The Tennessee Arts Academy is the nation’s premier professional development institute for arts education. A program of the Tennessee Department of Education, the Academy has been held annually since 1986 on the campus of Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee! This page will serve as the starting point whenever there is a need to conduct virtual TAA programming. Information will be provided here on when and how to access the virtual site. Please feel free to contact the TAA office by email (taa@belmont.edu) or by phone (615-460-5451) if you desire further information.
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 coauthored 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 West ACDA chair for student activities.
Matthew Stensrud is an award-winning elementary music and movement teacher who currently teaches music and movement to students from prekindergarten through fourth grade at Sidwell Friends Lower School in Washington, DC. 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 Other Special 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.
Kendra Kahl is the instructor of youth theatre at the University of Northern Iowa, where she teaches creative drama, methods of teaching drama and theatre, and theatre in education, among other courses. Drawing on her experience as a performer, director, and teaching artist, Kahl’s practice includes conservatory acting training, social justice building with teens, applied theatre workshops in nontheatre work and education settings, devising new work for young audiences, and residencies and classroom partnerships in elementary and middle schools. She has previously taught, directed, and performed with Childsplay theatre company, the Rose Theater, Lexington Children’s Theatre, Desert Foothills Theater, and the Virginia Samford Theatre. Kahl is also a playwright, and 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, premiered at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Her creative research has been published in the LEARNing Landscapes Journal, and she actively presents at national and international conferences.
In drama-based learning, students and educators imagine new worlds, go on journeys together, and reflect on their adventures. This participatory workshop will offer practical lessons, activities, and techniques that harness this imaginative story-based quality, infusing creative drama with English language arts standards.
Daniel Bird Tobin is a director, performer, science communicator, and theatre archaeologist. His work focuses on how to build compelling, emotionally rich performances out of personal artifacts and scientific research. He has performed solo shows across the United States and in England (An Iliad and Conqueror of the Western Marches are two favorites), and he has directed numerous shows (including Angels in America, Part One and The Theory of Relativity). A graduate of the performance program at Arizona State University, he has trained and worked with Dance Exchange, the SITI Company, Tectonic Theater Project, and the Globe Theatre in London. Currently he is an assistant professor of theatre at Centre College and a senior faculty fellow in the Center for Communicating Science at Virginia Tech. To learn more, visit www.danielbirdtobin.com.
The first part of the session will begin with a quick review of Rasas and Rasaboxes, including a discussion of some of the ways people have implemented this work into classes and productions. From this baseline, those present will launch into a series of discussions and exercises that explore how Rasic thinking can expand beyond performance to also inform directing and designing. How can Rasaboxes be a tool that will allow students to think creatively, laterally, and kinesthetically? For this session, we will be using This Girl Laughs as a jumping-off point.
Daniel Bird Tobin is a director, performer, science communicator, and theatre archaeologist. His work focuses on how to build compelling, emotionally rich performances out of personal artifacts and scientific research. He has performed solo shows across the United States and in England (An Iliad and Conqueror of the Western Marches are two favorites), and he has directed numerous shows (including Angels in America, Part One and The Theory of Relativity). A graduate of the performance program at Arizona State University, he has trained and worked with Dance Exchange, the SITI Company, Tectonic Theater Project, and the Globe Theatre in London. Currently he is an assistant professor of theatre at Centre College and a senior faculty fellow in the Center for Communicating Science at Virginia Tech. To learn more, visit www.danielbirdtobin.com.
When young performers are asked to play multiple characters over the course of a play or to make large, physical character choices, they can often become self-conscious or timid. This session will explore techniques developed by Glynn MacDonald, the master of movement at the Globe Theatre in London, that allow performers to quickly and efficiently build a physical life for a character. These approaches can be incredibly helpful for making ensemble roles feel real, human, and distinct from one another. They can also allow performers to create over-the-top characters well outside the normal physical comfort zone. Participants will continue to use This Girl Laughs and will want to provide some space around the computer to allow for movement.
