Summit X Distinguished Presenters

Mary Ellen (mel) Basham has 12 years experience and is currently art educator and National Art Honor Society sponsor at Shepherd High School. After completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Sam Houston State University, Mel began her teaching career in Aldine Independent School District where she developed an Advanced Placement Art History and Studio Art Program at MacArthur High School. An active member of National Art Education Association and Texas Art Education Association, she serves TAEA as High School Division Chair, Region IV Representative, and was selected 2008 High School Art Educator for Texas. As an art educator, Mel believes teaching process is the most valuable lesson for students to achieve. Her philosophy is summarized in this quote by Claudia Betti: “In life as in art, the process is the point. If you take care of the process, the product will take care of itself.”

 

Nicole Brisco is the Vice President of Membership for Texas Art Education Association and the visual arts instructor at Pleasant Grove High School in Texarkana, Texas. She teaches Art I/GT, Drawing II Honors, Drawing and Design III PreAP, and Advanced Placement Art. Her students have garnered state and national awards along with over $1 million in scholarships. Along with her duties as an art specialist, she is currently the contributing editor for School Arts Magazine and Discovering Drawing. She was the Secondary Division Chair for TAEA as well as a presenter on the state and national level. She has received the TAEA Secondary Art Educator of the Year Award, the Stephen F. Austin Art Educator of the Year Award, and the TRAHC Arts Hero Award. Mrs. Brisco is a practicing artist. Her specialty is large-scale mixed media and figurative works.

 

Sara A. Chapman is Executive Director of Texas Art Education Association and the Fine Arts Coordinator for Alief ISD in Houston. She possesses 44 years of experience as a professional art educator in Texas, including 15 years as an art teacher and 29 years as an arts administrator. She was Past President, President, President-elect and Secretary of TAEA and also editor of the Star newsletter and the Trends journal. She is a distinguished fellow. Sara is on the Board of Directors for both Center for Educator Development in the Fine Arts and Texas Coalition for Quality Arts Education and was a former NAEA Western Region Vice-President. Sara currently serves on the NAEA Policy & Procedures Restructure Committee and as the Professional Materials Committee.

 

Ronelle, Howell B.A. in Art, M.F.A. and M.Ed., taught at the university level in both studio and communication design, and has worked as a graphic designer and professional artist/muralist in West Texas before finding her niche in elementary art education. She was named Elementary Art Teacher of the Year for Texas by TAEA in 2007. As a past AREA II Representative she focused on empowering teachers to implement innovative art curricula and integrated assessment, while establishing strong peer mentoring and support. Ronelle teaches art at Cathelene Thomas Elementary in Slaton ISD. She teaches a weekly Art Club for fourth and fifth graders at Stephen F. Middle School. She serves as Slaton’s Youth Art Month chairman, reporting to the state about the comprehensive Slaton YAM celebrations. She is focused on providing truly meaningful and high interest art experiences for young children that build on one another to expand their understanding of the visual arts through making art themselves and interacting with the art of others.

 

Samantha Melvin is Elementary Division Chair for the Texas Art Education Association. She has also served as Elementary Division Chair-Elect, and Area VI Representative for TAEA. She is currently Western Region Elementary Division Representative for The National Art Education Association. She teaches Fine Arts at RJ Richey Elementary in Burnet CISD, Burnet, Texas. Named Educator of the Year for Spring Branch ISD (Houston) in 2007, she was also named Outstanding Teacher of the Humanities by Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Samantha was recently named Educator of the Year for Burnet CISD, and is a 2009 recipient of the Power of Art award. She teaches art classes weekly at the Boys & Girls Club of Burnet, and serves on their Advisory Council. This is her fifth year of teaching.

 

Sara Hickman likes to write about things that pop into her head, like bowls full of stars and kerosene and faithful hearts and cantaloupe and birdhouses. She likes to sing, too. She likes lots of voices singing. As she says, “It only takes one voice to start a choir.” She rode in an elevator with Pete Townshend, sang a duet with George Burns and charmed Johnny Carson twice on his late night show. Sara has recorded 14 albums to date, some for big people, some for small. Her latest release is Motherlode, a two-disc CD set of 20 songs.

