I am a multi-brass-woodwind-instrumentalist, with a lifetime of road experience traveling the world teaching/playing. I love to share any and all of my knowledge with any one who wants to learn and have fun.

Program Theme Our concert program “Place” explores diverse geographies, languages and musical /cultural traditions from all over the globe, featuring a fusion of original and traditional music from our 6-7 piece ensemble, with a focus on Ghanaian/West African influences. West African dancing is included is showcased in our performance, featuring 1-2 dancers originally from Accra, Ghana. Program Description “Place” takes the original music of Heard and brings the audience somewhere special and distinct in each piece– like the crowded bustle of an Accra open-air market (Market Song), a winding wintry boulevard in Montreal (Cotes des Neiges) or the summer streets of Brazil. (Danca Verao) Through narrative storytelling around our compositional inspirations, we explore cultural, geographical and environmental dimensions of other countries and places. A slideshow featuring maps and photos from our group's recent trip to Ghana provide a beautiful visual backdrop to our performance. Heard musicians include: Elizabeth Woodbury Kasius, keyboards, Laura Andrea Leguía, woodwinds, Bobby Kendall, bass, Brian Melick, percussion, Zorkie Nelson, percussion, Forsino Nelson, dance, Augustina Nelson, dance. All of our members sing! Breakout workshops in West African dance and world percussion can accompany the residency experience. Some of the schools/libraries/museums we’ve performed for include: Troy City School District, Troy, NY--Schools 2, 14, 16, 18 and Carroll Hill Elementary schools Van Rensselaer Elem, Rensselaer, NY Lake George Elementary Lake George, NY Samaritan Children’s Center, Troy, NY Susan Odell Taylor School, Troy, NY Paige Elementary, Schenectady, NY North Colonie Schools, Albany, NY--Boght Hills and Latham Ridge Elementary Schools Saratoga Springs Public Schools- Division St. Elementary Robert C. Parker School, East Greenbush, NY Abram Lansing School, Cohoes, NY Salem State College, Salem, MA ACC, Queensbury, NY HVCC, Troy, NY College of St. Rose, Albany, NY World Awareness Children’s Museum, Glens Falls, NY Guilderland Public Library, Guilderland, NY Albany Public Library–Arbor Hill and Delaware Ave. branches Millbrook, NY Library Silver Bay YMCA Resort Camp Chingachgook YMCA camp

Arithmetickles is an interactive Math Game show that uses audience participation and comedy in fast-paced math segments to capture the attention of students in grades K-8. Arithmetickles makes math jump off the page and onto the stage and changes how kids think of math! Arithmetickles includes Interactive Math Theater Games, Funny Number Puzzles, Creative Quizzes, Problem Solving, Mental Math and Witty Logic. Arithmetickles doesn’t aim to teach math but to make it so cool (and so much fun) that students will want to learn it.

The day-to-day life of children and teens can be hectic and challenging on multiple levels. Experiencing stress, anxiety and exhaustion can affect physical and emotional well-being, social relationships, academic success and sleep. Rooted Movement Classroom Yoga offers students skills and experiences that can help increase self-awareness and build resilience. As an embodied practice of mindfulness, yoga asks us to pay attention to what we are feeling, both physically and emotionally, in the present moment. These practices can send signals of safety back to the brain and soothe the nervous system. Our program (based on the work of Jennifer Cohen Harper’s Little Flower Yoga) focuses on five main areas: 1. Connection to oneself, one’s environment and others. 2. Breathwork, which promotes communication between the body and the nervous system. 3. Movement to help process stress hormones and give our students a sense of being strong, flexible and capable. 4. Focus Practice: when we can observe our minds wandering or becoming fixated on negative thoughts, we can bring the mind back to the object of focus and improve our capacity to stay present in the moment. 5. Relaxation to alleviate stress and tension. Whether in a single classroom session, an interactive workshop or over the course of a residency, students will have the opportunity to learn a variety of techniques, so they can gain some experience and deepen their own relationships with these practices. Teaching Themes around which we can develop a program to serve your students: 1. Interoception: what does your body feel like on the inside? 2. Building strength: how our bodies can teach our minds that we’re strong 3. Yoga in a Chair: learning yoga snacks you can do throughout the day 4. Mindfulness meditation and relaxation to down-regulate the nervous system 5. Balance practices 6. Spacial awareness and proprioception 7. Building a collaborative community through movement 8. Our brains, our bodies, our nervous systems and movement (4th grade and up) 9. Imaginative practices: connecting yoga poses to seasonal imagery, animal world, relevant classroom curriculum, etc. (K-3) 10.Dealing with challenges in a playful way 11.Self-reflection Professional Development: Rooted Movement also offers professional development for teachers and staff, including self-care programs and yoga/mindfulness tools that can be integrated into the classroom. Some Professional Development Topics: Basic Yoga Core Conditioning Chair Yoga Restorative Yoga for Deep Relaxation Breathwork and Meditation Applying Yoga for Social Emotional Learning in the Classroom

