Explore My Work
Teaching Experience
An Ontario Certified Teacher, Shifra has ten years experience facilitating arts-based educational experiences for children and people of all ages. For five years, she was the Assistant Artistic Director of MABELLEarts, where she designed and led free, outdoor art workshops and events for kids and families. Currently, she is the preschool teacher at the Morris Winchevsky School, delivering an arts-infused, social-justice oriented, experiential curriculum. She also leads the children’s program at AlgomaTrad Music and Dance Camp, and offers private tutoring through Prep Academy Tutors.
Community-building approach.
This free downloadable resource shares Shifra’s teaching philosophy for bringing inclusive community-engaged arts approaches into elementary literacy programs, as well as activity suggestions and resource guides.
Unit Plan: Neighbourhood Story Project.
This Grade 6 unit (Literacy, Social Studies, Visual Arts) supports students to collect and represent neighbourhood stories, using oral history and graffiti iconography. The download includes lesson guides and printables. (created with Magdalin Livingston)
Choral Conducting
The Gather Round Singers is an intergenerational community choir founded and directed by Shifra Cooper in 2017. The choir operates in partnership with Jumblies Theatre, and is made up of forty mixed-ability, multi-aged singers, from across Toronto. Under Shifra’s direction, the choir maintains core values of inclusion and access: providing transportation, catering and childcare for choristers; using step-free venues, eschewing auditions; and welcoming new singers at any point of the process (up to and including the day of performance). The Gather Round Singers rehearse on Thursday evenings from 6-8pm. New singers are always welcome! No experience necessary! Contact Shifra for details.
On CBC.
“Singing can be intimidating — especially if at some point in your life, you've been told not to sing, or that you don't have "a good voice." But Shifra Cooper, believes that everyone can sing.” This CBC podcast shares Shifra’s perspective on inclusive singing, and the stories of those who joined in.
In action.
The Gather Round Singers perform Under The Concrete: A City Place Cantata (composed by Martin Van de Ven), which brought together intercultural and Indigenous community voices, as part of Jumblies Theatre’s Touching Ground Festival of New Works at Fort York Historic Site.
Creative Technology
Throughout her career, Shifra has been committed to creative uses of up-to-date technology to create meaningful engagement and foster lasting connections and learning. Shifra’s work across a range of digital platforms creates creative, hands-on opportunities for learners, using technology to build connections, enable self-expression, and create impactful outcomes. These approaches demonstrate the unique way that a connection between technology and the arts, literacy and numeracy can lead to deepened community connection, interactive, engaging processes, and the creation of impactful, aesthetic products.
Virtual Programs.
This spring, Shifra acted as the Creative Producer for a large-scale community festival that transitioned to a digital context due to COVID-19. Virtual Iftar Nights brought together 30 professional artists and 150 community participants to take part in a month of music, story-telling, shadow puppetry, visual arts, interactive workshops, and educational activities. Shifra played a key leadership role in facilitating online workshops and designing & implementing the project’s transition to inclusive digital platforms.
Activity Examples
Green Screen.
This project exemplifies technology-based learning that brings together critical literacy and the arts. It combines an analog illustration and design process, with a media literacy component, as learners were invited to consider audience and elements of design to market their invented coffee company. Green Screen technology was added through the Do Ink app, creating a completed multi-media “campaign.”
3D Printing.
The Toronto Public Library offers affordable opportunities for library-card holders to print designs downloaded for free from Thingiverse. This small plant pot combines aesthetic appeal with the opportunity for students to plant and care for seeds, while considering elements of design and structure.
Coding.
Creating through coding is a vital pathway towards children taking the lead as designers of new and interactive digital tools with connections to the real world. This year, Shifra completed Hour of Code: an excellent coding entry-point which engages students in designing a tangible (and playable!), customized web game. Many of these activities demonstrate how coding can engage students in conversations about global issues, such as ocean pollution.
Video and Audio.
In this collaborative digital project, enacted during the time of COVID-19, students rehearsed and recorded singing with Shifra over Zoom, as well as illustrating icons reflecting on musical themes and personal experiences. The final product uses video and audio editing as well as graphic design to creatively weave together all contributing voices in a short video that centres student voice and expression. Watch the video here.
Augmented Reality.
When scanned, this QR code shares a short poem about native plants growing in an urban environment. This activity connects the digital sphere to students’ lived experience, using story-telling to enrich a (low cost) augmented reality experience that can be tailored to the spaces and experiences in students’ diverse communities, creating an interdisciplinary and multi-modal learning experience.
Digital Design.
Shifra’s portfolio of web design for Non-Profits includes the creation of these sites:
virtualiftarnights.ca
placingparks.ca
mabellearts.ca
Shifra is able to draw on her skills in web and graphic design, to create further multi-modal learning experiences for students, and expand possibilities for community connection through polished, professional-level digital platforms.