Sara grew up in Houston as the daughter of artistic parents—a mother who was a fiber artist, a father who was a painting professor. Her household was full of writing, painting, jars of clay. At 7, she started to play the guitar. She wrote her first song at 8, performed it on stage, and won an award from the Daughters of the American Revolution. She was hooked as a singer/songwriter.

From 1978-1981, Sara attended the High School for Performing & Visual Arts as a vocal major, and afterwards the University of North Texas in Denton, receiving a BA. in Fine Arts. She had garnered a following from her club performances (which paid for her art supplies). Upon graduation, she moved to Dallas. It was there that Sara created her first album, Equal Scary People, on her own. It won awards from the Dallas Observer and landed her a deal with Elektra Records. When Sara’s third album, Necessary Angels, was shelved by Elektra, fans rallied together to help her raise almost $50,000 to buy the album back. It was a moving testimony to the loyal support she had earned from her performances.

During this time, she started to become very involved in many community issues and charities. In 1994, Sara moved to Austin. During 1995, she toured with Nanci Griffith and Dan Fogelberg. In 1996, she self-produced Misfits, a collection of “odds and ends” from her musical career. During this time, Sara had her first baby, a little girl named Lily. In the following years she recorded several albums, including Two Kinds of Laughter, Spiritual Appliances, This Christmas Wish, Ready to Pop, Faithful Heart, and a 6- hour DVD retrospective, I Am Going on a Journey. During the creation of Spiritual Appliances, she also married a wonderful man named Lance and toured into her eighth month of pregnancy with her second child, Iolana.

In 1997, Sara was intrigued by a parenting class, and she became a certified instructor. While teaching “Redirecting Children’s Behavior,” Sara began her series of releases for children (and their parents), beginning in 2000 with Newborn, a CD of songs for parents to sing to their children. She followed with Toddler, a collection of 31 one-minute songs and stories, and Big Kid for the pre-teen crowd. These children’s albums have won many awards. Newborn raised more than $50,000 for the Hill Country Youth Ranch in Ingram, Texas, a safe haven for severely abused and neglected children, and the Mautner Project, which helps lesbians with cancer. The Hill Country Youth Ranch has opened the Sara Hickman Childrens’ Fund, which accepts matching grants and buys musical instruments, dance shoes, and art supplies. Sara, her husband, photographer/designer Lance Schriner, photographer Todd Wolfson, and designer Neil Ferguson are the founders of Stingray, a design group that creates CD package designs. They have created packages and posters for Ian Moore, Tish Hinojosa, Christine Albert & Chris Gage, The First United Methodist Chapel Chorale, The Will Taylor String Quartet, and, of course, Sara herself. With all that Sara is involved in, she spends the majority of her time with her children. She can be found at home having a picnic in the backyard with her girls or helping them to paint a wall mural in their room. She attends field trips with her children and occasionally teaches art and music. Daisy Sour Cream, Southwest Airlines and many others are also part of Sara’s portfolio—she sings national commercials, too.

And Sara loves to bowl (her high score is a 197), paint murals, garden, occasionally write articles for books and magazines, and hang out with her husband doing absolutely nothing but holding hands.

 

Denise Maxwell Cochran currently serves as Round Rock ISD’s Dance Curriculum Specialist for the Fine Arts. She also serves as the Middle School Dance Program Coordinator and Cheer Advisor. Denise has been a dance educator for 23 years. She is Past President of Texas Dance Educators Association, which named her Texas Dance Director of the Year in 2005. She also serves as a member of the Executive Board for the CEDFA and is an active member of Texas Association of Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance. She judges for numerous dance contest and camp companies around the state and is currently helping develop standards for K-8 dance in our public schools. Denise is an Austin native and loves living in Round Rock with her wonderful husband of 17 years, Oliver, and her sons, Oliver III and William.

