Kimberleigh Aarn
Theater Teaching Artist, Peer Mentor
Kimberleigh Aarn is a performing artist and nationally known artist-educator experienced in developing K-12 theatre arts curriculums along with designing and facilitating professional development experiences for educators in the arts.  She has served as an arts education coach throughout the country focusing on such areas as arts integration and literacy. Her professional acting background consists of theater, film and television with nominations for a Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come & Gone and a 2005 LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award nomination for The Merchant of Venice, Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare. She has been a Teaching Artist and mentor with P.S. ARTS since 1997 and started her own consultancy, Open Top Creativity which has a theatre and literacy program called “Through a Theatrical Lens.”

Music
Viktoriya Babchenko has been accomplished Teaching Artist with P.S. ARTS since 1999. Well versed in Kodaly and Orff Schulwerk, Viktoriya currently heads successful music programs at Coeur D’Alene Elementary and Playa Elementary.

Ann Barron
Visual Arts
Ann Barron is a professional graphic artist and has been a Teaching Artist with P.S. ARTS for thirteen years. She attributes her success in the classroom to her ability to create a "safe space" in the studio - providing opportunities for the student artists to revel in their creations while discussing the process from initial vision to finished art piece. 

Claire Bergen
Music
Claire Bergen is a musician and community activist who is committed to positively impacting local communities by developing culturally relevant arts education programs serving urban students. Her work experience includes holding positions such as a Violin Coordinator for the Rainbow Music Academy, Violin Instructor for Los Angeles Music and Art School, and has also taught for LAUSD. She received her Masters degree in Teaching from the University of Southern California.

Her community work is extensive and includes functioning as a grant writer for MESTO (The Multi-Ethnic Star Orchestra), a facilitator for Together, a workshop that included dialogues and activities about racism, prejudice, culture and tolerance.  She counts being the Musical Director for the Concert for Peace as once her largest achievements, where she recruited twenty five classical, rock and world musicians for a live performance benefiting charity.

Ms. Bergen is also a violist in METSO, an accomplished Kelzmer violinist and has performed with the Culver City/Marina Del Rey Symphony, the Southeast Symphony and the Carson Symphony.

Michael Delgado
Visual Arts
Michael Delgado is a Visual Arts Teaching Artist for P.S. ARTS. He has dedicated twelve years to the instruction of Kindergarten through fifth grade students in visual arts at Grand View and Coeur D'Alene Elementary Schools in the Venice area. Prior to his current position, Michael worked for Performing Tree Teaching Arts Program and St. James Elementary from 1990-1997. He studied guitar at Dick Grove School of Music in Sherman Oaks, which lead into playing with local bands and performances with Video/Performance Artist, Ulysses Jenkins.

Outside of the arts, Michael has spent over fifteen seasons as a volunteer baseball coach. His experience in coaching, teaching, and guiding youths in sports has been beneficial in the art room, fueling his belief that disciplines that are learned in athletics can be channeled in the art teaching process.

June Edmonds
Visual Arts
June Edmonds is an artist, a teacher and a professional curator. She has been an art instructor for such prestigious organizations as Santa Monica Community College, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Heart Project. 

Her professional experience as an artist includes designing and fabricating a 4’x34’ Venetian glass mural for the Department of Cultural Affairs Private-Public Art Program, a one-person exhibit entitled “Tierra Rica” in Chiapas, Mexico and creating a Venetian glass mosaic for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Los Angeles for the Metro Blueline Pacific Station.

A recipient of numerous grant and awards, Ms. Edmonds received her Masters in Fine Arts in Painting from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia.

Rachel Galper
Music
Rachel Galper is a Teaching Artist now working at Grand View Elementary School with Kindergarten through second grade students.  Rachel, a graduate of New Mexico State University, began her career in New Mexico, where she taught the classics to young people as part of the American Southwest Theatre Company. Working with faculty there, she “translated” Shakespeare and other classics, making the works more accessible to young people. In Los Angeles, Rachel took Early Education courses at UCLA, has completed Orff Level One at California State University at Los Angeles, and has worked with the Los Angeles Children’s Theatre and the L.A. Theatre Collective. Rachel has worked extensively with the Santa Monica Playhouse for many years and has many musical theater stage credits there including numerous Actors’ Repertory Theatre and Family Theatre productions. She has performed on tour with Actors' Repertory Theatre in both England and Japan. For several years during the school year, Rachel has been teaching Music and creative expression with P.S. ARTS and Theatre Arts at Canyon School in Santa Monica.  Her summers have been filled with children taking her direction at the Santa Monica Playhouse where she directs original musical works for young people.

