ALTO: Arts Integration

Arts Integration is an approach to teaching in which students construct and demonstrate understanding through an art form. Opera includes elements of all art forms, so ALTO teaching artists give students creative tools in Dance, Theater, Music, Poetry, Visual Arts or Media Arts while students engage in a creative process to make original art that expresses their understanding of something else they’re learning in school. Since 2010, ALTO teaching artists have led over 300 arts integrated multi-session residencies in the Santa Fe Public Schools. Current residencies are listed below, some of which are also available (as noted) for students in Albuquerque Public Schools on a limited basis.

Residencies Workshops General FAQ’s Family Info Past Residencies

2024-2025 – Arts Integration Offerings

Residency Descriptions

STEM Connections (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math)

NEW! — LOOK AT THAT FLOWER!
Calling all Scientists and Artists to join forces and Explore visual problem solving through botanical illustration!
6 sessions, Grade 4
Making realistic drawings can seem like a scary task to the average 4th-grader, and many assume that it is a matter of elusive talent rather than a skill process that they can learn. In this residency, students will learn to closely observe plants and insects native to Northern New Mexico and beyond. They will apply a variety of drawing techniques to create realistic illustrations of their choices of flora and fauna. As they work to finish their final product, they will also reflect on their process and create a written artist’s statement explaining the scientific discoveries and artistic choices they made along the way. They may discover that Artists and Scientists are really very similar. Liberty Yablon guides students through this creative and reflective approach to understanding symbiotic relationships, photosynthesis and habitat protection through thoughtfully constructed botanical illustrations. Teaching Artist: Liberty Yablon

Shape-Shifting Geometry
3 sessions, Grades 2-3
This experiential unit of study will explore and reinforce students’ understanding of two- dimensional (circle, square, triangle, rectangle) and three-dimensional shapes (sphere, cube, pyramid). They will be creating these shapes with their bodies. The students will be challenged in the first two sessions to create these different shapes working in small groups of two or three students. The third session will challenge the students to use shapes to create a short skit based on a poem by Shel Silverstein poem called “Shapes”. These three sessions can be scheduled over one or two weeks. Teaching Artist: Wendy Chapin

Mathematics Gets the Blues
5 sessions over 2-3 weeks, Grades 1-2 (on a limited basis, this residency is also available for APS educators)
Students will work together to write a blues song using the established lyric and musical pattern of that form. Along the way they will create and discover patterns and repetitions in groupings of 4, laying the foundations for addition and multiplication. By practicing these musical patterns within the metric framework, students will connect with these basic mathematical concepts in an entirely new way, cementing a greater, longer lasting understanding. Teaching Artist: Beth Ratay

Volcanoes: The Story of the Valles Caldera
8 sessions, Grades 6-8 (recommended twice weekly for 4 weeks)
When students transform earth science into the immediacy of movement, they experience a leap forward in comprehension while simultaneously building learning skills transferable to other subjects. In this residency students choreograph the powerful geologic forces behind one of the largest volcanic eruptions in this continent, the Valles Caldera. This is an integrated dance / literacy / science residency with a focus on understanding the processes that underlie the formation of volcanoes in general and the Valles Caldera in particular. Concepts including plate tectonics, convergence, divergence, subduction, translation and uplift are translated into dance. Teaching Artist: Randy Barron

New Mexico Desert: Story of Sand
7 sessions, Grades 2-3 (recommended twice weekly for 3 weeks, plus celebration day)
This is a 6-day integrated dance/science literacy residency focused on sequencing and moving the rock cycle. Based loosely on the FOSS 2nd grade science unit entitled “Pebbles, Sand and Silt: The Story of Sand”, students improvise dance phrases, embodying the changes over time that break down rocks to sand, and the roles that water and wind play in that process. In the process we look at various New Mexico locations where that process is clearly visible. The dance content is based on these naturally occurring events. Veteran dance teaching artist Kathleen Kingsley guides students as they creatively and collaboratively translate the essence of the story of sand into a dance “text” through a creative group process. Teaching Artist: Kathleen Kingsley