 

Betsy Heathcock graduated from the University of Dayton in 1978, with a Bachelor of Science degree in Elementary and all level Special Education. She taught severely handicapped students for two years on Long Island, then relocated to Texas. For nine years she taught Special Education and Dance Team at Dulles High School. In 1986 Betsy completed her Dance Certification through the University of Houston and began the Dance program at Dulles High School in 1986. In 1989 she moved to Spring Branch and taught Dance at Memorial High School for six years. When Austin High School opened she decided to return to Fort Bend and begin the Austin Angels Dance Team and teach dance. Betsy has been actively involved in the Texas Dance Drill Team Educators Association since 1984 and has served as Treasurer, 2nd Vice President, President, Past President and chairperson for numerous committees. Betsy received the Director of the Year and Lifetime Achievement awards. She is also an instructor and adjudicator for MA Dance and was the assistant director for the US Olympic Festival in 1986.

 

Mary Kepper is a member of the Fine Arts Department at Round Rock High School. She has been teaching for 34 years. Mary Beth retired from Bowie High School in Austin in 2005 in order to be a full-time single mom. She joined the faculty at RRHS in the fall of 2006. She spent five years as a member of the University of Texas Longhorn Band and earned her degree in Biology and Geography from UT in 1974. Having grown up in the dance studios of Austin and New Orleans, she has been active in dance education organizations, served on many committees over the years, and taken numerous national and international performance and competition field trips with her students. Mary Beth has been a member of the CEDFA training cadre for several years, and has been active in several other dance and fine arts organizations. She is the recipient of multiple Teacher of the Year awards and was named Texas Dance Director of the Year, Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, and was inducted into the Texas Dance Educators Hall of Fame in 2008.

 

John Tanner

As the director of the Center for Innovative Measures at CCSSO, John brings with him a unique and varied background perfectly suited to the role. He began his work in education during graduate school, where as an English major he met and became enamored of several leaders within New Standards, one of the early pioneers in the efforts to create standards around the skills and expectations we should have of students. As a result of that work he left his English career behind him and entered the world of measurement where he has been ever since, sensing that if the world of education was going to change for the better the measurement tools were likely to be the chief driver.

From New Standards John went to the Delaware Department of Education, where after only two months on the job he was asked to serve as the state test director. In that role he helped design and build the first several rounds of the Delaware Student Testing Program, as well as the original accountability and reporting systems used by the state. The use of technology as a reporting tool was at the time somewhat unique, and Delaware was one of the leaders in its use for disseminating assessment data.

After three years in Delaware, John joined what was then Harcourt Educational Measurement, where he spent the next eight years in a variety of executive roles, most of which were focused on the issue of large-scale assessment. These included roles in test development, national and state accounts, and business development. During his last two years with the company, he led the development of a set of frameworks that became the basis for a system by which schools and districts can greatly improve their use of assessment data. It was also during this period that many of his ideas for the next generation of school reforms were beginning to gel, and so began a search for the next opportunity to move the message forward.

In January of 2008 John came to CCSSO joining a tradition of excellence that began long before he ever even considered a career in measurement. Included in that tradition are dedicated professionals that have run some of the more successful projects in the history of large-scale assessment, including the state collaborative work known by the acronym “SCASS,” and the National Conference on Student Assessment. With the addition of the Center CCSSO is now poised to continue the tradition, extending its reach to the current issues facing the next generation of standards, their measures, and the students who will be affected by them.

 

Frank Coachman assumed the duties of Deputy Director for the Texas Music Educators Association in July 1999. For the previous 22 years, Coachman taught in Killeen ISD, 18 as Director of Bands for C.E. Ellison High School. Under his direction the organization consistently received UIL sweepstakes and music festival awards. Coachman served as Ellison’s Associate Director of Bands from 1979- 1981 and as Director of Bands for Nolan Junior High from 1978-79. As TMEA Deputy Director Coachman oversees the formation of Texas Future Music Educator chapters, guides the TMEA Mentoring Network, facilitates TMEA auditions among other duties. Coachman is primary facilitator of the TMEA/TMAC music assessment project and has served as a member of the CEDFA Summit Cadre since 2001. He is a Past President of TMEA and also served as State Band Vice-President from ’90-92, Region Band Chair from ’83-90 and Region Jazz Chair from ’81-84. He was TCME President from ’97-99 and has served on numerous boards and committees. Coachman is an honorary lifetime member of the Texas Music Adjudicators Association.

