New Choice! Creating Possibilities For Teaching Artists

Written by Luke Perone, Ph.D. and Luke Scaros

Meet The Lukes

Luke Scaros, MFA and Luke Perone, Ph.D, AKA “The Lukes,” are teaming up to create an opportunity for social therapeutics. We want to share the whys, the hows, the whos, and the whats. 

The Lukes were trained as social therapeutic coaches by the East Side Institute earlier in 2024. The study sessions were filled with philosophical discussions, introspection, and opportunities to observe and then co-lead therapeutic sessions with other professionals in the industry. When the sessions were over, the Lukes celebrated being together yet separate. Both Lukes wished to continue down the social therapeutic path, yet found joy in collaborating with a larger community. 

Both Lukes juggled the social therapeutic training with their teaching careers. Dr. Luke Perone taught courses in human development and play at the University of Washington Tacoma, while Luke Scaros taught middle school drama in Fairfax County Public Schools. Both Lukes have been able to express their frustrations with the teaching industry to the other and found commonalities regardless of the different teaching environments. 

Our Hope For The Intensive

A Social Therapeutic Intensive for Teaching Artists is an opportunity for people who teach the arts to gather together and build a community of care. Both Lukes want to create a space for exploration, where the participants can play with the industry's frustrations, and encourage others to jump into the deep end. 

Besides the fact that both Lukes have experience as teachers and artists, the choice to focus on this specific demographic has been  . . . well specific. 

The Stigmas of Formal Educational Practices in the United States

There is a culture in The United States, where STEM classes (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) are considered valuable while the arts are considered entertainment. This has been a centuries-long conditioning that has hurt the art classes and the educational system as a whole. In today’s school system, the average American child is exposed to isolated systems of learning, hopping from box to box (the boxes of a classroom, the boxes of a schedule, and even the boxes of different subjects or disciplines), and only focusing on that specific core skill for an hour and a half. After enduring the boxes labeled “Math,” “Science,” and “English,” it’s an unsurprising frustration when they reach the box labeled “Art,” “Theater,” or “Music,” and label it as unessential. 

What we’re doing in formal learning environments can be seen as either supporting or blocking what educational systems are “supposed to be doing.” Instead of alienating the course load, there is a curiosity on how to change the culture to that of unity.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to support collaborations within the school systems? Couldn’t we challenge our assumptions of what we’re supposed to be doing within the educational systems? What about creating new meanings and activities in our teaching? How about doing these and other activities together with other teaching artists and with our students and communities?

The important caveat is that this level of change shouldn’t be on the shoulders of teachers alone, but a communal shift in the mindset of education. Instead of applying pressure for our teachers to “do better,” how as a community can we come together to create this collaborative utopia?

Our Invitation

The Lukes suggests that social therapeutics can be a way to heal the divisions, check our assumptions, and create new activities together. The Lukes have created with and in our lives the power and possibilities of social therapeutics to transform not only how we teach but also why we do so.

Our passion for social therapeutics is what inspired us to become coaches and to bring this six-week intensive into being. We’d love to create this intensive group with other teaching artists who would like to give the group whatever experiences they’d like. As coaches, we would like to support us in creating an environment each week that invites us to play with possibilities, grow closer to each other, develop our passions for teaching, and create new paths for collective human development and learning. Come join us!