New Mexico Erosion: Wind and Water
7 sessions, Grades 4-5 (recommended twice weekly for 3 weeks, plus celebration day)
In this residency students choreograph living landscapes, embodying the powerful force that wind and water play in carving and shaping our planet and specifically our state. This is an integrated dance/ science literacy residency for 4th-5th grades focused on sequencing and visualizing the forces of wind and water and their geographic implications for New Mexico. Teaching artist Kathleen Kingsley guides students as they creatively and collaboratively translate the story of erosion in New Mexico into a dance “text” through the creative process of choreography. Teaching Artist: Kathleen Kingsley

Dry Bones Dancing
5 sessions, Grades 3-5 (on a limited basis, this residency is also available for APS educators)
In this arts integration residency, students explore musculoskeletal anatomy through improvisational movement and choreography. Students gain an understanding of the human skeleton as they engage in a process of creating choreography, tuning into their own bodies. The residency culminates in small group presentations of choreography created and performed by students. Led by experienced dance educator Julianna Massa, students will discover how their bodies are ideal tools for learning and creativity. Teaching Artist: Julianna Massa

NEW! — The Music of Math and the Science of Sound
5 sessions over 2-3 weeks, Grades 3-5 (on a limited basis, this residency is also available for APS educators)
In this residency, students will explore various ways that sound can be created, and how math and measurements work together to create multiple pitches on a single musical string (monochord). When students actively determine how sound and pitch work, they will make important scientific connections, while exercising their measurement, data collection and data organization skills. The exploration of the monochord also serves as an introduction to or review of fractional representation. After learning how a single string can be divided to create different pitches, students will create a short piece of music using the newly discovered properties of the monochord. Dr. Ratay, musician, composer and educator, leads students on this journey of discovery and creation. Teaching Artist: Beth Ratay

NEW! — Acequias: El Agua es Vida (Science Focus)
8 sessions, Grades 6-8 (Not available until Spring Semester, 2025)
In this residency, students take a deep dive into the science of watersheds, water flow, ecology of riparian areas, and the effects of global warming in New Mexico. As students gain fluency and confidence in movement, they choreograph completed dances that demonstrate their understanding of a history of place through the lens of water. An introduction of the dance elements, simple choreographic phrase structures, and practice with smaller scale challenges that build to larger ones result in complete choreographic works. Students work in groups with “expert packets” of information on specific physics or ecological topics (standards-based), which they mine for their choreography work. This residency requires that students have some familiarity with working effectively in groups as well as comprehension skills, especially reading for information, synthesizing and verbally sharing. This aspect will require extra time outside of the residency contact hours. Teacher involvement is key. Teaching Artist: Kathleen Kingsley

Math on the Move
5 sessions, Grades 3-5
Students frequently feel frustrated when asked to master mathematical skills without fully understanding the ideas behind those skills, or the ways in which they apply in daily life. In this lively residency, students explore numeracy, symbols, geometry, and collaborative choreography that bring mathematical ideas to life. Students create individual and small-group movement studies based on simple but powerful truths behind everyday math skills, and they will evaluate, edit, and revise their work before recording it on video. No previous dance experience is necessary, and children of all abilities can fully participate. Teaching Artist: Randy Barron

Finding the Math in Musical Patterns
5 sessions, 25 minutes each for Pre-K; 3 sessions, 45 minutes each for K (on a limited basis, this residency is also available for APS educators)
By identifying and creating musical patterns, students connect with basic mathematical concepts in an entirely new way, cementing a greater, longer lasting understanding of patterns and how they shape our world. Students will identify patterns in familiar songs, and create and share simple patterns using body percussion. Dr. Ratay guides students through this creative process, while demonstrating how mathematics and music intertwine to create patterns pleasing to the mind and the ear alike. Teaching Artist: Beth Ratay

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English Language Arts Connections

NEW! — Ink and Imagination
5 sessions, differentiated for Grades 2-12 (on a limited basis, this residency is also available for APS educators)
It’s often challenging for students to engage with classroom curriculum when they are struggling to truly know themselves and each other. They need Ink and Imagination! Sketched and Written ideas to be exact. In this residency, students will explore how both sketching and writing with ink on paper can be used as inventive and reflective tools to foster authentic curiosity and establish rapport and respect for the members of their classroom community. Art Making as “Research” is a powerful practice to engage youth in connecting to their own lives & curiosity and then extend that passion to learning overall. These strategies also encourage the development of student voice and choice while constructing skills that all learners can use throughout their education. In this residency, Teaching Artist Michelle Holdt, engages students in a series of art and writing explorations that support creative expression, risk-taking, communication, critical thinking, and demonstrate journaling as reflection. Join Michelle, a creative and compassionate teaching artist, as she engages students to dare, to draw, to write, and to share their imagination! Teaching Artist: Michelle Holdt

