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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