 

Debra Erck is in her 21st year of teaching Kindergarten through 5th grade music at Hill Elementary in Austin ISD. Debra earned her undergraduate degree cum laude from Southwestern University in Georgetown. She was a contributing author for the recent Silver Burdett music series Making Music and has written for several other publications. Over the years, she has served the Austin school district in many capacities, including Director of the All-City Elementary Choir and Chair of the Elementary Music Curriculum Committee. Debra holds Level III Kodály certification. Her training and participation in Cognitive Coaching was featured on a video series produced by ASCD. This spring she was selected Teacher of the Year for her campus and a semi-finalist at the district level. In addition to her school activities, Debra has served as the Children’s Chorus director for the Austin Lyric Opera and is currently the Director of Children’s Music at University United Methodist Church. She is currently working on her National Board Certification in Early and Middle Childhood Music. Debra is blessed with a wonderful family of musicians; husband Marc, and sons, Nicholas and Benjamin.

 

Robert Floyd currently serves as Executive Director of the Texas Music Educators Association and resides in Austin. Prior to moving to Austin in 1993, Floyd taught instrumental music in the Richardson Independent School District for 25 years. Under his direction, the Berkner High School Band was one of seven band programs in the nation to receive the coveted Sudler Award, presented by the Sousa Foundation in recognition of excellence in public school instrumental music. In 1974, 1986 and again in 1990 the Symphonic I band was selected by a series of taped auditions as the outstanding concert band in its class in Texas. In 1990 the Berkner Band was one of the five bands in the country to perform at the prestigious Midwest Clinic in Chicago. Robert served as the high school representative on the National Band Association Board on two different occasions and in 1986 was one of eight band directors in the United States elected to membership in the American Bandmasters Association. In 1992 Robert was one of ten band directors in the US named to the Legion of Honor by the Sousa Foundation. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Dallas Wind Symphony and served as interim conductor of that organization prior to his move to Austin. In 2004 Robert was named “Bandmaster of the Year” from the Texas Bandmasters Association. In his position as Executive Director of TMEA he is responsible for management of the association, production of the annual clinic/convention (which has more than 21,000 attendees), editing the monthly journals The Southwestern Musician, and lobbying the Legislature and State Board of Education to promote and preserve the fine arts in the public schools. he also serves as Chair of the Texas Coalition for Quality Arts Education and on the board of the Texas Music Project.

 

Holly Kofod is a graduate of Mc Murry University, Abilene and the OAKE endorsed Kodály Certification Program of AISD/Texas State University, formerly Southwest Texas State University. She is a contributing author of Promising Practices: Prekindergarten Music Education, edited by Barbara Andress, published by MENC. She was acknowledged by the authors, Micheál Houlahan and Philip Tacka, for her contributions regarding assessments in Kodály Today: A Cognitive Approach to Elementary Music Education published by Oxford University Press. She has presented workshops on music in early childhood education as well as technology; including working as the technology trainer for the LEEKS (Literacy Education Employing Kodály Strategies) program, a federally funded grant program awarded to Houston ISD. She is a member of OAKE, KET, TMEA, TCEA, and ISTE. She is the campus webmaster and the ITRC, Instructional Technology Resource Contact, at Wooten Elementary in Austin, where as the music specialist, she teaches elementary music, K-5 and was honored as the Teacher of the Year in 2007. Her students have participated in such activities as the online “Chat with the Maestro” program sponsored by the Austin Symphony Orchestra and are currently creating digital portfolios of their work for archival and assessment purposes.