Be Your Own Poet Laureate
5 sessions, Grades 2-12
2021-2023 Santa Fe Poet Laureate Darryl Lorenzo Wellington will help students strengthen their language skill and cultivate imaginative and creative abilities, facilitating a 5-session residency where students read poems, discuss poem, critique poems, and—most importantly — write their own. Students learn to ask “Why?” — what is a poem, why is a metaphor successful, and why does a line of poetry appeal to me? The residency plan can adapt for both elementary school students and higher grades, including high school students studying literature, or students in dance, music, gymnastics history, social studies, or science, who are interested in writing cross-disciplinary poetry. Teaching Artist: Darryl Lorenzo Wellington

Poetry as Narrative Writing
5 sessions, Grades 3-12
Often, constructing a written narrative seems challenging to students who may struggle to see the main ideas in a sequence of paragraphs. Applying the principles of narrative writing to poetic forms and conventions, students learn to tell evocative stories, both fictional and non-fictional, in their own words. Santa Fe Poet Laureate Darryl Lorenzo Wellington leads this creative approach to teaching narrative writing with joy, inquiry, and discovery. Teaching Artist: Darryl Lorenzo Wellington

Dancing New Mexico’s Stories: Poetry in Motion
5 sessions, Grades 3-6
Poetry offers a compatible form or structure for choreography as well as a springboard into movement that can be concrete or abstract, simple or complex, depending on student age, comprehension level and experience. Students connect more deeply with poetry when they involve their bodies in expressing meaning. Throughout the residency students will explore moving to words, phrases and whole poems presented as a series of short “movement problems” which they must solve choreographically. Poems range from simple haikus, and poetry centered around the southwest for younger grades, to more linguistically complex works from poets of New Mexico. Teaching Artist: Kathleen Kingsley

Dancing New Mexico’s Stories: The Poetry of New Mexican Poets
7 sessions, Grades 7-12
This is an integrated dance / ELA residency for middle and high school students with a focus on comprehension and expression; specifically strategies of questioning, making connections and inferring. Literacy encompasses many kinds of “text” including dance. Veteran dance teaching artist Kathleen Kingsley guides students as they probe for details, events, and emotional overtones to deepen the “story” behind the poems of Levi Romero, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Nora Naranjo Morse, Michelle Otero, and Penny Harter, turning images and feelings into meaningful choreography. Teaching Artist: Kathleen Kingsley

Breathing Life into Literature
5 sessions, Grades 3-6
Literary text can be daunting to young readers, who may find the conventions of fiction difficult going. In this residency, students will use the theater strategies of tableau and dialogue to create, perform, and record a written script based on an appropriate literary work. Wendy Chapin, theater director and long-time ALTO teaching artist, leads this deep exploration of meaning and story. Teaching Artist: Wendy Chapin

Poetry As The Means We Need
Spoken-word and Performance Poetry Residency
5 Sessions, Grades 6-12
Seen as a “step-child” of academic poetry, spoken-word/performance poetry (or slam poetry) is a poetry form that is infinite and accessible to all students. This type of poetry, most importantly, opens the door for poets to use their whole body, and space, to make a poem come alive! In this workshop, through different writing exercises, students will write their own spoken-word poems and will be exposed to different performing styles and will learn memorizing techniques to recite their poem like a seasoned poetry slam poet. This workshop will ask students to explore the power of their own story as a means to create change, not be forgotten, and inspire others to do the same. This residency is suitable for all humanities classes. Teaching Artist: Alejandro Jimenez

