Amanda Cantrell Roche has more than two decades of experience as an arts integration teaching artist for students in kindergarten through twelfth grade. She is also a lead trainer for the organization Narrative 4.
Tiffany Kerns is the executive director of the Country Music Association Foundation
Todd Shipley serves as the director of arts education for the Tennessee Department of Education.
Tricia Williams serves as the program director for the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation.
Candace Adams has taught music for twenty-two years. She currently works at Freedom Intermediate School in Franklin, Tennessee, where she teaches fifth and sixth grade general music, Orff Orchestra, and honors choir.
Elijah Adams has been a music educator for sixteen years. He is in his eighth year at Moore Elementary School in the Franklin Special School District in Franklin, Tennessee.
Sandra Babb is an assistant professor of choral music education at Oregon State University, where she teaches choral methods, vocal pedagogy, and choral conducting. She also directs OSU Bella Voce, which was recently featured at the 2021 National American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) conference. With degrees from Florida State University, Babb is an active conductor and clinician throughout the United States and is well known for her work in developing choral tone. She has co-authored articles for the International Journal of Research in Choral Singing, The Journal of Music Teacher Education, and Choral Journal. She is a contributing author for Composing in Choirs and Teaching Music through Performance in Choir: Volume IV, available from GIA Publications, and Voices in Concert, published by the Hal Leonard Corporation. She is also a National Center for Voice and Speech certified vocologist. Babb currently serves as the Oregon ACDA chair for treble choirs and the North WestACDA chair for student activities.
Brenda Gregory hasjust completed forty years as a music educator in Tennessee. She iscurrently the director of choral activities and the fine arts department chairat Siegel High School in Murfreesboro, where she directs the concert choir,chamber choir, Select Singers, and Siegel Chorale.
Alice Hammel is a widely known music educator, author, and clinician whose experience in music is extraordinarily diverse. She is a member of the faculty of James Madison University and has taught instrumental and choral music for many years in public and private schools. She was the Virginia Music Educator Association Outstanding Educator in 2011, and currently serves as the president of the Virginia Music Educators. Hammel has put her varied experiences to great use while compiling a large body of scholarly work. She is a co-author for four texts: Teaching Music to Students with Special Needs: A Label-free Approach, Teaching Music to Students with Autism, Winding It Back: Teaching to Individual Differences in Music Classroom and Ensemble Settings, and Teaching Music to Students with Special Needs: A Practical Resource. Hammel is a past president of the Council for Exceptional Children’s division for visual and performing arts education.
Dr. Corin Overland is a nationally recognized author, conductor, and educator who specializes in twenty-first century approaches to vocal and general music education. He is an associate professor of professional practice at the University of Miami Frost School of Music and currently serves as the chief academic editor of the Music Educators Journal. Overland is a member of the professional division of the GRAMMY Recording Academy and regularly appears as a guest speaker and clinician for professional development seminars and honors choirs around the country. He has more than fifteen years of experience as a vocal and general music teacher in public and private school settings. His research on labor and economic issues related to arts education can be found in the publications Journal of Research in Historical Music Education, Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, Contributions to Music Education, College Music Symposium, and the International Yearbook on Research in Arts Education.
Kay Piña is a PhD candidate at Pennsylvania State University where she supervises student teachers pursuing certification in music education. Piña has degrees from Texas State University in San Marcos and the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she completed her Dalcroze Eurhythmics certification under David Frego and Marla Butke. She has been named Master Teacher Artist by the American Eurhythmics Society. Before moving into her current role, Piña taught general music to fifth and sixth graders, as well as sixth-grade choir, at Laura Ingalls Wilder Intermediate School in Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District, located near San Antonio, Texas. She also taught elementary music at David Crockett Elementary, now David Crockett Academy, in the San Antonio Independent School District. Piña has completed levels one and two in Kodály music education and level one of Orff-Schulwerk certification.
Julia Heath Reynolds is the newly appointed assistant professor of music education at Belmont University. Before joining the faculty at Belmont, Heath Reynolds taught courses in elementary and secondary methods, music in special education, and coordinated student teaching at Indiana State University. Heath Reynolds is an active presenter and clinician for many organizations.
