn and Daniel Stein of Brown University will lead workshops in collaboration and creative expression. Quinn enthusiastically explains it this way: “By emerging teachers of all disciplines in areas that stretch their own ways of learning, they will be able to return with new approaches to their own students and methods of teaching, especially ways to integrate creativity into the classroom.”

View of the Villa Godiola, home of the Accademia dell’Arte
and site of the 2013 Expanding Teaching an Learning Through the Imagination Program

How did this program come to be? In her own retirement from teaching, Barbara Broomell started a graduate program at Canisius in Differentiated Instruction. Since it’s inception she has wanted to include a study abroad component for her students that was open to other area teachers both practicing and retired. “Combining veteran teachers with graduate students is an essential component of this program in order to inject experience with a renewed idealism and to ground idealism in the wisdom of experience,” says Broomell.

When Broomell approached Accademia with this idea last spring, Founder McGehee jumped at the idea as this model fits with Accademia’s philosophy and mission.

The program is open to US university faculty of all kinds. This is an opportunity to visit Arezzo, Italy and get a taste of the Accademia dell’Arte.

Visit the Accademia website for details, rates and to download an application. Apply early as space is limited and we would love to have you!