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Social Studies Connections

NEW! — Acequias: El Agua es Vida (NM History Focus)
8 sessions, Grades 6-8 (Not available until Spring Semester, 2025)
In this residency, students take a deep dive into ancient indigenous ways of collecting and distributing water, the Spanish introduction of the acequia system with its defined roles and hierarchy, and the different way of looking at water that the Americans brought to the Southwest. As students gain fluency and confidence in movement, they choreograph completed dances that demonstrate their understanding of a history of place through the lens of water. An introduction of the dance elements, simple choreographic phrase structures, and practice with smaller scale challenges that build to larger ones result in complete choreographic works. Students work in groups with “expert packets” of information on specific historical topics (standards-based), which they mine for their choreography work. This residency requires that students have some familiarity with working effectively in groups as well as comprehension skills, especially reading for information, synthesizing and verbally sharing. This aspect will require extra time outside of the residency contact hours. Teacher involvement is key. Teaching Artist: Kathleen Kingsley

Embodying Biography
6-8 sessions
Grades 3-4: Walking in Another Person’s Shoes
Grades 5-6 Becoming A Person You Admire
Students often struggle with biographies of characters from very different times and places. In this residency, students will use the Actor’s Tools of body movement, voice, and imagination to become the characters they are studying and then write a monologue they will perform as the character. The students can also focus on one character like Georgia O’Keeffe and tell her story by writing scenes that span each of the chapters in their life. The final presentation or performance can be staged in a format similar to a living museum or it can be a play with scenes that represent a part of the person’s journey through their life. Wendy Chapin, well-known Santa Fe director and teaching artist, leads this literally moving residency to make learning about history an engaging experience. Teaching Artist: Wendy Chapin

Maps in Motion
5 sessions, Grades 3-6
Map reading is increasingly a lost art, yet maps can give us so much perspective in multiple ways. In this residency, students learn the tools of mapping to create written maps and then put them into creative movement choreography that gives a sense of place and belonging. Multi-disciplinary teaching artist Tamara Johnson guides students through the steps to create their own artistic maps in motion. Teaching Artist: Tamara Johnson

Migration: Movement and Meaning
5 sessions, Grades 3-6
Once students have a grasp of basic mapping skills, they can use maps to show their understanding of changes in their local community or region over time. Students in this residency focus on migration patterns of the various peoples who live and have lived in northern New Mexico, and then create original choreography to demonstrate their understanding of migration. Tamara Johnson leads this engaging and discovery-packed residency. Teaching Artist: Tamara Johnson

Exploring New Mexico History through Song
5 sessions, Grades 5-12 (on a limited basis, this residency is also available for APS educators)
When students create a piece of music about a historical subject, they greatly increase their comprehension of the subject, and gain important learning skills. In this residency, students will work together to create a corrido (ballad) about Rafael Chacón in the Battle of Valverde, or any important figure or event in New Mexican history. Dr. Beth Ratay, an experienced composer and scholar of world musics, leads this session, focusing on students’ ability to synthesize historical facts into a deeper understanding of how these events shape our collective and individual lives. Teaching Artist: Beth Ratay

Breathing Life into New Mexico History
5 sessions, Grades 2-6
Students often have difficulty finding personal meaning in doing the research on historical events. During this 5-session residency, students create tableaus or frozen moments sequencing a specific New Mexico historical event such as the Long March or the Battle of Glorieta. In the process, students will engage in language-based learning that comes to life and stays in long-term memory through drama. Students will collaborate in small groups to create a living picture timeline of the chosen event, write narration and share their tableau. Wendy Chapin, a celebrated Santa Fe theater teacher and director, facilitates. Teaching Artist: Wendy Chapin

The Passion Project, An Exploration of Who We Are
5 sessions, Grades 9-12 (on a limited basis, this residency is also available for APS educators)
In this residency, high school students will explore a self-selected topic connected to their personal identity using “arts-based research.” The residency begins with students building and constructing an “artful journal” with recycled materials and found paper ephemera. The journals then become a place to document their research on identity, as described in the New Mexico Social Studies Standards. Students develop their project through a handful of scaffolded creative practices, such as found word poetry, blind contour drawing, and practice interviews. The students will then research on their own using the internet, interviewing experts, having an experience, reading a book, watching a video and MORE! All of their key takeaways are creatively recorded in their journals and with each other in class. Teaching Artist: Michelle Holdt

