Helen Wheelock is the Director of the CUNY-Creative Arts Team’s Early Learning Program (CAT-ELP), which uses uses interactive drama to strengthen literacy, critical thinking, and essential social-emotional skills among pre-k through 2nd grade students. She joined CAT in 1994 as a teaching artist and worked with the Elementary and Early Childhood programs until 2008, when she was appointed to her current role. Her work at CAT has taken her into classrooms in NYC, nationally and internationally and offered her opportunities to present at conferences and facilitate professional developments for educators on participant-centered pedagogy and drama strategies in the early childhood classroom. As an adjunct faculty member at the CUNY School of Professional Studies, she has taught several  graduate courses including Teaching Through Drama: Storytelling & Puppetry in the Early Years; Role-Play in the Classroom The Uses of Role-Play as a Teaching Tool; and, for the MA in Applied Theatre an Apprenticeship in Early Childhood Drama. Helen holds an MA in Educational Theatre from New York University and a BA in Theatre from Middlebury College.​