About this Artist

Pronouns: she/her

Sue Trainor is a Master Wolf Trap Teaching Artist, musician, and performing-songwriter with a gift for stirring up enthusiasm and creativity. In addition to her work locally, Sue travels nationally and internationally, delivering her PD programs, residencies, and family involvement workshops in pre-K, early elementary, and special needs classrooms. Sue was named Arts for Learning Maryland’s 2014 Artist of the Year.

Professional Development for Educators

Through the Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts, Sue has offered professional development for educators since 2003. Sue designs classroom residency lessons to meet the needs of individual teachers, and she offers in-service programs for schools as well as workshops and keynotes for education conferences. Sue’s Wolf Trap work has taken her across the U.S. mainland as well as to Hawaii, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Since 2002, Sue has rotated through the staffs of the Maryland Artist/Teacher Institute (MATI) and the various Maryland county ATI programs, most recently, PGATI (Prince George’s County) 2020. Sue was honored to serve as visiting Arts Integration Specialist for a Harford County, MD Title 1 school from 2013-2015.

Professional Development for Teaching Artists

From 2008-2018, Sue was the Master Teaching Artist for Music on the staff of Maryland’s Teaching Artist Institute (TAI), which offers training for artists interested in becoming classroom teaching artists. Since 2005, Wolf Trap has invited Sue to train Teaching Artists to deliver professional development to early childhood educators. Sue served as a Master Teacher on the staff of Maryland’s Very Special Arts retreats 2003-2006. Since retiring from TAI, Sue has continued to coach teaching artists on the roster of Arts for Learning and on her own.

Awards

Sue was Arts for Learning’s Artist of the Year in 2014. At that time, in addition to the Early Childhood work, Sue also was busy offering songwriting residencies in in Maryland schools through Arts for Learning. Among her regular visits was the Baer School in Baltimore, which serves children with severe multiple disabilities. Sue’s children’s recordings, “In Our Own Words” and “Under Tables, Out Back Doors,” earned multiple local and national awards, and her recordings for adults with her trio HOT SOUP have been played on acoustic music radio shows across North America and abroad.