A full-time educational consultant, Marcia is known for her ability to connect with diverse audiences. A featured keynote speaker and workshop leader at the national level, she emphasizes the indisputably positive relationship between learning and the arts. Cross-curricular instruction, in particular, arts infusion, is a passion. She has been a featured presenter at Arts Connect workshops, at the Atlanta School of Ballet, and at the Atlanta School of Performing Arts. In 2001, Marcia was the key note speaker and featured workshop presenter for the Arts Infusion Conference in Augusta, Georgia.

Furthermore, because teaching innovations must be supported by trained, knowledgeable, and supportive leaders, Marcia has provided extensive leadership training for principals and leaders in strategies for arts inclusion in the traditional classroom.

Having worked for many years with new teacher induction, Marcia facilitated the entry of non-traditional teachers into the profession through workshops in cooperative teaching, in which classroom instruction is enhanced through synergistic teaching between the regular classroom teacher and those whose talents are beyond the scope of the traditional classroom.

During Marcia's thirty-one years in education, she has held a variety of positions while serving concurrently as a consultant at both the local and national level. These positions include the following: Spanish Teacher, Teacher Evaluation and Assessment Specialist, Lead State Trainer for Georgia Teacher Evaluation, Supervisor of the DeKalb Foreign Language Magnet, Foreign Language Coordinator, Co-Director of the DeKalb County Professional Development Training Corps (ProCorps), Adjunct Professor at Brenau University-Graduate Division, and Supervisor of DeKalb’s Induction and Mentoring Program. In addition to her current consulting activities, she administers the Transition-to-Teaching Grant for the DeKalb School System, and works with the Metropolitan Regional Assessment Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement.

On the national level, Marcia regularly presents three high demand workshops: Bon Appetit: A Recipe for Capturing Students’ Short Attention Spans; I Never Knew You Were So Smart!; and, Differentiated Instruction: Strategies for Reaching and Teaching All Students! Other frequent requests include Parents on Your Side, Cooperative/ Team Teaching, Proactive Classroom Management, TESA, True Colors, and Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. She currently is a frequent instructor of Max Thompson’s Learning Focused Schools and Catching Kids Up. Other featured keynote presentations include the following Santa Cruz Teacher Induction Symposium in San Jose, California; 2004 Alternative Assessment Conference in San Antonio, Texas, and; regular presentations at the annual National Staff Development Conference.

Mrs. Roberts received her Bachelor of Science degree in Spanish Education at the University of Georgia where she graduated with high honors and was inducted into Phi Kappa Phi Honorary Society. She obtained her M.A.T. in Spanish and her Leadership Certification at Georgia State University. She has been named STAR Teacher, Teacher of the Year, DeKalb’s educational liaison to China, Japan, and Russia as part of an innovative language/telecommunication grant, and recently served as president of the Metropolitan Area Teacher Education Group (MATEG) for an unprecedented two consecutive terms.

Denise Jennings - What Do Schools Want?

Denise Jennings is the curriculum coordinator for K-12 Art Education, Fulton County Schools. She is a National Board Certified Teacher and served as the lead writer for the current Georgia 9-12 Quality Core Curriculum. She has taught high school art, Advanced Placement Studio Art, and has piloted courses in computer art and art history. In 2003-04, as the school system coordinator of the Fulton County / Fulton County Schools, School Arts Program Partnership she helped bring teaching artists to 27 residencies and 515 programs in Fulton County Schools. School Arts is a Kennedy Center Partnership; through this relationship she has worked with Kennedy Center trained teaching artists.

Related experiences include the National Art Education Association Board of Directors, National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Early Adolescent through Young Adulthood/Art Standards Revision Committee, invited presenter at the Getty Center for Education in the Arts and Georgia Department of Education Annual Teaching Conferences, and Educational Testing Service consultant for the National Assessment of Educational Progress in the Arts. She has been named National Secondary Art Educator of the Year, Georgia National Gallery of Art 50th Anniversary Scholar, Georgia Christa McAuliffe Fellow and Council for Basic Education / Getty Center Fellow.

