Daniel Barash
Daniel Barash, founding Director of THE SHADOW PUPPETWORKSHOP, relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area from Washington, D.C. in 2009. Since founding his arts-in-education organization, he has conducted hundreds of assembly programs, workshops, and residencies at local schools, museums, and libraries. He holds a Masters Degree in elementary education from New York University, and has pioneered the use of shadow puppetry, an ancient Asian art form, in diverse formal and informal educational settings. Daniel performed a one-man educational theater program for more than 100,000 students across the United States, and has worked with students in Belarus, India, Laos, and Lithuania. He regularly conducts trainings for educators in the use of shadow puppetry to explore curricula, both in the U.S. and abroad.
David Gonzalez
David Gonzalez is a Professional Storyteller, Playwright, Poet, Musician & Keynote Speaker. He received his doctorate in Music Therapy from New York University and taught there for ten years. He is a cultural ambassador for the U.S. State Department, and is the proud recipient of the International Performing Arts for Youth “Lifetime Achievement Award for Sustained Excellence“.
David was named a Fellow of the Joseph Campbell Foundation and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for “Unique Theatrical Experience” for The Frog Bride. David has created numerous productions, including the critically acclaimed ¡Sofrito! both of which enjoyed sold-out runs at New Victory Theater. Sleeping Beauty was co-commissioned by the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Brooklyn College, and The McCallum Theater.
Kassie Misiewicz
Kassie is a professional Theatre for Youth director, actor and John F. Kennedy Center National Teaching Artist. She received her Masters of Fine Arts degree in Theatre for Young Audiences from the Arizona State University and her BA in Theatre from the University of Notre Dame.
Kassie is the Artistic Director and founder of Trike Theatre: Northwest Arkansas’ professional theatre for youth and families. For the past 15 years, she has been implementing arts integration residencies with PreK-8th grade students, coaching teachers, training teaching artists and building cooperative, creative, kinesthetic classrooms wherever she goes.
Kassie lives in Bentonville, Arkansas and loves to travel with her family: Dan (husband), Maeve (18) and Rowan (16) and have spontaneous dance parties in the kitchen.
123 Andrés
123 Andrés, the GRAMMY nominated, Latin Grammy-winning duo with catchy songs and a high-energy show that gets kids and families singing and dancing, in Spanish and English.
123 Andrés, the husband-wife team of Andrés and Christina, are teaching artists creating music, books and live shows in Spanish and English for children and families. Each year they perform for tens of thousands of children and families at student matinee and family concerts. Their songs and videos are used in early childhood and elementary classrooms across the US and abroad, and they have charmed live audiences across the US and in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and at several stops in Central America.
Andrés grew up in Bogotá, Colombia, and learned how to play the guitar from his father as a child. He studied clarinet at the Conservatory and had his first studio experience at age eight. He went on to earn a Doctorate in music and win first prize in the National Composition Contest in Colombia for one of his early songs.
Christina was raised in the US, in a Spanish-speaking family hailing from Colombia, and studied theater and dance as a child. After serving as a classroom teacher in public schools and earning a Masters in Education from the University of Pennsylvania, she found her mission teaching through music.
123 Andrés maintains an active calendar of live and virtual concerts, joy-filled shows for student and family audiences, that get everyone singing, moving and learning.
123 Andrés has released eight studio albums, garnering three Latin GRAMMY nominations and a Latin GRAMMY win for Best Children’s Music Album, as well as a GRAMMY nomination in the same category. Their three children’s books have been published by Scholastic. Their latest project is a new podcast currently in development, in collaboration with PBS Kids and PRX.
123 Andrés has been featured by The New York Times, NPR, the Boston Globe, Washington Post, CNN en Español, Univisión, Telemundo and SiriusXM.
Paige Whelan
Paige Whelan (Focus 5, Inc.) is a problem solver.
She grew up watching her father tinker with half-built computers in the garage. He often pulled her away from roller-skating to help him with any task that required extra hands. They found new ways to accomplish goals when the first (or second) idea failed. Paige brought that problem-solving experience to her twenty year career in education. She taught preschool in Boston and then fifth grade at a Title I Changing Education Through the Arts (CETA) school in Arlington, Virginia. Paige was named Teacher of the Year and became the school’s technology and arts integration specialist, designing and launching an arts-integrated technology program for the students and mentoring their teachers. She created a similar program for a middle school in her home state of California. Since then, she moved to Boise and travels as a teaching artist with the occasional return to classroom teaching to learn about current educational challenges firsthand.