Julie Lapping Rivera began her career in New York while working as a teaching artist with the Studio in a School Association, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Lincoln Center Institute. She was awarded a fellowship in drawing from the New York Foundation for the Arts and has received Arts in Education grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her art residencies include Scoula Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy; Soaring Gardens in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania; and La Muse in La Bastide, France. Rivera teaches printmaking at Smith College; is on the faculty of Zea Mays Printmaking in Florence, Massachusetts; and works as a visiting artist throughout the country. She works primarily in woodcut combined with collage. Her work often includes collaboration with artists and poets. Her most recent collaborative projects are a sculptural installation, Be a Ladder, inspired by a Rumi poem, at Art in the Orchard in Easthampton, Massachusetts, and an ongoing portrait and poetry project honoring underrecognized women in history.
This session will include an exploration of monotype printmaking, using nature and haiku poetry as inspiration for mark making, color, and imagery. Please click here to access the list of supplies you will need to have with you for this session.
Jeanne Oliver is a best-selling author and the creator of the online art school jeanneoliver.com, which has taught over seventy thousand members from around the world. She is also a podcaster and the creator of the Creatively Made Business curriculum. One of her passions is connecting with women and sharing that each of us has been creatively made.
Using simple tools and limited time, participants will create contour sketch florals and add color through watercolors. Please click here to access the list of supplies you will need to have with you for this session.
Bradley Foust is the fine arts supervisor for Bartlett City Schools.
Atticus Hensley is the band director for East and West Middle Schools and the fine arts coordinator for Tullahoma City Schools.
Jeff Smith is the director of visual and performing arts for the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools.
Participants will hear how data from the State of the Arts study is cultivating collaboration within and beyond the arts, shaping future goals, and impacting students’ experiences in art education in three different school districts. The presenters will articulate the value of arts education in ways that will inspire and equip participants to advocate for the arts in their schools and beyond.
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Lanae Dickstein is the director of bands at Haynes Bridge Middle School in Alpharetta, Georgia. Prior to this position, Dickstein was the director of bands at Central Middle School in Carrollton, Georgia. She received her degrees from Georgia State University in Atlanta. She serves as an organizer for the Georgia Music Educators Association Middle School All-State Band and also organized the Carroll County Middle School Honor Band. Dickstein has been a clinician at the 2022 Georgia Music Educators Association In-Service Conference as well as the 2022 Midwest Clinic International Band, Orchestra and Music Conference. She is a French horn player and enjoys teaching and performing in the metro Atlanta area. Dickstein is also a member of the Georgia Music Educators Association and the National Association for Music Education.
This session will provide a practical guide to optimize mental energy by making positive changes in work habits. Teachers can improve self-management skills by setting up simple, effective systems that will be shared in the session. By creating efficient planning and teaching spaces, educators can clear up their mental space and make the work day more manageable.
Julia Heath Reynolds is the newly appointed assistant professor of music education at Belmont University. Prior to joining the faculty at Belmont, Heath Reynolds coordinated student teaching and taught courses in elementary and secondary methods and music in special education at Indiana State University. She is an active presenter and clinician and is a member of the Tennessee Music Educators Association, National Association for Music Education, and the International Society for Music Education.
The session will include an overview of special education laws as they pertain to the music classroom. Many teachers are unsure about these laws and are sometimes apprehensive to reach out and ask tough questions. Topics that will be covered include the individual education plan (IEP), labels, language, adaptations, modifications, placement, and more.
Angela Tipps is completing her twenty-fifth year at the Middle Tennessee State University School of Music. She conducts the SOAL Chorale (for soprano and alto) and TEBA Chorale (for tenor and bass), oversees music appreciation courses, teaches basic and choral conducting, and serves as musical director for the theatre department. She also conducts the Middle Tennessee Choral Society, an eighty-voice community chorus that performs major works with orchestra each year. Tipps is also the organist and director of music at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Murfreesboro.
Thoughtful and artistic programming can significantly affect the success of a concert performance. This session will explore the idea of balance in concert programs in terms of keys, tempi, languages, difficulty, styles, and character. Participants are encouraged to bring potential pieces from their musical library to arrange in a meaningful order as they work in virtual groups to develop appealing programs.
Jonathan Bernstein’s plays and musicals have been produced all over the country. Under the auspices of the Jerome Robbins Foundation, he is currently developing a new project titled Here in the Bright Colorado Sun, his second collaboration with Susan Misner. Before this, they premiered The Shape She Makes at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which won multiple Elliot Norton Awards. Directing credits include material at the Atlantic Theater Company, the Kennedy Center, Williamstown Theatre Festival, New York Stage and Film, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and many others. Bernstein has worked at New York’s City Center, Manhattan Theatre Club, Second Stage Theater, Roundabout Theatre, Public Theater, and 52nd Street Project. He produced the 2021 short film Bend, which won the top prize at the Lincoln Center’s Dance on Camera Festival. He is a professor of playwriting and script analysis in the graduate musical theatre writing program at New York University, and he serves as the artistic director of The Performing Arts Project, an international arts training not-for-profit for youth.