Through these and other experiences in arts education partnerships, curriculum, and teaching art, Denise brings experience and understanding of the working relationships between teaching artists and public schools.

Susan Merritt - What Do Schools Want?

Susan Merritt was appointed as Director of Education for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in February of 2000. Previously, she served as Fine Arts Coordinator for Gwinnett County Public Schools, supervising 351 teachers in music, theatre, dance and visual arts.

Merritt has three decades of involvement in local, regional and national arts education. She is the founding president of the Georgia Coalition for Arts Education/Georgia Alliance for Arts Education, an arts education advocacy organization. She is a member of the Arts in Education Council of Americans for the Arts.

Ms. Merritt is responsible for planning, implementing, managing and evaluating the ASO's existing education programs while developing new programs that help achieve the Orchestra's educational goals and objectives.

Celeste Miller - Performer & Lead Instructor

Celeste has been active as an artist developing strategies for Arts & Education residencies for the past ten years. She brings to her workshops her years of experience in the field, as well as her evaluation and assessment skills, which she has made into teachable commodities that she has shared with artists and educators across the US in conferences, workshops and consultations.

In the field, Miller is the founding and lead artist in a ten-year program through Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival that places artists in the classroom to use choreographic methods to teach core academic curriculum in partnership with the classroom teacher. This program, Curriculum in Motion, includes a mentor component to train other artists to carry out the work in their communities.

Miller has taught workshops and seminars on this method for teachers and educators at Arts for Literacy, Brown University; Whole Schools Institute of Mississippi; Young Audiences of Indiana Annual Arts & Education Conference; Alabama Dance Council's Annual Dance Summit; Collaborative Education Council of Charlotte, North Carolina; among others.

Topics Celeste will cover at the June 18-19 conference draw upon her workshop menu:

Connecting Art to Classroom Curriculum: Making authentic links between your artistic discipline and the classroom unit of study, including a discussion of the benefits and pitfalls of working in this way. Celeste will teach her process of uncovering metaphor as a basis for making curricular connections while maintaining the authenticity of the art form in use.

Forging Residency Partnerships: How to engage classroom teachers as partners in the residency - from planning sessions, to day to day involvement, to final assessment and evaluation. Also, how to engage the school’s support and awareness of the artist's residency, even if the artist is only working with one portion in the school. Participants will evaluate their current practices and design ways in which they would like to expand or improve on their current practice.

Developing Tools for Evaluation, Assessment and Documentation of Residencies: How to design useful tools to meet the goals of the various partners in a residency, and how to engage teachers in becoming co-partners in developing plans for successful evaluation, assessment and documentation. How to gather data from the evaluations - and what to do with the data once it is collected.

Elise Witt ~ Singing the Spiral: read about Elise on this website.

Spiraling Metaphor Conference Planning Team:

Cary Cleaver (registration info), home office: 770-949-5351 ~ read about Cary on this website.

Jeff Mather home: 404-508-5928 ~ read about Jeff on his website.

Pam Beagle-Daresta home: 678-355-0868 ~ read about Pam on this website.

Randy Taylor Museum of Design: 404-688-2467 x 303

David Randal (Randy) Taylor

With a BFA in Graphic Design and a Master Degree in Early Childhood Education, Randy was the Education Director of CREATE, an educational theatre company for over 20 years. He is a Registered Drama Therapist, an approved trainer for the Georgia Department of Human Resources, a Georgia Council for the Arts roster artist and roster arts consultant, and volunteers his illustrations for the Nature Conservancy.

Randy contracts with institutions to provide training programs, having recently coordinated the High Museum Teacher Institute on Jacob Lawrence. He successfully directed an arts summer camp, provided nationwide training in School-Age Care for Work/Family Directions, and served on the executive board of the Georgia School Age Care Association.

In the position as curator of education for the Museum of Design he coordinates outreach and festival programs, residencies, Global Classroom Website and on-site programs. He serves as the training coordinator for ArtsConnect an arts integration program that is in place in 5 school systems in the Atlanta Area.

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