Matthew Stensrud is an award-winning elementary music and movement teacher who currently teaches music and movement to students from pre-kindergarten through fourth grade at Sidwell Friends Lower School in Washington, D.C. He grew up in Norman, Oklahoma, and received degrees from George Mason University and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Stensrud is an Orff-Schulwerk approved teacher educator of movement and teaches movement for Orff certification courses in New Jersey and Oregon. He is also on The Orff Echo editorial board and was a key content contributor to the book Responsive Classroom for Music, Art, PE, and OtherSpecial Areas. He is well-known on social media as @MisterSOrff and offers newsletters, mentoring, lesson plans, and more through his website MisterSOrff.com
Lois Wiggins is a retired band director who taught for thirty-three years in Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. She holds degrees from Austin Peay State University, the University of Georgia, and Western Kentucky University. Wiggins is past state band chair for the Kentucky Music Educators Association (KMEA) and served for ten years as band content area leader for the Fayette County Public Schools in Lexington, Kentucky. She is currently a co-conductor with the Central Kentucky Youth Repertory Orchestra. During her career, she has served as a guest conductor for numerous honor bands and has adjudicated at concert band, marching band, and solo and ensemble festivals throughout Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee. Wiggins is a 2016 Grammy Music Educator Award National finalist. Additional recognitions she has received are Outstanding Bandmaster by Phi Beta Mu International Bandmasters Fraternity in 2010 and KMEA Middle School Teacher of the year in 2000. In February 2022, Wiggins was inducted into the Psi Chapter of the Phi Beta Mu Band Masters Fraternity Hall of Fame.
Katie Bruno is the director of education at the Nashville Shakespeare Festival. She has been a professional actor and musician for the past ten years in New York and Tennessee and proudly holds a degree in Musical Theatre from the University of Miami, in Florida.
Denice Hicks has been the Nashville Shakespeare Festival executive artistic director since 2005. An advocate for empowering students through creativity, she has edited and directed touring productions of Shakespeare’s works, developed workshops for students of all ages, and created the Festival’s Apprentice Company Training and Shakespeare Allowed programming.
Faith Hillis is a teaching artist, poet, and performance maker from Houston, Texas, and the capacity building manager for Arts Connect Houston. Hillis has worked with various national and global communities and organizations including: Drama for Schools, Voices Against Violence, Creative Action, the Performing Justice Project, and the United States embassy in Sarajevo. She has degrees from Sam Houston State University and the University of Texas at Austin. Her master’s thesis, Emergent Strategy in Applied Theatre with Youth: Traversing Fear and Creating Justice, examines how artist-facilitators can use performance-based work with youth to help their bodies move past fear in order to envision and perform justice. Hillis is passionate about continuously working in and with communities that actively center justice, equity, and love as an embodied practice.
Jim Hoare is the executive vice president at TRW and the author of Your High School Improv Show Playbook and Your School Theatre Director’s Playbook. This is his forty-fifth year in educational theatre. Hoare has presented workshops throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. In 2011, he received the New York State Theatre Education Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Jim Hoare is the executive vice president at TRW and the author of Your High School Improv Show Playbook and Your School Theatre Director’s Playbook. This is his forty-fifth year in educational theatre. Hoare has presented workshops throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. In 2011, he received the New York State Theatre Education Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Colleen Hughes is a teaching artist, movement director, and choreographer, as well as a certified intimacy director with the organization Intimacy Directors and Coordinators, where she is also on the staff. Hughes is trained in trauma-informed practices, which are central to her work. She builds her work on a foundation of trust in the humanity of artists and the importance of theatre as a means of connection, communication, and compassion. Her work has been seen in dozens of regional and off-Broadway productions along the east coast, including the Philadelphia Theatre Company, Lantern Theatre Company, Curio Theatre Company, Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre, Simpatico Theatre Company, Drexel University, and Commonwealth Classic Theatre. Hughes holds a degree in theatre from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and has also trained at the Stella Adler Studio. She has taught dance and theatre to students in grades kindergarten through twelve for more than a decade.
Kendra Kahl is a performer, director, and teaching artist based in Tempe, Arizona. She currently teaches for Childsplay Theatre Company, Desert Foothills Theatre, and Arizona State University. She has previously taught, directed, and performed with the Rose Theater, Lexington Children’s Theatre, IMAGINE!, and the Virginia Samford Theatre. Kahl’s teaching artistry includes conservatory acting training, social justice building with teens, applied theatre workshops in non-theatre work and education settings, and residencies and classroom partnerships in elementary and middle schools. She is also a playwright. Her work has been performed at the Southeastern Theatre Conference, Thought Bubble Theatre Festival, the Rose Theater, and Samford University. Her newest commission, The One Between, will premiere at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Kahl is an active member of the American Alliance for Theatre and Education for which she chairs the New Guard Network.
Mila Parrish is a professor of dance at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, where she is the director of dance education. An active scholar, Parrish’s research has established new trends in curricula design, assessment, and teacher training. Her publications appear in the Journal of Dance Education, Research in Dance Education, Arts Education Policy Review, and Journal for Learning through the Arts, among others. She is internationally recognized for her scholarship in digital dance, somatics, and interdisciplinary instruction. A leader in the dance education community, Parrish has offered more than one hundred professional development courses, seminars, and workshops worldwide. She serves as special guest faculty with the Dance Education Laboratory at the 92Y Harkness Dance Center in New York and American Dance Festival. Parrish is the recipient of the leadership award for her community initiatives and theOutstanding Dance Teacher in Higher Education Award from the National Dance Education Organization.