Kurt Vonnegut once said that “we have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” This workshop is devoted to the bravery one has to summon in order to (figuratively) cliff jump, and to how exhilarating and difficult wing-making can be under duress. There will be a discussion of techniques that jog play drive, which gently challenges inherited artistic protocols.
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Joshua Rashon Streeter is an assistant professor of theatre education at Emerson College. His teaching focuses on critical pedagogy, pre-service and in-service education, drama and theatre education, Theatre for Young Audiences, musical theatre, and arts integration. Streeter’s scholarship analyzes the pedagogies used in rehearsals and classrooms and considers the relationship between process and product in a creative experience. Recently he received the 2021 Ann Flagg Multicultural Award from the American Alliance for Theatre and Education and the 2021 Provost’s Excellence in Inclusivity Award from James Madison University. He was also one of three national finalists for the Ernest A. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement for Early Career Faculty. Streeter was also one of the twelve writers for the national theatre standards and continues to work as a consultant to numerous state departments of education. For the past fifteen years he has created and facilitated workshops across the nation.
In this session, workshop participants will actively explore drama strategies they can embed into history and biography units within elementary education. Focusing on the tools of voice, body, and imagination, participants will explore historical figures and events that will help students deepen comprehension, expand narratives, and connect to learning objectives.
As a mixed-media artist, Robyn McClendon tells stories and encourages others to do the same through the visual context. As a healer and Reiki master, she helps others to shed old stories and replace them with ones that are empowering, self-directed, and not burdened by cultural mores and family histories. As an artaeomythologist, she leads retreats and workshops that combine the visual arts, idea generation, and book arts. Through these seminars, participants find a voice for their story and are empowered to move forward and recognize a more authentic artistic experience. In her quest to find answers, she studied and worked as an artaeomythologist for the past thirty years teaching at the Smithsonian Institutions and Corcoran Galleries. She has combined her archaeological adventures and knowledge of historical symbols and icons to formulate theoretical research in the area of human consciousness.
In this session, participants will construct a miniature book designed to be held in the palm. This traditional form can be found inscribed with short prayers or inspirational thoughts. Materials used will be everyday papers and postconsumer materials such as kraft paper bags or packing material. The use of these materials was inspired by a recent project, #PostConsumerArt, in which waste materials are utilized in fine artwork. In keeping with palm book tradition, favorite quotes or inspirational passages will be added to the books. Participants should have the following materials on hand: brown paper bag, scissors, metal ruler, ink or paints, permanent marker or Posca pen, a length of ribbon or string, hole punch, and a quote or inspirational passage.
Mike Mitchell is an artist and arts educator living in Nashville, Tennessee. Also known as mikewindy, he is a 2020 Makey Makey Ambassador, has achieved the Tennessee Art Education Association Middle Region Art Educator of the Year award, and is Tennessee’s only Crayola Creativity Ambassador. He sits on the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s rural, educational, arts, culture, and history committee. He earned a degree from the University of Memphis in 2004, where he investigated making art using a wide array of media, including video, sound, painting, printmaking, ceramics, metal casting, stop motion animation, collage, and performance. He has continued those investigations over the past twenty years and exhibited his work in public spaces all over the world, including galleries, trains, street corners, and outside the grocery store where he has been shopping for forty years.
Using the free program Audacity, blank blocks, and chance, participants will learn how to create sound artwork with their students.
Participants may want to download Audacity prior to the session so that they can create their own sound artwork as well as participate in the group sound artwork.
Flowerree W. McDonough was named by the National Art Education Association as the Tennessee Art Educator of the Year in 1999 and the National Emeritus Art Educator in 2018. The Tennessee Arts Academy Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to her in 2011. The Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts named her Tennessee Visual Arts Educator of the Year in 2009 in a ceremony at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville.
