Education Outreach
Jobsite has worked with middle school, high school, and college-level student groups since our 2001 production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged). Since then, we’ve grown from simply offering student groups of 10 or more substantially reduced rates and a post-show talk with the actors to a full program that reached over 5,000 students with our production of A Midsummer Nights’ Dream.
In 2012, we began offering daytime matinees to school groups (Fahrenheit 451, Much Ado About Nothing). In 2016, we partnered with the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay and the Saunders Foundation, allowing us to double the number of those performances, reaching thousands, while getting over 500 young people into the theater at absolutely no cost. In 2017 we entered an arrangement with Hillsborough County Public Schools, the Arts Council of Hillsborough County, and the Straz Center/Patel Conservatory to become part of their Field Trips program.
Recent Education Partners
- Focus Academy
- Sickles High School (where we have an ongoing, year-round program with their AP English and SicklesTV programs)
- St. Peter Claver Catholic School (now in our 9th year)
- Mother Teresa of Calcutta Catholic School (ongoing)
- Orange Grove Middle Magnet School
- Blake High School (ongoing)
- Wilson Middle School (ongoing)
- University of Tampa (ongoing)
- USF St. Petersburg Teen Acting Conservatory
- St. Leo University
- USF Honors College and Theater Departments
- St. Petersburg College (ongoing, including a hands-on program in technical theater)
With each production we also offer a robust study guide that hits relevant curriculum points by grade level, extending far past theater into reading and literacy, history, and the social sciences. We offer both pre- and post-show visits to the schools, sending teaching artists involved in the production to offer custom-built workshops, demonstrations, or lectures to help further enrich the overall experience.
In addition to the workshops and demonstrations during the pre-show visits, we also include important context about the performance like information on the author, subject matter, and history about the time it was written as well as what the students should expect to see on stage and why we think it matters. Post-show visits also include opportunities for the students to ask questions and provide feedback prior to the custom-built workshop, lecture, or demonstration that we arrange with the teachers. With these in-classroom visits we are able to work with far greater numbers of the student populations than we could bring into the theater.
