Susan Snyder, Ph.D., President, arts education IDEAS, LLC
Susan (Sue) Snyder is founder and President of IDEAS: Inventive Designs for Education and the ArtS, LLC (www.aeideas.com), a company dedicated to facilitating innovative, child-appropriate, arts-integrated education models and programs. She holds a BS and MA in Music Education, a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction, an Orff Master Teachers Certificate, and a Cooperative Learning Trainers’ Certificate. Sue has extensively studied topics across disciplines, including arts education, brain compatible learning, creativity, curriculum design, early childhood, literacy/integrated language arts, learning theory, MI, movement, storytelling, multicultural education, social-emotional development, ELL/dual language, and special learners. Shas taught at all levels, Pre-K – post-graduate, including courses at Hunter College and residencies/workshops across the Unites States, Canada, Australia and Lithuania. She is an author of texts and position papers, and has worked in program development, management, research/evaluation, and publishing/media.
Consulting Experience
As a consultant within the arts education community, Susan has collaborated nationwide in the development and dissemination of integrated curriculum initiatives. She informed development of the CT Commission on the Arts’ HOT (Higher Order Thinking) Schools program, the Mississippi Whole Schools Program with CAPE (Chicago Arts Partnership for Education), Liz Lerman and others; the Leonard Bernstein Artful Learning Program with the Grammy Foundation, Carnegie Hall Education’s Musical Explorers program, the Young Audiences Arts 4 Learning Program, Bridgeport MACH (Music and Arts Center for Humanity) Programming in conjunction with Wolf Trap and Ailey Dance, ABCD (Action for Bridgeport Community Development anti-poverty agency) and the Bridgeport, CT Public Schools with Child FIRST and others. Additionally, she has been involved in ground-breaking initiatives in Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Iowa, Texas, California and Alaska. She held a two-year appointment as Scholar-in-Residence for the CT State Department of Education BEST (Beginning Educator Support and Testing) program.
As an educational consultant to the media industry, Susan has worked with Children’s Television Workshop, Disney, Cookie Jar, and was a consultant on the Ready to Learn Partnership’s 2005 evaluation team, a media-literacy for young children initiative designed to help reduce the achievement gap, funded by the US Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement. She was senior curriculum consultant for the US Department of Education’s Ready to Learn 2010 media Grant – Project LAMP (Learning Apps Media Partnership) with Callaway Digital Arts and HITN, developing media platforms and products to build cognitive capacity and school readiness for success. She has also worked on the proposal writing and evaluation side of grants.
Susan worked with PBS, the US Department of Education, and the Michael Cohen Group to plan and facilitate the 2006 Ready to Learn Conference in Washington, D.C., engaging and preparing educational and media thought-leaders. She was invited and represented arts education IDEAS at the First WISE Foundation Colloquium in Qatar in 2009 as one of 1000 international educational innovation leaders, and returned as an invited guest to the 2010 WISE Symposium.
Publications
Susan is a senior author for McGraw-Hill Education, collaborating to develop three basal textbook series with ancillary properties, the most recent of which is offered in an extensive digital, multi-media platform. She has also self-published several multi-media publications that promote multisensory, arts-integrated teaching and learning from early childhood through work with older adults. Her work targets at-risk and different learners, particularly in urban settings and low socioeconomic communities and schools, using the arts as tools for reducing achievement and cultural gaps, delivering arts skills and understandings, classroom content, social emotional learning, and critical & creative thinking.
Building on her storytelling and oral history skills, Susan published her first novel in 2012 with co-author Mahru Ghashghaei: Nine Rubies: Broken Silence of a Daughter of Revolutionary Iran – a memoir over 20 years in the making.
Sue continues to work with children and their grownups through teaching Music Together classes. See www.letitbe-music.com or www.musictogether.com for further information.
Contact information:
Susan R. Snyder, Ph.D.
President, arts education IDEAS, LLC
(914) 325-2074
sue@aeideas.com