Until her retirement in 2013, McDonough served for thirty-two years as chair of the Bearden High School Fine Arts Department in Knoxville, Tennessee. During her tenure, her students garnered numerous scholarships and won scholastic gold, silver, and honorable mention awards. At Carnegie Hall, she was honored at the national teacher recognition ceremony for having several national student winners. After being named a Twenty-First Century Classroom Teacher, the resulting grant funds jump-started her students’ technological understanding of visual production techniques. She received a fellowship of the National Endowment for the Humanities and subsequently participated in the Excellence in Teaching Institute at Ohio Wesleyan and in Florence, Italy.
She served as president of the Tennessee Art Education Association, as well as National Art Education Association’s southeast region secondary director, and has also chaired statewide art education conferences. In 2000, she represented the state in several events as state finalist for Tennessee Teacher of the Year. Working with Leadership Knoxville, she has coordinated the art experiences for new class members each year since she became a member in 2003. McDonough has been a frequent clinician and adjudicator at regional and national events. McDonough passionately serves both students and teachers of the arts in her dual roles as an adjudicator for the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts and as a Tennessee Arts Academy Foundation board member.
The Tennessee Arts Academy presents a new feature during this year’s Virtual Winter Retreat. “Tennessee Talks” will present the thoughts and reflections of a notable Tennessean whose life’s work has had a major influence on the arts, arts education, and the lives of all citizens throughout our great state. Much like the Academy’s “Musings,” Tennessee Talks will be a time of meaningful inspiration and introspection.
This year’s Tennessee Talks guest of honor is Flowerree McDonough.
Denice Hicks has been performing for more than fifty years and is currently the artistic director of the Nashville Shakespeare Festival, a company dedicated to community enrichment through professional theatrical experiences and interactive workshops. Educated at Point Park University, Hicks starred in her first Shakespeare role as Juliet at the historic Pittsburgh Playhouse in 1979. She moved to Nashville in 1980 to perform at Opryland USA, was an original company member of the Nashville Repertory Theatre, and was among the founders of both the Darkhorse Theater and People’s Branch Theatre. She has been a guest lecturer at many universities and with the Cooperative Center for Study Abroad program for three weeks in Stratford-upon-Avon and in London. Hicks has been involved in more than seventy productions of Shakespeare’s works, with some of her favorite roles being Puck, Ophelia, Juliet, Rosalind, Olivia, Cassius, theDuke of York (Richard II), and Ariel. Non-Shakespeare favorite roles are Stella (A Streetcar NamedDesire), Ouiser (Steel Magnolias), and Lenny (Crimes of the Heart). She toured the entire state as Emily Dickinson in The Belle of Amherst for Humanities Outreach of Tennessee. Hicks is thrilled to be reviving her passion for Emily Dickinson’s poetry with Stephanie Shine and is honored to be working with Tennessee Shakespeare Company.
Stephanie Shine is the director of outreach, general manager, and resident artist at Tennessee Shakespeare Company, for which she has directed many plays, including Henry VI: Wars of the Roses; Macbeth; Henry V; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Julius Caesar; It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play; Southern Yuletide; Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits; Shake(s), Rattle, and Roll; Lend Me Thy Sword; and eleven productions of Romeo and Juliet. On stage with the theatre, she played the Abbess in The Comedy of Errors, the Countess in All’s Well That Ends Well, the female roles in Unto the Breach, and Gertrude in Hamlet. Prior to joining Tennessee Shakespeare Company, she was artistic director of Seattle Shakespeare Company, a position she enjoyed for thirteen years. Her production of I Am of Ireland (which she also conceived and adapted) opened Book-It’s twenty-fifth anniversary season in 2014. As an actor, she has performed with the Oregon Shakespearean Festival, New York City’s Theatre for a New Audience, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Alley Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, The Empty Space, and Seattle Children’s Theatre, among others. The Germantown Arts Alliance honored her with its 2016 Distinguished Arts and Humanities Medal for Performing Arts. She is the mother of four exceptional people: Conor, Cahilan, Sullivan, and Collins.
Collaboration is a leap of faith. Join Denice Hicks and Stephanie Shine, creators of I Dwell in Possibility: Emily Dickinson Emerges. Explore the collaborative process between three women: Hicks and Shine, working together for the first time, and Emily Dickinson, immortal in her writing and ever present in the collaborative room. Highlights from the show will be shared as Hicks transforms in the moment to bring Emily Dickinson into the twenty-first century.
