Katie teaches playwriting and acting to elementary, middle and high school students.

She believes that teaching the two topics together fosters students’ trust in their empathy, language and imaginations.  At the elementary level, her curriculum distills a play to four key ingredients and empowers students to write their own plays by imagining themselves in a character’s shoes and exploring what they would say next.  Her middle and high school curricula incorporate exercises from Daniel Sklar, Paula Vogel and Maria Irene Fornes to deepen characters’ needs and take ownership of story structure. She uses small-group prompts for writers to hear their work aloud and try rewrites without the pressure of a large audience - and to let student actors and directors to practice embodying the physical cues in a written text.

From 2014-2022, Katie taught and directed for Chautauqua Institution’s Young Playwrights Project, which annually serves approximately 500 2nd-4th graders in Western New York.  She was promoted to lead teaching artist in 2018. For Syracuse Stage she has led standalone workshops and a four-week summer program for middle and high school students.  She received a 2022 SOURCE grant from Syracuse University to work with undergraduate student researchers on program assessment in elementary school playwriting curricula.