Loneka Wilkinson Battiste, associate professor of music education at the University of Houston, is an international scholar with more than twenty years of teaching experience in school and community settings. Her work has been published in Choral Journal, Journal of Historical Research in Music Education, Journal of General Music Education, Proceedings of the International Society for Music Education, and Toward Equity in Music Teacher Education. She has been a featured clinician for the Texas Music Educators Association conference and was the featured mini-conference presenter for the Organization of American Kodály Educators national conference in 2022. She has given speeches and papers in Accra, Ghana and in the Brazilian states of Pernambuco, Paraiba, Ceára, and Bahia. Her work focuses on supporting both enriching and affirming experiences for all students. She received her PhD in music education from Louisiana State University.
The presenter is often asked how to teach Black music, be true to the history, and also stay within government mandates to avoid oppressive topics. Battiste has developed ways to contextualize Black artistic experiences while bringing balance to the conversations surrounding them. After defining Black joy, she will share examples of real applications and hope that attendees will leave inspired, enlightened, empowered, and equipped to lead more impactful artistic experiences.
Tony Hartman teaches music to students in elementary grades, and is also the director of Steel de Boro, a steel pan program for students from fourth to sixth grade. He teaches at Middle Tennessee State University and has presented numerous sessions around the country. Hartman has compositions published through Row-Loff Productions and was recognized as a CMA Music Educator of Excellence.
Experience a practical framework for normalizing instrument use in the elementary music room. Through the lens of Kodály-inspired teaching and Orff-influenced activities, participants will explore how to use instruments in purposeful ways. The activities are appropriate for students from kindergarten through sixth grade.
Erika Knapp is assistant professor of music education at Texas Woman’s University, specializing in elementary and choral music education. She received her doctorate at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, and taught elementary and secondary general music and middle school choir for thirteen years. Knapp has presented for many national and international venues, where she focuses on inclusive practice and empowering educators to create joyful musical experiences. She is an Orff pedagogy teacher-trainer for the American Orff Schulwerk Association and teaches level I and II courses across the United States. Her research interests include music for students with ability differences, teacher professional development, and equity in music education. She has published research in the Journal of Music Teacher Education, Music Education Research, The International Journal of Music Education, Psychology of Music, Music Educators Journal, and The Orff Echo.
Classrooms are filled with diverse thinkers, movers, and creators, and teaching can reflect that. This session will explain what it means to design truly accessible experiences for neurodivergent learners across disciplines. Participants will examine how environment, instruction, and relationships shape belonging. Teachers of music, dance, theatre, or visual art will leave with practical strategies for seeing every student’s potential.
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David H. Knapp is assistant professor of music education at Florida State University, where he also earned his doctorate. His research and teaching focus on removing barriers to participation in music education. He teaches courses in digital music making and modern band, with a focus on diverse and accessible teaching practices. Knapp’s research has been published in the International Journal of Community Music, Music Education Research, Research Studies in Music Education, and the Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education. Prior to his teaching at Florida State University, he served on the music education faculty at Syracuse University. While there he began the Music in the Community program, a collaboration with community partners to establish lab spaces throughout the community. This work helped him to earn the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Unsung Heroes Award in 2022, presented by Martin Luther King III.
Participants in this session will learn to make beats using the accessible online platform Soundtrap. They will select from among favorite genres and create their own track using scaffolded exercises suitable for learners at every level.
Scott Rush is the team lead for the Habits series published by GIA and currently serves as the conductor of the Charleston Wind Symphony. He is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music and the University of South Carolina and is the former director of bands at Wando High School in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Under his direction, the Wando Symphonic Band performed at the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic and were Grand National finalists. Rush is active as a conductor, clinician, and adjudicator throughout the United States and Canada. He is the author or co-author of eighteen books, some of which include: Habits of a Successful Band Director, Habits of a Successful Musician, Habits of a Successful Middle School Band Director, Habits of a Significant Band Director. In 2010, Rush was elected to the American Bandmasters Association, and he currently serves as past president of the Servant Leadership Association for Music.
The Habits Synergy Model focuses on how knowledge, communication, systems and processes, heart energy, and effectiveness create synergy to produce a successful music educator. In this session, Rush explores how musical and personal significance lasts for generations when the social, emotional, cultural, and musical needs of all students are met.
