Arts in Education

Students

HGSE Arts in Education Program
2008-2009 Student Profiles

Jamila Amarshi, a Stanford University graduate with a double-major degree in studio art and psychology, is interested in community-based youth arts and in education in developing countries. She has worked for Human Rights First in New York, served as an intern with youth arts organizations, and done HIV-education work in Tanzania. While studying at HGSE, Jamila is also working as a teen programs intern at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and dancing with the Harvard
Ballroom Dance Team.

Varina Bleil, a 1994 graduate of the University of Texas program in film production, joins AIE after fourteen years in Los Angeles, where she worked first as senior vice president at a film production company at Warner Bros. and later as an independent producer and writer. Varina was associate producer on the film Mr. and Mrs. Smith, wrote the screenplay adaptation of the Newberry Award-winning children's book The Moorchild (by Eloise McGraw), served as a staff writer for the one-hour television series Eureka on the Sci-Fi channel, and taught theater and creative writing to at-risk teenagers and juvenile offenders, as well as psychiatric patients from the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. For course credit in the HGSE Field Experience Program, she is collaborating with CAST (the Center for Applied Special Technology) to create a prototype for a television series that fosters social and emotional learning using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) for children ages 4 - 8.

Angélica Allende Brisk, the proud mother of Alejandra and Isabela Trumble and an award-winning producer and freelance editor since 1991, worked as a staff producer for La Plaza at WGBH in Boston prior to her enrollment, writing, producing, and directing several half-hour documentaries for local and nationalbroadcast. Her independent production credits include Sex Without Love, a poem by Sharon Olds; the feature film Never Met Picasso; and 16 Decisions, an international festival favorite exploring a Bangladeshi woman's social charter. She recently released Scenes from a Parish, a documentarychronicling the recreation of community in a mill townparish, and is finishing work on The Beauty of All Things: The Work of Hyman Bloom.

Kimberly Dawson, a native Bostonian who graduated from the Boston University acting program, comes to Harvard after sojourns as actress, screenwriter, and producer in London, New York, and Los Angeles. A satellite translator of Portuguese for Habitat Humanity Brazil, she has traveled as a humanitarian volunteer and as a professional card player. While at HGSE, Kim is volunteering as a drama teacher with the Huntington Theatre/Codman Academy collaboration and working with
Project Zero.

Angela Dykman was born and raised in Tasmania, Australia. The recipient of a Tasmanian Fellowship for teachers to study in the United States, she was an elementary/middle school-teacher in a rural public school prior to joining the AIE program. Angela is particularly interested in the use of arts as a teaching and learning tool for 'at risk' students and is interning at the Cloud Foundation for
course credit in the Field Experience Program.

Francie Furlong comes to HGSE with an educational background that includes precollege work in voice and piano at Julliard, a BA in theater Arts from Brown University, and an MA in Drama from the University of Virginia. She is the founder/artistic director of the Old Michie Puppet and Youth Theatre in Charlottesville, where she works as a professional puppeteer, specializing in Czech marionettes. A
licensed K-12 English/ Drama teacher, Francie's current projects include working on a textbook, "Journal of a Director's Craft in Youth Theatre," for New Plays, Inc., attending early childhood education workshops and conferences at Reggio Emilia, and taking Tina Grotzer's "Framing Scientific Research for Public Understanding" class to figure out the relationship between the arts and sciences.

Maura Tighe Gattuso, enrolled at HGSE to explore what she doesn't know about working with children in community arts settings, has worked extensively as a theater director, both in a public high school and as the owner of a small non-profit educational theater program. She hopes to collect ammunition to effectively advocate for arts education in public school settings, possibly changing the world as we know it (education reform is a passionate issue for her). Maura, who would also like to develop a better understanding of why she keeps playing with the children, is also a casting director for film and television (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Sasha Heer just earned a BA (titled "Teaching Young Children Through Social Studies and the Arts") at Bennington College. Through teaching in a variety of early childhood settings, she has come to a Reggio-inspired, constructivist perspective on education. Sasha's interests at present include the close examination of student work, the role of improvisation in teaching, and the development of effective teacher education policies.

Sara Webb Hiris has come to the AIE program with a background in human biology, holistic medicine, and visual art. She is currently working with the Artful Thinking project at Harvard Project Zero and is on the arts planning committee of the Boston Public Schools. At HGSE, Sara is focusing on arts and wellness integration in school curricula.

Christine Jee did her undergraduate BA in elementary education at Boston University and has been teaching second grade in Lawrence, north of Boston, for the past three years, where she plans to return upon graduation. She volunteers in the family programming department at the Institute of Contemporary Art, serves as a mentor at the Boys and Girls Club, and participates in the Bread Loaf Teachers' Network.