Social and Emotional Learning

Creative Movement Skill-Building
6 (30-minute) sessions, pre-K (recommended once a week for 6 weeks)
“Movement is the architect of the brain” says dance educator Anne Green Gilbert. Based on the dance elements of Body, Energy, Space and Time (BEST), and on Anne’s lesson plan format, this residency is an introduction to movement skill-building strategies for the district’s youngest students. Sessions include both somatic awareness techniques and creative dance activities. Kathleen will supply teachers with the lesson plan and teachers are encouraged to repeat parts of the lesson in between residency days. Teaching Artist: Kathleen Kingsley

Learning with the Brain in Mind
6 (50-minute) sessions, Grades K-1
Children love to move and learn through movement. But did you know that they also develop their brains by moving? Based on the dance elements of Body, Energy, Space and Time (BEST), BrainDance, and brain-compatible lessons plans, this 5-day residency serve as an introduction for K-3rd teachers and their classrooms to explore the possibilities within dance skill-building for classroom curriculum integration. Led by veteran teaching artist Kathleen Kingsley, sessions include both developmental movement techniques and creative dance activities that can easily be integrated into science, math, SEL, and language arts curriculum development and teaching. Teaching Artist: Kathleen Kingsley

Circles! In Art, Drama, Classroom, and Community
6 sessions, differentiated for Grades pre-K-12 (on a limited basis, this residency is also available for APS educators)
In this residency, students will explore circles as a theme in both visual art, drama, and community circles. Students will participate in a handful of scaffolded creative practices such as found circle poems, spiral drawings, simple mandalas as well as playing drama games in a circle, and will host community conversations and circles. Students will creatively record all of their sketches and notes in their journals, and in closing share them with each other in class. Teaching Artist: Michelle Holdt

Identity Investigation, An Exploration of Self and Community
6 sessions, differentiated for Grades 2-12 (on a limited basis, this residency is also available for APS educators)
In this residency begins students will explore self and community through drawing and writing in their “altered journals.” The journals become a place to document their research on identity. Teaching artist Michelle Holdt will lead the students through a handful of scaffolded creative practices such as blackout poetry, concept maps, collage, and creative timelines. Students creatively record all of their investigations in their journals, and in closing share them with each other in class. Teaching Artist: Michelle Holdt

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Teaching Artists

Randy Barron has classroom teaching experience dating back to 1980, and he served as a touring Kennedy Center Teaching Artist from 1995-2021. Randy has led hundreds of professional development events for teachers and teaching artists, in forty US States, as well as in Singapore. Randy danced and choreographed professionally with dance companies from Boston and New York City to the Midwest, and he served as a founding Artistic Director of City in Motion Dance Theater in Kansas City, Missouri. Randy has a wide range of experience in education. He has been a charter school founder, a charter high school director, a curriculum writer — and even a school bus driver. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology, and he is also a former volunteer firefighter and EMT. Randy has received the Coll Award of Distinction from the New Mexico Art Education Association. He lives with his wife on the Santa Fe Trail near Las Vegas, New Mexico, just an hour’s drive from their twelve-year-old, identical twin grand-daughters.

Wendy Chapin is a theater artist who began teaching in the Santa Fe public schools in 2001 independently as a theater teacher, working with integrated arts for the Alto Program, and working for Artworks a Lincoln Center Program sponsored by Partners in Education. She has taught theater arts to all ages from 7-70 for 40 years. Wendy is a theater artist who believes in collaborating with teachers to find ways to embody learning as well as creating opportunities for students to develop empathy as part of their interpersonal and intrapersonal experiences inherent when using drama in combination with curricular areas of study. Wendy has a BA in theater and history from the University of Colorado and an MA in Art Therapy from Southwestern College. She worked in professional theater on and off Broadway for 11 years.

Michelle Holdt is an enthusiastic arts integration specialist and leader with a strong commitment to leading an arts rich life and making creative practice available for all children. She has over 20 years experience in arts education as a drama teacher, professional development leader, and arts administrator in a wide variety of educational settings. She was the Arts and Restorative Learning Coordinator at the San Mateo County Office of Ed and holds a Masters and Credential in Educational Administration from San Francisco State University, an Art Integration Certificate with The Alliance for Arts Learning Leadership, a BA in Drama and Human Development from Harvard University, a Masters in Theatre and Dance from the University of New Mexico, and a clear K-8 multiple subject credential from New College of California in San Francisco.