Paige earned her BA in Psychology from UC Davis and a Master’s in Educational Technology Leadership from Lamar University. She is a National Board Certified Teacher who is also endorsed on the John F. Kennedy Center’s National Roster of Teaching Artists. Beyond education, Paige troubleshoots family life with her husband and two kids, occasionally making time for yoga or mediocre tap dancing.
Maria Tereza Schaedler-Luera
Maria is a Brazilian-born educator, artist, and consultant with extensive experience in theater, music, arts and literacy, mindfulness, and cross-cultural engagement. Maria is the co-founder of Atomica Arts, where she designs and implements arts integration programs, bilingual initiatives, and wellness workshops. She also serves as Co-Executive Director of LifeLine Productions Inc., a nonprofit using the arts to destigmatize mental illness and amplify marginalized voices through storytelling and performance.
Maria is an Arts Integration Consultant for Focus 5 Inc., a national leader in arts integration, and a Drama and Mindfulness Teaching Artist for the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall and the Sarasota Performing Arts Center Foundation, where she pilots teaching models and workshops for schools and nonprofits, focusing on culturally relevant teaching, bilingual programs, and mental health.
Jamin Carter
Jamin Carter (Focus 5, Inc.) is a visual artist and art educator. He holds a BFA in Sculpture and Painting and a Masters of Arts in Teaching in visual art education.
As an educator, he has experience teaching in K-12 classrooms and taught studio art and AP art history in a public high school. He spent five years working as an art educator in three diverse Title I schools, ranging from grades K-8. Additionally, he has worked as a mentor in elementary and middle school art classrooms, modeling skills and techniques that utilize arts integration as well as other unique approaches to art education.
As an artist, Jamin has worked in various mediums such as oil painting, sculpture, and brush with ink. He currently has a studio in Memphis where he has exhibited work and served as a consultant for public art works with the Urban Arts Commission and Vita Brevis.
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.
CT Rhames
C.T. Rhames, San Antonio Wolf Trap Teaching Artist, made her San Antonio main stage debut here at the Joe Long Theatre in The King as Sarabi. Since then she has performed in multiple San Antonio productions. She has had the immense pleasure of directing numerous productions, as well as, facilitating as the artistic director for the organization Choose to Dream. As an educator, she has directed many school productions for school-age children. She knows firsthand the vital importance of arts integration in the core education curriculum. Integration of this curriculum leads to the awesome honor of pioneering the teaching artist concept in the state of Texas. Furthermore, CT is also a creative playwright and has written several works, some of which were included in the 2013 Rags to Riches summer camp production and a Harriet Tubman Reenactment.
Joyous Windrider Jiménez
Joyous Windrider Jiménez is an improv & performance poet, teatrista, mixed-media visual artist and video creator who blends performance and visual elements into stories that articulate her own journey of healing and emotional literacy. A San Antonio native, she spent nearly a decade abroad on the island of Cyprus, where she helped diverse minority groups tell their stories. Since her return in 2009, she has presented her original poetry, theatre, and visual work in venues around her city, including the historical Guadalupe Theatre, Bihl Haus Arts, Gallista Gallery, Jump-Start Performance Company, UTSA’s Buena Vista Theatre. She was recently anthologized in Puro Chicanx: Writers of the 21st Century published by Cutthroat, A Journal Of The Arts and The Black Earth Institute. A teaching artist since 2012, she’s been creating and delivering workshops for organizations such as SAY Sí, Gemini Ink, the Magik Theatre, Teatro Audaz, San Antonio Wolf Trap, the McNay Art Museum, the San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio Independent School District, and most recently Blue Star Contemporary’s MOSAIC program for youth. Her students have been national recipients of the Scholastic Arts & Writing awards, and their performances have been featured in venues across Texas.
Jessica DiLorenzo
Jessica DiLorenzo (Focus 5, Inc.) holds a Masters in Elementary Education as well as a Bachelors in Psychology and Theatre Arts from Rutgers University. In addition, Jessica studied acting at The Maggie Flanigan Studio Summer Intensive Program in New York City, nurturing her love for the art form and inspiring her to combine her passion for teaching with her theater experience. Jessica has been joyfully integrating the arts and facilitating project based learning in elementary school classrooms since 2006. She has been providing professional development workshops to teachers and school leaders since 2013. As the Arts Integration Specialist for Any Given Child Sarasota, she is a coach and mentor to teachers throughout the Sarasota County school district and beyond.
Harlam 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.