Uday Joshi worked as commissioner of arts and cultural affairs for the city of Oakland and as a teacher at the East Oakland School of the Arts before coming to Cambridge. In the spring of 2008 in Oakland, he played the male lead in the premier of Mirrors of Mumbai, a jazz/Indian classical operetta that premiered last spring. Uday was recognized by Americans for the Arts as one of ten "emerging leaders in the arts" for his recent work as director of youth programs for the New WORLD Theater at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Piper LaGrelius comes to the HGSE AIE program (where she is focusing on arts integration theory and practice) with a BFA in musical theater from the University of Michigan as well as an MA in elementary education. Piper has worked as a teaching artist focusing on arts-integrated curriculum design and as a professional development mentor for the Palo Alto Unified School district in partnership with the Bay Area organization, TheaterWorks. Piper also has experience as a classroom teacher, and as the managing director of a non-profit Michigan's children's theater company.

Jody Richardson did her undergraduate studies in violin performance and music theory pedagogy at the New England Conservatory. She has an enthusiasm for singing, learning about non-classical styles of music, and speaking Spanish. Jody is currently a Music Together teacher in Boston, and while most of her educationalexperience has involved early childhood, she is looking forward to expanding that
experience to include all age groups.

Allyson Ross, a native of Norfolk, Virginia, joins the AIE program after teaching two years as a 4th grade Title 1 school teacher in Norfolk Public Schools. A graduate of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, she is engaging her passion for modern dance and ballet (and her aspiration for a professional dance career) through involvement in the Harvard Dance Program and the Harvard Ballet Company, and has also begun to study Bikram Yoga. Allyson one day hopes to open up a performing arts magnet elementary/ middle school in Norfolk.

Diana Norma Szokolyai ("Norma" for all who know her) is a Hungarian and American poet, dancer, and visual artist who comes to Harvard by way of France, where she spent a couple of years doing research on Gypsy writers for her M.A. in French studies. Her work has appeared in various literary publications, and poet Sairica Rose has called her book of poems and photographs, Roses in the Snow, "an exquisite collection of postcards from journeys through the inner and outer
universes." Norma performs her poetry in a variety of local and international venues with Sounds in Bloom, the poetry-music-movement-art collaborative she cofounded with saxophonist/composer Dennis Shafer.

Ben Turbow comes to the AIE program from Chicago, where he served as an evaluation assistant at the John G. Shedd Aquarium. His extensive experience in museum education evaluation also includes work at the Exhibit Museum of Natural History at the U of Michigan, and work in Xi'an and Beijing, China. Ben received his BA in psychology, art and culture, with a concentration in Spanish and minor in art history, from the University of Michigan and his MBA in marketing from Loyola University Business School in Chicago. Ben is fluent in Spanish and studied abroad at the Spanish American Institute, Universidad de Sevilla, Spain, where he did coursework in the history of 20th century political and social thought.

Paulina Villarroel a B.F.A. degree recipient from the Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film and Television, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, has worked as the video production manager for Facing History and Ourselves, an international educational non-profit committed to teaching civic responsibility, tolerance, and social action to young people, as a way of fostering moral adulthood. Over the last ten years, she
has worked on several independent shorts and features in New England and New York. Paulina's documentary credits include This Far By Faith (Episodes 1 and 5) produced for PBS, and Half Past Autumn, The Life and Times of Gordon Parks, produced for HBO. At HGSE Paulina's interests are in working with youth of diverse backgrounds to develop their own creative voice through filmmaking for social change—and in exploring how media literacy can be used to foster civic participation in youth as producers, not just consumers, of media.

Leda Whyte comes to the AIE program at HGSE after a year of graduate work at the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Originally from the Chicago area and most recently from Los Angeles, Leda has a background working in creative drama and museum education, and was a staff member in the education department at the California Science Center, where she developed a variety of educational theater programs and coordinated a science theater outreach
program. She has a BS in speech/theater from Northwestern University and has worked as an actress and director in Chicago and Los Angeles.

Elena Belle White joins the AIE program with eight years experience working as a teaching artist and arts administrator in a variety of youth-focused visual arts programs. As an artist/teacher/activist, Elena affirms the potential of the arts to empower youth and communities, to foster creative thinking, and to effect meaningful social change. She worked as a coordinator and staff artist at Project
YIELD, a nationally recognized after-school arts program in Oakland, California, and most recently coordinated youth and community programs at the School of TheMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston. At HGSE, Elena interns at Project Zero with the Making Learning Visible project.

Fung Sing Wong is at HGSE on scholarship from the Ministry of Education, Singapore. Her work in Singapore involved gifted education language arts curriculum design and implementation and teacher selection and training, as well as research informing practice and national policy. She is interested in any discussion about what a powerful language arts education for high-ability learners could look like, and is also interested in possible collaborative, cross-cultural /international inquiry projects in the language arts.