Julienne “Mizz June” Brown is a transgender woman of African descent who lives in the Bronx. Her artistic disciplines include Music (songwriting, singing) and Theater. She has been an activist, an educator, and an advocate within the Transgender community (and other marginalized communities) for over a decade. She was the first out transgender woman of African descent to appear as a guest on a daytime soap opera (All My Children). She has performed on various stages around NYC and the within the country, including (but not limited to): Mixed Blood Theatre (Minneapolis), The Public Theater, LaMama Experimental Theater Club, Brooklyn Academy of Music.
She is currently an honor roll student at Lehman College- where she is pursuing higher education in Music with a focus on Voice, Diction, Theory, and Music Education. Her belief system is similar to the Ancient Greek approach to the arts in education. Which is the idea that artistic disciplines should be treated as an essential supplement to non-artistic subjects within a student’s curriculum and, therefore given equal respect.
TAP Work:
“It was an immense joy to be given the opportunity to be in a classroom and get to observe and teach. Through TAP, I learned how to tailor the ideas I’ve had for lesson plans into more suitable presentations for a younger demographic. I had been granted the opportunity to intern in a third grade classroom at The Juan Pablo Duarte School (P.S. 132) in Washington Heights with Rachael Schefrin and Jessie Paddock. My class had been a group of ESL students who had this hunger for knowledge that both surprised and excited me. They were equal parts inquisitive and knowledgable. They taught me not to go into any situation expecting anything. My Teaching Artist mentors also taught me how to have fun in the classroom and how to treat my teaching artistry as equal parts performance and lesson plan. Their logic makes sense; If you’re not excited about what you do, how can you expect your students to be excited?”
Most Memorable TAP Moment:
“My most memorable moment of TAP was creating a lesson plan and teaching path with my fellow TAP interns, Abbie and Jane. I enjoyed being able to work with smart creative women in a way that combined all of our strengths equally. At first, it seemed a bit daunting to combine all of our artistic disciplines into one lesson. However, after multiple edits, meetings, emails, and text messages – we were able to create a great lesson plan that had been received well. One of my contributions to our combined lesson plan had been what I ended up teaching my ESL class. Not only did the students enjoy the lesson, but they remembered what had been taught as well!”
Find out more about Julienne here:
Check out Julienne’s Lesson Plan she created in her CWP residency.
Interested in TAP? Find out more about our 2018-19 Program.
See more of our 2017-18 Graduates in the 2018 TAP Anthology!