Rachel resides in Santa Monica with her husband, two children and Kodi (her dog).  She keeps busy by square dancing and going to high school booster club meetings, where she is the Secretary.

Hilary Hahn
Visual Arts
Hilary Hahn is a Visual Arts Teaching Artist for P.S. ARTS. Prior to teaching at P.S. ARTS, She was an educator for the Artlink Program in Ontario schools, Hillel Academy, and instructed Scenic Design for six seasons at Pico Playhouse. Hilary holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Art from the University of LaVerne, where she studied fine art and excelled as a Set Designer. She has also taught private art workshops in New York City with Broadway Kid’s Cares.

As a native of Louisville, Kentucky she brings with her experiences of wildlife and the richness of growing up in a place where “you never meet a stranger”. As a teacher, she enjoys talking about the natural world and a human’s relationship to it. One successful project during her residency at Moffett Elementary School combined her love of architecture and the environment in the construction of an eco-village focused on recycling, community, and sustainability. A personal artistic achievement this year included featuring work at the Silverlake Arts and Crafts Festival. She is an active member of the artist’s group The Wednesday Collective. Additionally, she holds Academic Achievement Awards in the French language and is a dedicated and practicing yogi.

Tabitha Hernandez
Visual Arts
Tabitha Hernandez is a Teaching Artist for P.S. ARTS who currently teaches visual arts to kindergarten through fifth grade students at Kettleman City Elementary and Tamarack Elementary. She brings her four years of experience working on murals and other community projects within her hometown to her teaching.   Tabitha is currently working on her Multiple Subject Credential from Chapman University in California.

Johanna McKay
Theater
Johanna McKay has directed and adapted Shakespearean plays for teens and has taught acting to children for over ten years. She teaches drama at Billy Mitchell Elementary School for P.S. ARTS in Los Angeles. Johanna has earned her B.F.A. in acting from The Theatre School, DePaul University (Sarah Siddons Award), and her M.F.A. from UCLA (Jack Nicholson Award). Johanna’s acting credits include work at the Steppenwolf, The Goodman, Dallas Theatre Center, San Jose Repertory Theatre and the Hollywood Bowl. She recently won the Santa Barbara Independent Theatre Award for her performance as Gwendolyn in The Importance of Being Earnest (Rubicon Theatre) and a Dramalogue Award for Mary Barnes (The Odyssey). Film/TV credits include Grey’s Anatomy, Malcolm in the Middle, Mr. 3000, The Babe, and The Bernie Mac Show.

Benjamin Morales
Visual Arts
Benjamin Morales is an experienced Visual Arts Teaching Artist who prides himself on maintaining a high level of creativity and a familiarity of multi-cultural aesthetics.  Prior to joining the faculty at P.S. ARTS, he was the Head Art Instructor at Alta Vista Charter High School, functioned as an art instructor at School of Arts and Enterprise and was on the studio faculty of the Armory Center for the Arts.  Mr. Morales is also a prolific artist and is an active participant of group shows exhibiting themes that are culturally motivated. Recently, he worked with George Yepes, the Los Angeles based muralist to create a 340-foot mural for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/ NASA. He received his B.A. in Fine Art in Illustration from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2002.

Marwan Mograbi
Music
Marwan Mograbi was born and raised in Accra, Ghana where he was exposed to music and drums at a very early age. After graduating from the School of Performing Arts at the University of Ghana, with a degree in modern Languages and performing Arts he worked at the National Theater of Ghana as an actor and a musician for two years. He then moved to Germany and created Tabasamu a non-profit organization showcasing traditional African arts through which he taught and performed African music for five years. He has been working as a professional musician and educator in Los Angeles since 2000.

