I am on the Tennessee Arts Commission Artist Roster in the categories of Arts Integration and Professional Development. Residency fees may be covered through applying for a grant with TAC. Through Metro Arts Commission, I trained in Restorative Justice Arts Projects, and conduct these in collaboration with TPAC Education and other RJAP teaching artists.
This four-minute video shows the process of dance residencies conducted for R.I.S.E.: Refugee and Immigrant Students Empowered:
Below are three examples of independent arts integration residencies I offer. Each residency can be customized for each school, and these are just examples of themes to explore. I can develop a unique residency for your school or organization based on your needs. Collaborating with teachers optimizes the benefits for students:
Whole School Community Building Residencies
Through TPAC Education’s semester-long Disney Musicals in the Schools residences, particularly when paired with their ArtSmart Residencies at the same school, I have witnessed the value of long-term relationships between a teaching artist and a school. I am passionate about developing year-long relationships with one or two schools or school clusters in Davidson or nearby counties. Working in tandem with administration and faculty, I can design arts integrated experiences to help strengthen your school community and focus on a particular character or theme for the year. This would be a collaboratively-envisioned residency and could involve one visit per classroom per month for the school year, or be more intensively scheduled at a particular time.
These residencies are also available on a more limited scale, with funding through Student Ticket Subsidy Grants. In December 2019, I worked with all classes 1st-4th grade at Highland Park Elementary School in Columbia, TN.
Please contact me if you would like to start a conversation about how an arts integrative residency can help you enhance your school culture.
Arts Infused SEL 
In October of 2019 I conducted this residency for five classrooms of students at Oakland Middle School identified with behavior or emotional challenges or learning disabilities. Like all my residencies, this can be catered for each school’s need.
Residency includes reflective and creative activities that address:
- Identifying and drawing individual emotional trajectories.
- Navigating emotional trajectories in a group; developing mindfulness of others’ emotional states while handling your own
- Understanding and Embodying Community
- Articulating Personal Identity
Storytelling and Storysharing — based on the Narrative4 empathy-building process of telling a partner’s story in first person.
Individual self reflection and community building within the creative process helps to engage the students with SEL curriculum. Deep reflection on identity through inter and intra personal dialogue, kinesthetic exploration, and story-telling practices develops self-awareness and self-to-other awareness. Risk-taking and deep listening in activities reinforces empathy and healthy boundaries. Showing vulnerability in reflection and pushing outside of personal comfort zones through movement and storytelling builds trust among participants, and encourages growth mindset.
Giving Back: Honoring Our Leaders, Our Communities and Ourselves through Dance 
and Spoken Word
Designed specifically for 5th grade and adaptable for grades 2-6. Students explore characteristics of communities, and what makes communities healthy and unhealthy. They identify problems within their school or wider communities and express ways of solving those problems through the creation of small-group dances. They reflect on historical figures who have positively impacted their communities and the world and create tribute dances and/or poems for those people. Then, students individually consider what they have to give back to the community, and express this through movement and writing. The culmination of the program is sharing of student-created dances which reflect values of their community and student’s individual contributions.
Standards:
Connects with 5th grade social studies curriculum on Civil Rights leaders and civic efficacy. If poetry is included, language arts standard of writing in a variety of different modes is addressed.
Dance: Understanding choreographic principles, processes, and structures; Understanding dance as a way to create and communicate meaning; Applying and demonstrating critical and creative thinking skills in dance.
Depending on the scope of your student share event, this residency requires 3-5 lessons per classroom.
For residency fees and options, please contact me at amanda.c.roche@gmail.com.