Melanie Rick
Melanie Rick (Focus 5, Inc.) is a National Board Certified Teacher, a certified Reading Specialist, and an arts integration consultant. Melanie designs and leads workshops, in-depth courses, and summer institutes focused on arts integration, specifically addressing how to integrate visual art and poetry throughout the K-8 curriculum.
She works in museums, schools, and arts centers across the country and is a course leader and coach for the Kennedy Center's Changing Education Through the Arts (CETA) program in Washington, D.C. Melanie has served as a consultant to the CETA, working with teaching artists to develop and evaluate workshops presented at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Melanie was an elementary classroom teacher, middle school special education teacher, and arts integration resource teacher before becoming a national consultant with Focus 5, Inc.
Lynne Silverstein
Lynne B. Silverstein is the Senior Program Consultant for the Kennedy Center's Education Department. She has more than 35 years of experience in arts education, arts administration, and professional development. From 1993 to the present, Ms. Silverstein has provided extensive consultation to the Kennedy Center's Education Program. In this capacity, she writes about programs, designs and teaches seminars for teaching artists, directs films, creates web
sites, and develops Semperformance guides. Previously, Ms. Silverstein initiated and directed the Kennedy Center's national Partners in Education Program (1990-93) and the Kennedy Center's local Professional Development Opportunities for Teachers program (1980-90), and taught visual arts (1971-80) in the public schools.
Harlan Brownlee
Harlan Brownlee (Focus 5, Inc.) understands the transformational power that the arts have to improve the
quality of life for individuals and community. Harlan has worked for 35 years in arts education as a performing artist,
teaching artist, adjunct professor (Rockhurst University School of Education & University of Missouri Kansas City), and arts administrator, and is on the Kennedy Center teaching artist rosters for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as well as Changing Education Through the Arts. He conducts masterclasses, workshops, and residencies across the United States, designing and implementing hundreds of lesson plans developed during his years of teaching a weekly class at Community School #1, a campus that integrates dance and movement into the general curriculum with an emphasis on the subject areas of science and literacy. Harlan holds a BFA in dance and choreography, an MA in Educational Research and Psychology, and is a past Associate Editor for the Teaching Artist Journal.
Imani Gonzalez
Imani Gonzalez performs and conducts vocal workshops concentrating on traditional world music nationally, from the cultures of Asia, West and South Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. She has conducted traditional World Music workshops for the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, and offers exciting professional development workshops, residencies, classroom modeling, arts coaching for teachers, and school performances for communities at every level. She has performed traditional African music for the Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival, and the World Music Institute. Ms. Gonzalez has taught in the DC Public School system and in private schools as a traditional world music teacher. In past years, she has received grants from both the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the Artist -In-Education Program for the Maryland State Arts Council. She has also served as Consultant for the PDAE Grant Committee of Jacksonville, Florida. She is a Kennedy Center and Washington Performing Arts (WPA) teaching artist and is on the roster with the Maryland State Arts Council and United Arts Council of North Carolina.
Sean Layne
Sean Layne (Focus 5, Inc.) is the founder of and Senior Consultant for Focus 5, Inc., and author of the book Acting Right: Building a Cooperative, Collaborative, Creative Classroom Community Through Drama. He holds a BFA degree in Acting and studied acting in London, England. Sean has worked in the field of arts integration for 35 years. He leads residencies for students K-8, presents workshops for teachers, and has designed training seminars for teaching artists nationwide for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He is a National Teaching Artist for the Kennedy Center as well as an arts coach for their Changing Education Through the Arts (CETA) program.
For over a decade, Sean acted, directed, and designed sets for the Interact Story Theatre, a professional theater company that has served more than 4,000 schools, museums, libraries, and festivals around the world. He began working with the Wolf Trap Institute Early Learning Through the Arts program in 1989. As a Master Artist, he represented Wolf Trap across the country and internationally, and he designed and piloted new residency and workshop models.
Katrin Blucker Ludwig
(San Antonio Wolf Trap)
With a degree in Theater from Northwestern University, and further education at the Drama Studio London-Berkeley, the Henson Group, and Madcap Puppets, Katrin has served as an artistic director, stage manager, co-producer of award-winning one-acts, stage tech, as well as a performer from Ohio to California. In teaching, Katrin encourages integrating different art forms with other subjects demonstrating that art, history, science, etc. interrelate. Using puppetry, movement, and creative drama, she has developed workshops and residencies with teachers at San Antonio area school districts, grades PreK-2nd.
Tanesha Payne
(San Antonio Wolf Trap)
Tanesha Payne is a performer, choreographer, and educator who resides in San Antonio, Texas. Tanesha holds a BFA in Dance from Texas State University and is currently working on her MFA in Choreography at Jacksonville University. While in New York City, Tanesha was accepted into the certificate and fellowship programs at The Ailey School. She followed her heart and joined the Arch Dance Company under Jennifer Archibald where she served as rehearsal director. During her three years with the company, she taught master classes and performed across the United States. Tanesha Payne’s choreography has been recognized at the American College Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, and San Antonio Dances, and she combines past experiences, inside and outside of the studio, to help her dancers embrace what dance is for them and realize the world needs exactly what they have to offer.
