Teaching, lecturing, and public speaking

Mona Z. Smith is a New York-based educator, teaching artist, and public speaker. Smith has lectured and taught courses for learners of all ages in both traditional and nontraditional settings including elementary and secondary classrooms, museum galleries, lecture halls, and performing arts organizations in New York and California.  Her teaching interests include playwriting, theater, Shakespeare, dramatic literature, fiction and creative nonfiction. (See also: BOOKS and PLAYS).

As a theater teaching artist, Smith  leads workshops and residency programs in elementary and secondary schools. She is also Playwright-in-Residence at Paramount Hudson Valley Arts in Peekskill, NY. From 2011-2017, she served as a theater Artist-in-Residence at Lanai Road School, an innovative public school in Los Angeles, where she designed theater curricula and taught interactive, performance-based workshops on Shakespeare studies and playwriting.

Previous teaching, lecturing, and public speaking experiences include:

  • Haldane School District: Interactive arts and humanities presentations for middle school students (Japanese American Internment during World War II; Canada Lee and the McCarthy-Era Red Scare)

  • Paramount Hudson Valley Arts: Playwright-in-Residence, teaching artist

  • Half Moon Theatre: Teaching artist

  • CUNY/Kingsborough Community College: Presenter, public speaker, mentor

  • Brooklyn Museum: Lecturer, public speaker, docent education and training

  • Brooklyn Information & Culture: Public speaker, Brooklyn Tourism Council

  • U.S. colleges and universities: Guest lecturer in nonfiction, journalism, and playwriting at institutions including Nebraska Wesleyan, Niagara University, California State University/East Bay, and Xavier University

  • U.S. colleges and universities: Guest lecturer and panelist in conjunction with Becoming Something: The Story of Canada Lee. Panels have included “McCarthyism Revisited” at the Metropolitan College of New York with activist Paul Robeson Jr. and authors Victor Navasky and Ellen Schrecker.

For more information, contact: mona@monazsmith.com.