Tammy Moran
Visual Arts
Tammy Moran has been a Teaching Artist with P.S. ARTS for seven years. Tammy is an avid believer in educating the whole child through music, which led her to obtain certification in Orff Schulwerk Levels One and Two. She is currently pursing her Master’s Degree at California at State University Los Angeles.

Leah Padow
Visual Arts Teaching Artist, Peer Mentor
Leah Lawrence is a Los Angeles native who fell in love with art as a child.  She obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Studio Art from California State University of California, Long Beach in 2000 and has since become involved in the world of art education.  Leah works as a Teaching Artist and Peer Mentor for P.S. ARTS and has been involved with various arts organizations in Southern California including OCMA and the Brentwood Art Center.  She is a member of art groups Women Painters West, Art Talk, and the Wednesday Collective,  which support her work as a studio artist. Leah's favorite part about being an artist is seeing how all artists, especially her students, can use similar materials to create a variety aesthetic and emotional expressions.

David Partida
Visual Arts
David Partida is a multi-media artist, primarily working in the visual arts. He received his Bachelor's Degree from San Francisco State University and a Multiple Subject Credential from Cal State, Los Angeles. After teaching elementary school for five years, David now teaches visual arts at Camino Nuevo Charter Academy servicing students from Kindergarten through eighth grade. Aside from practicing visual art forms, David is an active performance artist exclusively working with traditional Aztec dance, song and instruments. He is also a jewelry maker and plans to launch a jewelry website this year. David has worked on and collaborated on several murals, community projects and events. David sits on the Pueblo Nuevo Development board of directors, which provides opportunities for economic and educational advancement for the residents of the McArthur Park neighborhood. David currently resides in Hollywood, California where he's planning to start a dance group.

Martha Ramirez-Oropeza
Theater
Martha Ramirez-Oropeza brings a wealth of experience to her position as a Theater Teaching Artist at Edison Language Academy where she designed and implemented a theater program for Kindergarten through fifth graders that is conducted entirely in Spanish. Prior to becoming a Teaching Artist for P.S. ARTS, she was an actor, director and administrator for the Mascarones Theater Group, which was one of Mexico’s leading independent indigenous theater groups. The company’s motto was, “If the people do not go to the theater, then the theater has to go to the people.” Thus, Mascarones brought choral poetry, a blend of the choruses of Greek theater and dance choreography, to the workers of Mexico.

In addition to her work in the theater, Martha is also an accomplished visual artist who specializes in illustration and murals. She has taught and conducted workshops at Universidad Nahuatl, University of California, Los Angeles, University of California, Santa Cruz and Columbia University.  

Jennifer Seifert
Theater
For the past nine years, Jennifer Seifert has worked as a teaching artist with thousands of children from LAUSD, Wiseburn School District, LESD, and Mountain View School District.  As a theater Teaching Artist Jennifer has worked with such programs as Inside Out Community Arts, Glendale Public Library, Upstage Theatre Arts, OCPAC, Will and Company and P.S. ARTS.

Her interest in bringing arts education to inner city children began while she was at USC, when she founded the USC Children’s Theatre Company, an organization that performed for surrounding schools in the South Central area of Los Angeles.  While attending USC she was awarded both the Blankenchip/White Scholarship and the Jack Nicholson Award for outstanding contribution to the arts.

As an actress she has worked with such theatres as the Geffen Theatre, Actors’ Gang, A Noise Within, Shakespeare Festival L.A., North Coast Rep., Mint Theatre (Off-Broadway), Laguna Playhouse, Ricardo Montalban, Pechanga, Rubicon Theatre Co., and the Falcon Theatre.  She is a member of the Troubadour Theatre Co., which was most recently honored with an award from the LADCC, for “Excellence in Theatre.”  Jennifer has received Backstage West Garland Award Honorable Mentions for her performance in Much Adoobie Brothers About Nothing (Falcon Theatre), and for her direction of Someone to Watch Over Me (Hudson Theatre). Her television and film experience includes Punching the Clown (Slamdance 2009), Return to Babylon (Beverly Hills Film Festival 2009), The Cleaner, Huff, The Huntress, Lars and the Really Real Girl (Drama ¾ short film nominated for MTV Music Award), and the Academy Award nominated film, In America. She continues to study acting with Howard Fine and Larry Moss.

