John Bertles has created and taught staff development programs for classroom teachers, teaching artists, music and visual arts specialists, conservatory students and graduate students.  As a staff development consultant he has worked for the Julliard School, Carnegie Hall, New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Empire State Partnerships, Manhattan School of Music, Leonard Bernstein Center, Franklin Institute, Eisenhower Foundation, and various school districts in and out of New York City. 

He also frequently teaches staff development programs using the theme of simple student-built instruments through his educational performing group Bash the Trash , as well as through other organizations (see Curriculum and Staff Development Based on Student-Built Musical Instruments ).

Please note that staff development programs specifically geared for Teaching Artists are listed under Teaching Artist Development and Implementation

He has created staff development programs for such subjects as:

    * Simple Composition Strategies for Student-written Pieces (with recorders as well as other instruments)
    * Listening to Classical Music with Children
    * Creating and using Listening Maps
    * Using the Arts to teach to the Core Curriculum
    * Creating Assessment Mechanisms for Arts Programs
    * Incorporating the Arts Standards into Existing Programs

as well as many others.  New staff development programs can easily be created that are tailor-made to certain needs and specifications, or existing programs can be modified.  Flexibility is vital here.

He can:

• Work with classroom teachers to help them to incorporate the arts into their core curriculum
• Work with arts specialists to help them to make connections to the core curriculum
• Help classroom teachers and arts specialists develop strategies that will enable them to create partnerships and to work more closely toward a common goal
  
• Work with music specialists to help them with different strategies to approaching music for a student audience
• Work with teachers, teaching artists or arts specialists to help understand how to create assessment tasks specifically geared to arts activities, rather than using general "one-size-fits-all" assessment tasks.
• Help teachers, teaching artists or arts specialists to understand, use, document and assess national, state and local arts standards