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Obituary: Joan Robinson, 1950-2023

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Master teacher, librarian and storyteller used arts and drama to make learning interesting and fun Joan Robinson died on June 16, 2023 — on her own terms thanks to Act 39 — with her spouse, Suzi Wizowaty, next to her. Joan was a wonderful human being with a huge heart. She was warm and nonjudgmental and funny. She loved her family, her friends and her pets, and she had especially meaningful visits with family and friends in her last few weeks. Joan was a master teacher who devoted much of her life to working with children and adults — especially classroom teachers — on using the arts, and especially drama, to make learning more interesting and fun, whether the subject was science or literature or something in between. She loved kids and knew how to talk with them whether they were five or 15. After Trinity University (San Antonio), two years as a first- and second-grade teacher on Long Island and a master’s degree from Rutgers, Joan balanced part-time gigs as an actor and teaching artist at New Jersey's Creative Theatre Unlimited and as a storyteller at Princeton Public Library. Joan met Suzi in 1979, and in 1985 they moved to Burlington, and Joan commuted for nine years to work as the children’s librarian at the Ilsley Library in Middlebury, where she organized a Haunted Library on Halloween and other wild projects. In 1992, she won the Vermont Library Association’s Sarah C. Hagar Award—for basically the coolest librarian. One summer she took off to tour over 200 Vermont libraries as Ms. Frizzle, taking kids on Magic School Bus rides (in her marvelous hand-painted costume). Joan left the Ilsley to lead the Flynn Center’s education department for 18 years, curating student matinees, helping create FlynnArts, working with teachers in schools, and developing Words Come Alive! She loved acting out historical scenarios with kids and used to tell great stories about the History Comes Alive! camps she led in the summer at the Shelburne and Rokeby Museums and elsewhere. After she retired from the Flynn, she was recruited to serve as drama coach (which she did for five years) at the newly created Integrated Arts Academy at Wheeler School, which she had helped bring into being. Meanwhile, around the edges for many years, Joan taught in the graduate department of education at St. Michael’s—courses like "Storytelling and Drama as a Teaching Tool." She told stories professionally with Abi Sessions as “Abi and Joan” at Burlington’s First…

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