Please take a moment to consider my StoryFaces and Talking Art assembly programs for schools, a unique presentation of storytelling and visual arts with a variety of content for grades K - 12, family audiences and events. Christopher Agostino’s StoryFaces is a fusion of language and visual arts, an exciting storytelling show in which volunteers are face painted to illustrate the stories as I tell them, captivating the audience with traditional folktales and my uniquely animated original stories like The Amazing Face Story and The Amazing Face Story Activity, a follow-up activity in which students create an original story starring themselves — including Talking Art programs focusing on art history for upper grades — and programs for adults and family audiences. Assembly Programs are available for grade levels K - 12, with variable content for different grade levels. For middle and upper grade levels the performances also include cultural information on the use and significance of masks and makeup. Performances run 45 - 60 minutes, and work best for an audience of 250 students or less. In most shows I paint 8 to 12 volunteers during the performance, while mesmerizing the entire audience with stories ranging from traditional tales like Aesop’s Fables to legendary adventures like Punia and the King of the Sharks, The Tail of the Dragon and the samurai hero tale Raiko vs. the Goblin Spider, plus my original stories such as The Tiger that Went to the House of the Sun, When A Man First Met a Crocodile and in my Talking Arts programs, stories about art -- origins, inspirations and appropriations -- such as my mask design demonstration: Two Lizards on Four Faces, and Picasso the Thief and the birth of Modern Art.

Discover the fascinating world of Native American folklore, respect for nature and a sense of family, community and caring for the land. Marty Hight shares her stories about beliefs held deeply sacred and get an inside look at how the Native Americans world changed as their land was taken and they were forced to march to a new and strange land. Or, learn how to craft corn husk dolls and hear the story about her creation. Marty invites your students to help illustrate her stories, demonstrate dances and celebrates their special gifts. In this school assembly, history comes alive as stories told for centuries are shared in an engaging way to impart character lessons and tribal history. It’s ideal for Grades K-6. TOPICS INCLUDE: HISTORY • CULTURE • STORYTELLING • SINGING • NATURE • TRADITIONS • DIVERSITY • LANGUAGE • CRAFTS • AND MORE! Marty Hight (Ma-ha-gum-se / Shawnee) is a Native American who has a Cherokee and Shawnee heritage. She is a proud member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma who draws from family history and storytelling to share her people’s history, language, songs, customs, rituals and legends through vivid narratives. Reach out today to learn how you can join in the excitement when you host Marty Hight!

The Children's Museum at Saratoga is dedicated to creating an interactive community that inspires curiosity, sparks imagination, and nurtures discovery. We are committed to serving as a resource for Capital Region school districts and to ensuring that programs and services are accessible to all children. The Museum offers outreach and field trip programs for students from preschool to 6th grade. Each program is designed to meet the needs of each classroom with plenty of opportunities for unique hands-on experiences. Programs correlate to Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards. They are wonderful additions to classroom curriculum as either an introduction to a lesson or to enhance current classroom units. The Museum's priority is to make educational programs accessible to all students. We ask that you please share any special needs your students may have ahead of time so that we can accommodate their needs. For more information about the Museum's program catalog and prices, please check out https://cmssny.org/education/.

