The Caterpillar's Footprint
The Caterpillar's Footprint
The Caterpillar's Footprint
The Caterpillar's Footprint
The Caterpillar's Footprint
Professional Development
Join us for a series of quarterly professional development workshops for early childhood educators, teaching artists, and theatre and dance for the very young practitioners!
Workshops take place online (live only, no recordings). A Google Meets link will be emailed to participants one week prior to each workshop date (please be sure to check the time zone difference prior to registering).
Registration is pay what you can!
Upcoming Events:
Practical Strategies for Creative Drama in the Early Childhood Classroom
7:15pm - 8:30pm Central / 8:15pm - 9:30pm Eastern
In this professional development session, explore creative drama, movement and imaginative activities and songs for very young children. Join Ashley Laverty, Founding Artistic Director of Kerfuffle, for an engaging and on-your-feet workshop for teaching artists, theatre professionals, early childhood educators, and anyone who engages with very young children. Participants are encouraged to bring their favorite lesson plans or games, and Ashley will share practical strategies for modifying existing lesson plans to suit the social, emotional and physical development of children 6 years old and younger. Don't miss this opportunity to expand your teaching practice and dream up new lesson plans that both you and your students will be excited about.
Who Should Attend?
Kerfuffle's professional development workshops are geared for early childhood educators, teaching artists, and theatre and dance for the very young practitioners!
This PD workshop might be best enjoyed by artists interested in developing their own work for the first time; artists who have been developing their own work and want to learn new tools or techniques; early childhood teaching artists; artists who self-produce or are interested in self producing; emerging theatre producers, directors, playwrights, devisers, and artists, and anyone interested in the greater field of theatre and dance for the very young.
About the Facilitator:
Ashley is the founding Artistic Director of Kerfuffle, an award-winning theatre and dance company that creates multi-sensory and emotionally engaging performances for children ages 0-6 years old. Under her leadership, Kerfuffle partners with museums, libraries, parks, and community centers to bring accessible theatre to the very young. In Chicago, Ashley teaches with Writers Theater, Lifeline Theatre, Imagine Performing Arts and The Stage School. Ashley leads professional development workshops focusing on drama integration in the early childhood setting with librarians and EC educators across the country. In 2026, she facilitated a full-day PD for all children's librarians across the Chicago Public Library branches focused around integrating drama into library settings, and she was the Creative Drama Specialist at the Tennessee Arts Summer Academy, a week-long professional development program offered to K–12 arts specialists, classroom teachers, librarians, and school administrators across the state of Tennessee. Ashley holds an M.F.A in Theatre for Youth from Arizona State University and a B.A. in Theatre Arts from Point Park University.
Mark your calendars for our 2026 PD workshops:
Next PD of 2026 TBA....