E. Frank Bluestein is the 1996–1997 Disney National Performing Arts Teacher of the Year and the 1994 Tennessee Teacher of the Year. USA Today named Bluestein as one of the top forty teachers in the United States in 1998. Up until his retirement, he served as chairman of the Germantown High School Fine Arts Department and as executive producer for the school’s three-million-dollar, Emmy Award–winning television studio. Bluestein is a past winner of the American Theatre Association’s John C. Barner Award and has served as an arts advisory panelist for numerous organizations, including the National Endowment for the Arts and the Tennessee Arts Commission. He spent several years as director of shows at Opryland, USA, and most recently wrote and directed the national touring production of Beale Street Saturday Night starring blues legend Joyce Cobb. In 2013, Bluestein was inducted into the Educational Theatre Association’s Hall of Fame in Minneapolis, and in 2021 he was named by Tennessee governor Bill Lee as a recipient of the Tennessee Governor’s Arts Award, Tennessee’s highest honor in the arts.
David Reynolds is a visual art educator currently teaching in the Franklin Special District in Franklin, Tennessee. He earned his degree in art education from Middle Tennessee State University and began his career in the Williamson County School System. He has served as commissioner for the City of Franklin’s Public Arts Commission, marketing and promotion chair for the Tennessee Art Education Association, and visual art facilitator for the Tennessee Arts Academy since 2017. He is a frequent presenter at both the state and national levels. As a freelance graphic designer, Reynolds has created design work for Hallmark, Purity Dairies, and Dixon Ticonderoga Company. He executed a full graphical re-branding of both the Tennessee Art Education Association in 2023 and the Tennessee Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance in 2024. In addition to his service in the visual arts, Reynolds can be found many Sundays as a featured vocalist at the Church at Station Hill.
Jennifer Vannatta-Hall is a professor of music education and associate director of the School of Music at Middle Tennessee State University(MTSU). She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in music education and music psychology, and supervises student teachers. Vannatta-Hall holds degrees from MTSU and the University of Illinois. She is certified through the master level in Orff-Schulwerk, and in the Smithsonian Institute’s World Music Pedagogy. Vannatta-Hall has presented workshops and conference sessions all over the United States and in March 2019 was a visiting professor of music at Hangzhou Normal University in China. She frequently conducts and adjudicates choral festivals around the country. Vannatta-Hall’s research interests include early childhood music teacher education and general music for students from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Her book, Music Teaching Self-Efficacy in Early Childhood Teacher Education, was published in 2013.
