Jerelyn Newman has been teaching children for over 25 years. Born and raised just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, Jerelyn embraced her love of the arts at an early age, studying and performing dance, voice, acting, and musical theatre. After high school, she was accepted to her top choice school, The Boston Conservatory (now The Boston Conservatory at Berklee) where she continued to follow her passion in both classical vocal performance and musical theatre. While at the Conservatory, she studied classical/operatic performance with Elisabeth Phinney, musical theatre with Walter Boyce, and ate all her meals in the Berklee cafeteria (where she met her Berklee alum husband over a bowl of Lucky Charms). Knowing she was going to marry her musician boyfriend, Jerelyn decided to pursue a “More Reliable Paycheck for Two Starving Artists” Degree in Early Childhood Education/Child Development from Boston’s Fisher University in the late 1900’s. After a few years of simultaneously teaching and performing on both the East and West Coasts (including a 2007 performance at Carnegie Hall under famed choral composer, John Rutter), Jerelyn decided she wanted more degrees than a thermometer, by continuing her education in Child Psychology. Although one would think that working, performing, and continuing to study acting (with Judy Kerr) and voice (with Gerald White) would be the obvious reason this degree is not hanging on her wall, it would actually be attaining and starring in the lead role of “Mom to 3 beautiful girls” that she decided to press pause on this path. While raising her 3 daughters, Jerelyn has successfully worked as a voice-over actor and a TV/film session singer (SAG/AFTRA).

For several years, Jerelyn volunteered for her children’s elementary school musical theatre productions. It was then that she realized she wanted to combine her love of teaching and her passion for kids and teens’ social/emotional development with the arts into a career. Since 2012, she has been a Theatre Group Facilitator at Polaris Teen Center, a residential adolescent mental health facility in Tarzana, CA. Around the same time, she launched the TK-2nd grade “Upstage Juniors” program at Westwood Charter Elementary in Los Angeles, CA. She successfully directed two separate casts in each production of Annie (2013) and The Jungle Book (2014). The popularity of the Juniors program was such that it sold out its 2015 inaugural summer production of Aladdin, in both cast and ticket sales.

In September of 2015, Jerelyn’s passion for combining the artistic education and social/emotional development of children led to the opening of Westside Children’s Theatre! In summer of 2019, in an effort to support the philosophy that theatre education enhances the artistry of the dancer, she was asked to be a guest teacher by Artistic Director, Denise Cecere with The Northeast Youth Ballet in Massachusetts. In summer of 2020, Jerelyn was asked to be an adjudicator for The Virtual Broadway Festival along with 5 other leading theatre companies in support of Broadway Cares. Jerelyn actively continues her theatre education with the Drama Teachers Academy since 2015 and traveling physically (and virtually) to NYC for The Broadway Teachers Workshop since 2018.