Thomas Rinn serves as assistant professor of choral music education at Texas State University and artistic director of the Austin Gay Men’s Chorus. He holds a PhD in music education from the University of North Texas, a master’s of music education from Florida State University, and a bachelor’s of music from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Prior to his current appointment, he spent twenty years as a high school choral director. Rinn’s research focuses on music teacher education, social media in music education, teacher retention, and effective instructional strategies. His work has been published in the Journal of Music Teacher Education, the International Journal of Research in Choral Singing, and the Journal of Research in Music Education. A past president of the Texas Choral Directors Association, Rinn currently chairs the University Scholastic League Choral Sight-Reading committee and serves nationwide as a choral clinician, guest conductor, adjudicator, and presenter.
Please join other participants as the Academy Chorale prepares a program of music to be performed at the TAA Finale luncheon on Friday. The Academy Chorale performs under the direction of Thomas Standish-Rinn, the TAA Summer Institute secondary choral instructor.
Melissa Roth Young is a graduate of Baylor University and the University of North Texas. With more than thirty years of teaching experience, she is currently a PhD music education fellow at the University of North Texas. She previously served as the choir director at Haggard Middle School in Plano, Texas, and was co-director of the Plano Children's Chorale. Choirs under her direction have consistently received awards at concert and sight-reading contests, as well as distinctions at local choral festivals. She has served in regional, state, and national offices for numerous organizations related to music education and is also a part of the choral track faculty for the Southern Methodist University Kodály Certification program. She is a sought-after clinician and adjudicator and is published with Alliance Music Publications, Carl Fisher, and Melissa Roth Young Music. She lives in Richardson, Texas, and sings with the First United Methodist Church Richardson Chancel Choir and the Summer Women’s Chorus of Plano Civic Chorus.
This session will explore music collected from both student and teacher cultural exchanges. Every teacher and student represents and lives in multiple cultural environments including family cultures, heritage cultures, community cultures, and school cultures.
Sheila Daniels, a multi-disciplinary theatre-maker based in Seattle, is an associate professor at Cornish College of the Arts at Seattle University. She teaches directing, acting and devising. Her theatre credits include directing at Seattle Rep (Indecent, Dancing at Lughnasa), ACT (The Wolves, The Ramayana), Strawberry Theatre Workshop (Lydia, The Bridge of San Luis Rey), Seattle Shakespeare Company (A Winter’s Tale, Pericles, Macbeth), Seattle Children’s Theatre (Jackie & Me), and Intiman Theatre (A Streetcar Named Desire, Crime and Punishment), where she served as associate director under Bart Sher from 2007-2009. Her devising work has been commissioned by Tacoma Museum of Glass, UMO Ensemble, and her own company, Baba Yaga. Productions in 2026 include Gypsy: A Musical Fable with Cornish and Jiehae Park’s The Aves at ACT Theater. Daniels is in the multi-year process of making the documentary Hidden Bodies: Stereotyping and Shaming of the Femme Body in American Theater.
This workshop will explore an approach to casting that challenges directors to examine their own biases. Through her years as a director and educator, Daniels has noted how rarely the actual texts and songs in theatre create types. Rather directors have relied on societal norms and the histories of productions to create them. Based on work in the classroom, she offers a deceptively simple approach to inclusive casting by unpacking biases without shame-based fear.
Alan Hawkins is an improviser, educator, and author with more than twenty years of experience in teaching and directing. He has trained at many of the nation’s leading improv institutions, including the Second City Conservatory and Musical Conservatory in Los Angeles, the iO West program, the Chicago ComedySportz Training Center, and the Annoyance Theatre. Since 2004 he has taught improv and theatre, developed curriculum for high school instruction, and served as a teacher and director at the Chicago Teen Comedy Fest. Hawkins is an ensemble member and instructor at Unexpected Productions in Seattle, where he teaches improvisation, including his signature “Improvising in the Style of Shakespeare” workshop series. He is the author of You Can’t Learn Improv From a Book, a resource designed to help drama teachers introduce and strengthen student improvisation. Hawkins’s teaching emphasizes emotional honesty, active listening, and expressive storytelling, assisting educators to empower students to create bold, connected, and imaginative work.
Participants will explore how movement, physical intention, and imaginative object work can enhance creative expression across the arts. This concentrated session will demonstrate how physical choices shape meaning, define environment, and deepen emotional connection. Educators from any discipline will leave with adaptable tools that support spatial awareness, creative exploration, and embodied storytelling in the classroom.
