California Educational Theatre Association Incorporated

Programs: Festivals: in order to provide educational opportunities for califronia students and teachers, ceta sponsors four major festivals that continue to grow each year. All festivals include teacher members, students, parents, and theatre professionals. Events take place in southern, central and northern california and include about 250 teachers and 2500 students, 800 parents, and 50 profesionals on average. Festivals provide students with interactive, hands-on workshops, expanded technical theatre opportunities, and a chance to win trophies and scholarships. The past presidents' council raises funds to provide scholarships and support to these events thereby reducing student cost.

statewide teacher conference: a three-day conference is always held during the month of october. It has been held annually since ceta was founded. This event is a major component of our mission because it provides high-quality professional development and activity information and networking for 200 member theatre educators, levels elementary to higher education. This annual gathering of dedicated, passionate theatre educatiors allows for development and expansion of educational pedagogy, advocacy and our desire to further our understanding of what it means to be both artist and teacher. Throughout the year the professional learning community that is created at this conference continues to collaborate through the use of social media and networking at ceta festivals.

scholarship programs: one of our goals is to recognize theatre excellence through awards and scholarships as well as to provide access to theatre education for all students at all grade levels. Our past presidents' council collects donations to support our scholarships. These scholarships are used both to provide access to theatre education for underserved students as well as to reward excellence in theatre education. Our current scholarships include several for transportation and participation fees at the middle school and high school grade levels throughout the state. Other scholarships award academic excellence and are given to graduating seniors entering college. All scholarship fundraising and awards' decisions are made by a committee that includes past presidents and ceta members.

advocacy: in order to achieve our goal that sequential, standards-based, comprehensive theatre education is provided by a credentialed teacher for all california students, we must inform the public, parents, students, educators/administrators as to why this is important. Our advocacy efforts include all our communication via the internet, constant contact, and social media. Our website, which inclues our position paper, is not password-protected and it is intended to be usful to anyone seeking information on theatre education, including parents, administrators, theatre teachers, and students. Additionally, our website creates a way for theatre teachers to collaborate and register for events, etc. By going to www. Cetoweb. Org. Annually, we celebrate our advocacy efforts with ca youth in theatre day which is a festive day honoring theatre students throughout california. It showcases the best of theatre education in the state of california and includes 450 teachers and students from over 40 schools from throughout the state, peforming for and interacting with members of our state government. We continue to update the ceta position paper to bring it into line with the new common core standards and the national core arts standards.