Alejandro Jimenez is a formerly-undocumented immigrant, poet, writer, and educator from Colima, Mexico, living in New Mexico. He placed 3rd at the 2022 Abya Yala Poetry Slam Championships held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which brought together 15 national poetry slam champions from 15 countries in North, South, Central America and the Caribbean. He is the 2021 Mexican National Poetry Slam Champion, he is a two-time National Poetry Slam Semi-Finalist (US), multiple time TEDx Speaker/Performer, and a regional Emmy-nominated poet. In 2022, he was featured in TIME Magazine as one of 80 Mexican artists shaping contemporary Mexican culture. His work centers and touches on cultural identity, immigrant narratives, masculinity, memory, and the intersections of them all.

Tamara Johnson is a dancer, educator, and writer. She has been designing and facilitating experiential education programming for over a decade. She is passionate about the power of dance to overcome language barriers and cultivate empathy. Tamara is currently the Executive Director and Co-Artistic Director of MoveWest and a Course Development Specialist in the Institute of American Indian Arts department of Online Learning.

Kathleen Kingsley is a dancer/choreographer/dance educator. As co-founder of City in Motion Dance Theater in Kansas City, Missouri, she choreographed for and danced with the resident company, as well as working as an artist in education with Kansas City Young Audiences. She also initiated the first of four children’s dance theaters. She is a graduate of Anne Green Gilbert’s Summer Teacher Institute in creative dance. Her work in dance straddles both the teaching artist and school educator roles. As co-founder of the Río Gallinas School for Ecology and the Arts in Las Vegas, New Mexico she developed and taught the dance curriculum for grades 1-8. She established the dance department at the United World College of the American West (UWC-USA) and developed their International Baccalaureate Degree Program dance curriculum. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Latin American studies. Currently Kathleen is co-founder and executive artistic director of MoveWest Center for Movement Exploration in Santa Fe and serves as ALTO’s residency program coordinator.

Julianna Massa (she/they) is a dance artist based in Albuquerque, NM, trained in modern/contemporary dance. Her work centers around a love and respect for the messy imperfection of human bodies moving together in space, asking how dance can bring us towards shared visions of the future. Recently, Julianna was on the faculty for the inaugural Albuquerque Contemporary Dance Festival. Julianna has experience teaching dance and creative movement to children and adults with Albuquerque Public Schools, Harwood Art Center, OT Circus Arts Connections, and Keshet Dance and Center for the Arts.

Beth Ratay is a versatile composer who is able to craft music using a wide variety of styles and techniques. From music possessed of a quiet, understated grace, to music based on mathematical concepts, to emotive and hilarious opera, Ratay’s music is engaging, charming and beautiful. Dr. Ratay has had her music performed by diverse ensembles from across the United States. Her studies on the relationship of text to music in the work of Leoš Janáček and symmetric or layered musical structures in the music of Harrison Birtwistle strongly informs her own compositions. Beth also has been teaching music to people of all ages for over 25 years. Her experience includes individual instrumental and compositional instruction, music fundamentals and general education music courses for adults, and music basics for kids for all ages. Beth believes that learning music teaches many important and fundamental skills including social/emotional skills, math skills, and problem solving skills.

Darryl Lorenzo Wellington is the 2021-2023 Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, NM. He also writes a syndicated editorial column for The Progressive Media Project. Since 2016, he has been a Writing/Communications Fellow with Center for Community Change, a Washington DC-based organization that supports low-income people of color. Last year, he presented talks and workshops on poetry at over fifteen Santa Fe elementary, middle and high schools.

Liberty Yablon is a sculptor, photographer and illustrator, born and raised in Santa Fe. She’s Also lived in Los Angeles where she worked in fashion design and film production. She loves to sew and design extravagant costumes. In downtime she crochets and loves time in nature. Before becoming a workshop leader with the Alto program, as well as ArtWorks, she taught art and theater full time for SFPS. She was an early member of art collective Meow Wolf and created immersive art experiences with them for 5 years. She’s passionate about teaching and loves working with students of all ages and backgrounds.