 

Kay Vanlandingham was appointed as Administrative Director for the Texas Music Educators Association in 2007. She has dedicated 31 years of her life to nurture orchestra, choir, and band students. In each of her assignments she built music programs numerically and in excellence. She served Round Rock ISD as Fine Arts Facilitator, as orchestra liaison for the district, department chair and on various committees. She was co-conductor of the Austin Youth Philharmonic Orchestra from 1996 until 2000 and has been the co-conductor for the Austin Youth Symphony Orchestra since 2004. She was named WalMart’s Outstanding Teacher of the Year. Kay holds membership and affiliations with TMEA, TODA, Mu Omicron, and TMAA, and has served on the Committee on Standards of Adjudication and Performance Practice and theUIL PML Committee. She has conducted the Longhorn Music Camp’s Philharmonic Orchestra since 2005. Kay is a past President of the Texas Orchestra Directors Association. She is a frequent judge and clinician. In addition to performing and teaching violin, she also performs as a soprano soloist in her community.

 

Betsy Cornwell will be working in her 32nd year as a Theatre Arts teacher for the Austin Independent School District nest year. Most of that time has been spent with James Bowie High School’s Starlight Theatre Company, which has performed twice at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. Betsy’s students have won numerous awards and performed in countless well-received productions. She has served as President of the Texas Educational Theatre Association and won that organization’s Founder’s Award in 1995. She has worked on the Curriculum Task Force for AISD and was a member of CEDFA’s original cadre of trainers. She has taught workshops on theatre arts curriculum at state conventions, UIL Superconferences, Regional Service Centers, and school inservices.

 

Dave Feranchak has been involved in theatre for over 20 years. In 2006, he earned a Master’s degree in Educational Theatre from New York University. During this time, he worked in London and Dublin with world-renowned leaders in educational theatre. In 2004, he spent three weeks in Japan as part of the Fulbright Memorial Fund Teacher Program observing the Japanese educational system. His professional theatre credits include Stage Manager for the Pasadena Shakespeare Company and stage carpenter for Lakeside Dinner Theatre in Oswego, N.Y. He has taught theatre for 14 years. Before coming to Conroe High School, he taught at Humble High School (which advanced to the State UIL One-Act Play Contest), Campbell Junior High, and Liberty High School in Ohio. He taught the Summer Drama Conservatory at Kingwood College, and for the Montgomery College Summer Youth Program. He worked as the Script Coordinator for Hollywood Squares. He was an administrative assistant in the Marketing Department of DreamWorks Pictures, the Music Department of the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, and for Dick Clark Productions. He also worked for HBO on the staff of the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival and as a production assistant for Stone Soup Productions.

 

Pam Fletcher Friday is a theatre teacher at Hill Country in the Eanes ISD by day and a professional costume designer by night. Pam has brought her theatre arts techniques and costuming skills for use in classes in private and public schools, non-profit organizations and museums from Austin to Baltimore. Pam has worked with students as young as 3 and as old as 93. She is a resident designer with the Vortex Repertory Company, Pollyanna Theatre Co., Second Youth and Summer Stock Austin. She has a show, Iolanthe, opening this weekend with the Austin Gilbert and Sullivan Society.

 

Carlen Gilseth received a MFA in Directing from the University of Texas. Prior to coming to The Woodlands High School in 1993, he taught acting at UT, Box Office Management at the University of Arizona, and Technical Theatre at Montgomery College. He also acted at the Paul Bunyan Playhouse in Bemidji, Minnesota. He has served on the Texas Thespians State Adult Advisory Board and has served as State Chapter Director. He has served on the board of the Texas Educational Theatre Association and was chairman of the 2004 TETA Convention. He was instrumental in The Woodlands receiving TETA Institutional Member status with his establishment of the technical theatre program. His students have received many scholarships and some are currently on Broadway, in regional theatres, and in film and television. He has taken five plays to UIL State and was State Champion in 2000 with The Shadow Box. Under his direction TWHS has won the International Thespian Society/Educational Theatre Association Outstanding School Award in 2000 and 2007. His tech students have twice won the ITS/EDTA Outstanding Technical Student Award. In the summer of 2001 he received the Fulbright Memorial Fund Scholarship and spent three weeks in Japan