Jennifer can also be seen teaching on HDTV in a segment on the Herb Alpert Foundation and P.S. ARTS.

Jennifer Cree Swan
Visual Arts
Jennifer Cree Swan has established and managed community based arts programs for twenty years. Jennifer studied documentary filmmaking and interdisciplinary arts education at New York University and San Francisco State University. In 1989 she founded Listen To Our Elders, Listen To Our Children an organization dedicated to creating intergenerational oral history programs carried out by youth and elders throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1996, Jennifer moved to Washington, DC to work with the National SAFE KIDS campaign. For six years Jennifer coordinated the local DC SAFE KIDS coalition and managed support services for three hundred SAFE KIDS coalitions worldwide. From 2001-2004 she was the Arts Program Director for Joe’s Movement Emporium a comprehensive art center serving Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Jennifer now resides in Venice, California where she teaches art, is a freelance writer/oral historian, and helps arts and media organizations develop and carry out strategic plans.

Tamie Smith
Visual Arts
Tamie Smith is a native Californian who is based in Venice, California. She has been a P.S. ARTS Teaching Artist since 2000. Tamie has completed several large-scale ceramic tile murals in and around the Los Angeles area. She has been involved with local non-profit arts community projects such as the Venice Community Housing Corporations at-risk youth training program. Previous to her career as a Teaching Artist, Tamie lived and worked abroad. She studied at Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera (Academy of Fine Arts of Brera) in Milan, Italy. She has always been involved in art throughout her life, from watching her father build Hot Rods as a child to visiting museums in Paris. Tamie is a multi-media artist whose life experience is her inspiration.

Stephen Spataro
Music
Stephen Spataro currently teaches music to kindergarten through sixth grade classes at Broadway Elementary and Grandview Elementary Schools. Stephen comes to us from the east coast where he had an award winning general music and choral program in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and at Milton Hershey School in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He then moved on to New York to complete a M.A. in Music Education with three levels of certification in “Orff,” and “Kodaly.” After teaching for several years in New York, he found his way to the west coast and is now a member of the P.S. ARTS teaching faculty.

Stephen is also a composer and singer/ songwriter. He has also written many pieces for children and a musical called, “Sweet Dreams”-the story of the life of the chocolate king, Milton Hershey, founder of Hershey’s Chocolate. Being relatively new to the Los Angeles area, he is also exploring opportunities to perform and utilize his talents. He has a passion for teaching and works diligently at bringing out the best in his students.

Terence “Tee” C. Williams
Theater
Tee Williams is grateful and humbled to work as a theater Teaching Artist for P.S. ARTS. He is thankful for the opportunity to guide his students to explore the world around them through theater. Tee enjoys continuously inspiring his students to create original works and rediscover classic drama. A native New Yorker, Tee has appeared in numerous stage productions on the east coast with his most notable role as Othello on 42nd Street. He received his Bachelors degree from Penn State University and continued his theater training at Florida State University’s Asolo Conservatory. He received his M.A. in Fine Arts from Brooklyn College while working with black theater legend Woodie King, Jr. In Los Angeles, Tee was last seen in a production of “Making It Big” as well as NAACP Award nominee “NEVA~EH: Prince of Black Angeles.” Tee continues to take great pride in his work with young people and support for their infinite possibilities. Let the stars shine from within!

Sandy Yamashiro
Visual Arts
Sandy has a B.A. in Social Welfare and a Masters Degree in Social Work. Her experiences as a social worker gave her invaluable tools that she incorporates into her teaching practice and gave her an insight into the lives of P.S. ARTS’s underserved students. In addition, she has also been a silk painter, incorporating Japanese design into her wearable artwork and she considers her family her greatest inspiration. Sandy Yamashiro has been a P.S. ARTS Teaching Artist at John Muir Elementary for eight years.