Partnership with CEPIA Costa Rica and La Paz Community School to expand arts education in Costa Rica
Celebrate the Beat (CTB) announces a partnership with CEPIA and La Paz Community School (“La Paz”) to bring arts education to communities in Costa Rica. Through this partnership, CTB is collaborating with La Paz and CEPIA, the two most prominent non-profit organizations in the Guanacaste area, to create a self-sustaining program that leverages CTB’s method and experience and applies it to a specific Costa Rican cultural context.
The timing of this partnership is auspicious, as La Paz’s Physical Education Department is transforming into a Movement Department whose focus is empowering students to create healthy relationships with their bodies and movement so they can become lifelong, healthy movers. Abel McClennen, La Paz’s Director General, says of the partnership, “As a school focused on celebrating inclusion and how our differences make us stronger, La Paz Community School is delighted to collaborate with Celebrate the Beat and CEPIA to use movement and rhythm to unite and empower our community.” CTB’s nationally-recognized method engages students to work collaboratively, think creatively, and act with empathy. The approach effectively models assessment-driven arts education, addressing the needs of children across a broad spectrum of abilities and life experiences, where every moment is alive with learning, every child is "seen" from day one, and receives honest, supportive, and immediate feedback.
This partnership will offer arts education through which children develop and explore self-regulation, self-awareness, social awareness, decision-making, and personal relationship skills. ”CEPIA is honored to invite children from underserved communities to experience Celebrate the Beat teachings and activities. Through CTB’s beautiful and tested method, we hope the students will build self-confidence, create joyful experiences and learn new forms of creative expression,” said Laetitia Deweer, Founder and Director of Development & Strategy, CEPIA
Educators from CEPIA and La Paz will attend classes, dance with students, and participate in performances. They will collaborate with CTB to design curricula related to each year's educational theme; thus, students will dance and experience music related to what they learn in the classroom. Teachers from La Paz and CEPIA will train in the CTB method and then work to train others in the Guanacaste area, including from Elevate Dance Studio and those affiliated with the university in Liberia, to incorporate the curriculum into the individual organizations and the greater community. Tracy Straus, CTB’s Founder and Artistic Executive Director, mentions, ”In this new partnership, we are engaging local children while giving local artists the tools to carry on the magic of Celebrate the Beat so that the work can flourish for years to come!"
The partnership represents a continuation of CTB’s commitment to serving historically marginalized communities and has built a diverse team to lead teacher training, curricular development, residencies for ages 3-18, and curricular integration using the nationally recognized CTB teaching method. La Paz teachers will develop the skills and confidence to run their program with the support of CTB.
McClennen emphasizes the uniqueness of this opportunity for the community, “in a corner of the world where we have such socioeconomic and sociocultural diversity, this allows us to communicate using a common language of dance to create stronger, healthier, and more empathetic learners.”
About
La Paz Community School was founded in 2007 to address sociocultural gaps prevalent in a region struggling to cope with the balance between an agricultural and tourist economy. La Paz offers forward-thinking education, operating at a capacity of approximately 620 students from preschool to 12th grade. Students from Costa Rica and worldwide join together to learn how to be creative, multilingual, compassionate, and responsible global leaders. This is accomplished through experiential and hands-on curricular and extracurricular initiatives.
By integrating talented youth from the underprivileged, the middle class, and the upper-class sectors of rural Latin America, the school transforms student differences into strengths that foment rich and meaningful dialogue and experiences at all grade levels, thus preparing students to effectively confront global challenges.
As an authorized IB World School, La Paz exposes students to a rigorous and meaningful academic program rooted in the La Paz Peace Practices and the IB community profile. Through paradigm-challenging intercultural discourse, La Paz Community School students are equipped to fundamentally transform their lives, communities, nations, and eventually the world into a better place.
CEPIA (Culture, Education, and Psychology for Infants and Adolescents) is a costarican nationally accredited non-profit organization that, since 2005, promotes culture, educational and labor opportunities, mental and physical health, participation, and social cohesion of children and teenagers and their families from poor backgrounds in the communities of Guanacaste, Costa Rica.