Trust Your Gut Productions, LLC, is a professional theatre company specializing in the creation and support of new works including plays, musicals, cabarets, murder mysteries, site-specific theatre, educational outreach and more. TYGP has a long history of didactic theatre projects, including pieces and projects based around anti-bullying, cyber-etiquette, civic duty, drug and substance awareness, and more. For 6 years, TYGP has run its Summer Academy, based in Gloversville, NY, which provides students ages 9-19 with a 4 week-long pay-what-you-can summer arts camp, during which they receive conservatory-style training in all aspects of performing arts (including playwriting, music composition, acting, dancing, technical theatre, and more) as they endeavor to create, produce, and perform their own, original musical adaptation of a piece of world literature. We believe that every child is worthy of high-quality arts training, and that our unique pedagogy can help students in all aspects of their academic, personal, and professional lives through engendering strong interpersonal communication skills, body and mind awareness, critical thinking and problem solving, and aids in fostering and growing their creativity and capacity for collaboration.

I offer hands-on creative writing workshops in poetry and prose (3-5 days each---3 workshops per day---across a chosen grade level, where each class gets 3-5 visits each). I meet with teachers to discuss their curriculum needs and thematic requests, suggesting various workshop ideas tailored to their requests. Teachers then choose what works best for them---for example: Assistance with reluctant writers, adding details, word choice, adjective strength, voice---in whatever current learning theme is paramount, such as animals, environment, feelings, character development, social studies, etc. I support teachers throughout the residency where they will be present and interact whenever their insight is needed as I teach. During and after the residency, I check in (over lunch, etc.) to ascertain how teachers are feeling about their students' progress, and also to offer many resources from both my books, stories, poems, and teacher oriented publications (nine books with Scholastic Professional Books for teachers) where they might copy any lessons they wish to use in the future. I also offer follow-up ideas at the end of every residency for those who wish to continue using the writing "tools/ideas" I present to their students. And there are always numerous options! I love to work with the core levels to help develop a stronger writing momentum with students (for example, 2nd grades in fall, same students in 3rd grade with different themes/format the following year, 4th grade added on or begun simultaneously--always building on previous workshop skills, etc. Districts have booked me in various schools for 25 plus years, often having me conduct workshops from year to year in multiple levels, as teachers love the support and boost my energy brings to their classrooms and students from which they springboard after I leave. The sky's the limit! I am here to serve educationally and creatively.

I teach fun, hands-on painting workshops with a specialty in watercolor, gouache, and murals!

Griffin Brady is a celebrated teaching artist who holds a masters degree in Ethnomusicology and is the acclaimed director of the Slyboots School, Slyboots Circus and the Bernard Woma Dagara Music Center USA. Griffin leads tours to schools across the country with the Slyboots Circus and the Saakumu Dance Troupe from Ghana, West Africa.

Educational Market Best-Selling Author and TEDx speaker Jermiko Thomas delivers engaging literacy and social-emotional learning programs through the Adventures of Walter series. Programs support literacy development, STEM curiosity, SEL skills, bullying prevention, autism inclusion, and positive character development through interactive storytelling and classroom engagement. The Adventures of Walter collection also includes student learning resources such as activity workbooks, coloring books, and an American Sign Language (ASL) Alphabet & Numbers workbook, helping reinforce literacy, creativity, and inclusive learning. Jermiko’s programs are inspired by his personal journey — he did not speak until age six and first communicated through sign language, making his work especially meaningful for students with diverse learning and communication needs. Programs are designed for elementary schools (Pre-K–5) and can be delivered as assemblies, classroom workshops, literacy events, STEM enrichment sessions, and special education programming.