Before her retirement in May of 2008, Susan Ramsay was a music specialist at Franklin Elementary School in the Franklin Special Schools District and was named Teacher of the Year for that system. She has received National Board Certification in Music and holds degrees from Peabody College and Middle Tennessee State University. Ramsay is past president of the Middle Tennessee Orff-Schulwerk Association and the Middle Tennessee Elementary Music Educators Association and has served as regional representative on the National Board of Trustees for AOSA. She has presented at Orff and Kodaly national conferences and for the National Association for Music Education (NAfME). She serves as an adjunct professor at several colleges and universities and maintains an active schedule of performances as a storyteller and as a musician.
Before her retirement in May of 2008, Susan Ramsay was a music specialist at Franklin Elementary School in the Franklin Special Schools District and was named Teacher of the Year for that system. She has received National Board Certification in Music and holds degrees from Peabody College and Middle Tennessee State University. Ramsay is past president of the Middle Tennessee Orff-Schulwerk Association and the Middle Tennessee Elementary Music Educators Association and has served as regional representative on the National Board of Trustees for AOSA. She has presented at Orff and Kodaly national conferences and for the National Association for Music Education (NAfME). She serves as an adjunct professor at several colleges and universities and maintains an active schedule of performances as a storyteller and as a musician.
Marcelo Tesón is an award-winning filmmaker and teacher with more than two decades of classroom experience. He started his career as a sound editor at Sony Pictures and Universal Studios, where his professional credits included the TV shows Law & Order, Arrested Development, and Psych, as well as the Peabody Award-winning documentary Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four. As an instructor, Tesón teaches young people the art of filmmaking and radio with organizations such as the Traveling Film Institute and Texas Folklife, where he was the director of the award-winning Stories from Deep in the Heart, a radio program for teachers. He is founder and director of the Creative Action Youth Cinema Collective, a program that brings young people from all over Austin to make socially relevant cinema. In 2016, the collective won the South by Southwest Community Award for their work lifting up the youth voices of Central Texas. A first-generation immigrant from Argentina, Tesón is currently in post- production on his first feature film as director, Touchy-Feely, which is scheduled for release in 2023.
Marcelo Tesón is an award-winning filmmaker and teacher with more than two decades of classroom experience. He started his career as a sound editor at Sony Pictures and Universal Studios, where his professional credits included the TV shows Law & Order, Arrested Development, and Psych, as well as the Peabody Award-winning documentary Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four. As an instructor, Tesón teaches young people the art of filmmaking and radio with organizations such as the Traveling Film Institute and Texas Folklife, where he was the director of the award-winning Stories from Deep in the Heart, a radio program for teachers. He is founder and director of the Creative Action Youth Cinema Collective, a program that brings young people from all over Austin to make socially relevant cinema. In 2016, the collective won the South by Southwest Community Award for their work lifting up the youth voices of Central Texas. A first-generation immigrant from Argentina, Tesón is currently in post- production on his first feature film as director, Touchy-Feely, which is scheduled for release in 2023.
Daniel Bird Tobin is a director, performer, science communicator, and theatre archaeologist. He has performed solo shows across the United States and in England (An Iliad and Conqueror of the Western Marches are two favorites). Tobin has worked with fabulous artists, such as Liz Lerman, Danai Gurira, and Aaron Landsman, and assisted the amazing directors Emily Mann, John Doyle, and Sam Buntrock. A graduate of the master’s degree in performance program at Arizona State University, Tobin has trained and worked with Dance Exchange, the SITI Company, Tectonic Theatre Project, and the Globe Theatre in London. Currently, he is a theatre specialist in the English Department at Saint Anselm College and a Senior Faculty Fellow in the Center for Communicating Science at Virginia Tech. DanielBirdTobin.com.
Lesley Patterson-Marx has exhibited her artist’s books, prints, and mixed-media works in many galleries, art centers, colleges, and universities across the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings, Craft, and ReadyMade and can be found in the permanent collections of Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Vanderbilt University, Mississippi University for Women, and Noelle Hotel. Patterson-Marx received degrees from Murray State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Since 1999, she has taught classes and workshops in a variety of media for groups of all ages. She has worked as a college and high school instructor and has taught at Appalachian Center for Craft; Watkins College of Art, Design, and Film; University School of Nashville, and Tennessee State University. You can find examples of her work at LesleyPattersonMarx.com.