Jonathan Jones serves as a program administrator for the Program in Educational Theatre at New York University Steinhardt. He has taught courses there in theatre education, pedagogy, assessment, and theatre history, and was awarded the Steinhardt Teaching Excellence Award. He also teaches courses in public speaking and theatre history at the City University of New York. Jones, who received his PhD from New York University, was previously a theatre and English teacher at North Hollywood High School in Los Angeles, where he was honored with the Inspirational Educator Award by Universal Studios. Jones has given presentations on theatre education, research, creativity, and pedagogy in Canada, China, Iraq, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He serves as chair of the board for the American Alliance for Theatre & Education (AATE) and as editor for ArtsPraxis. His book, Assessment in the Drama Classroom: A Culturally Responsive and Student-Centered Approach, was published by Routledge Press in 2024 and awarded the 2025 AATE Distinguished Book Award.
In this interactive workshop, Jonathan Jones will demonstrate how to turn a poem into a theatrical experience for participants using context clues, inference, improvisation, and sequencing.
Ashley Laverty is the founding artistic director of Kerfuffle, a theatre and dance company that creates original performances for children up to age six. Under her leadership, Kerfuffle has partnered with many arts and non-arts organizations to bring aesthetically exciting, engaging, and accessible theatre experiences to children around the country in museums, libraries, parks, and community centers. She has more than twelve years of teaching artist experience, specializing in early childhood drama. In Chicago, Laverty is proud to be a teaching artist with Lifeline Theatre, Writers Theater, Imagine Theatre, and the Stage School. She has led professional development workshops focusing on integrating drama in early childhood with educators across the country. Laverty holds a degree in theatre for youth from Arizona State University and a degree in theatre arts from Point Park University's Conservatory of Performing Arts.
Participants will work together as an ensemble to create a short collaborative poem performance using gesture work and “I Am” poems. The session will integrate writing and movement exercises that can be adapted for learners of any age.
James Savage Jr. is an associate professor at Ohio Northern University and an associate teacher with the Great Lakes Michael Chekhov Consortium. He has performed Off-Broadway, regionally, and internationally. Some favorite highlights include Henry V, Richard II, and Hamlet at the American Globe Theatre; Doubt, Everyman, and Murder in the Cathedral at the Black Orchid Theatre; and Your War’try Grave at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. He performed and co-created a solo show titled 8x10 (about solitary confinement in the United States prison system) in New York City and at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival in 2017, and played Odysseus in The Odyssey at the Hydrama Theatre on the island of Hydra in Greece. Savage has taught at The New School for Drama, the New York Film Academy, and New York University Steinhardt. He also contributed two chapters in the Routledge book titled Michael Chekhov and Sanford Meisner: Collisions and Convergence in Actor Training.
A fun session focusing on safe, effective unarmed combat. Participants learn to execute slaps, punches, hair-pulls, and knaps. The session concludes with pairs choreographing a thirty second, high-stakes fight sequence.
Looking for a way to get students started with playwriting? This workshop introduces a process for generating characters, conflicts, and dramatic moments. The session offers a practical classroom exercise that will help students move from idea to stage, and discover the basic structure behind many powerful stories. The activities shared are appropriate for theatre classrooms in middle and high school.
Looking for a way to get students started with playwriting? This workshop introduces a process for generating characters, conflicts, and dramatic moments. The session offers a practical classroom exercise that will help students move from idea to stage, and discover the basic structure behind many powerful stories. The activities shared are appropriate for theatre classrooms in middle and high school.
Matt Webster is an educator who has been teaching students and theatre teachers for more than thirty years. He is the education consultant for the Drama Teacher Academy and an adjunct professor at Winthrop University. Webster is also the author of the book Methods of Teaching Theatre: A Teacher Toolkit, an award-winning playwright, prolific actor, and director.
Matt Webster will lead participants through a handful of classroom theatre games and activities in order to cultivate the vocabulary for both soft skills (communication, leadership, and creative problem solving) and social emotional learning. Participants will be encouraged to suggest games and activities from their own classrooms. This hands-on workshop is appropriate for teachers in grades kindergarten through twelve with an emphasis on grades six through twelve, though it is easily adaptable for the kindergarten through grade five curriculum.
