K-12 & Adult education

For the past decade, Caledonia Northern Folk Studio’s Principal, Jess Lamar Reece Holler has been honored to work as a teaching artist, instructor, curriculum developer, & program administrator in a wide variety of educational settings — including both formal K-12 settings (public & private), summer camps, & through community-based, life-long learning for adult culture-keepers, artists, & community members in community-based settings, in person & online. Jess also brings several years’ experience serving as a teaching assistant or instructor-of-record in the higher education setting: including through online instruction & online instructional design.

Throughout these experiences, Jess’s teaching work emphasizes the innate dignity & knowledge of those in each edcuational space, the power of choice-based & creative pedagogy; interdisciplinary instruction; accessing & producing hands-on primary sources & methods; documentary arts; and making educational frameworks accessible to audiences & communities regardless of specialized training.

Jess’s teaching work (especially in K-12 & community settings) has been informed by democratized people’s education movements, and by Folk Arts in Education frameworks: which prioritize local learning, bringing community members into the schools, and honoring & supporting both culturally-affirming pedagogies, & opportunities to learn & build meaningful solidarities across lines of geographic, ethnic, cultural, & gender difference. Jess’s pedagogy is also informed & inflected by critical disability studies; and aspires towards a framework of universal design: where all learners can show up and grow, as they are; and has focused, in many ways, on connecting learners across generations, & on providing opportunities for formal educational & institutional access for community scholars & artists in their first positions as teaching artists or artists-in-residence.

In keeping with principles of equity budgeting, all teaching artist, artist residency, teaching artist training program, & summer institute opportunities Jess has created & stewarded for adult community artists, speakers, & culture-keepers have been fairly compensated.

K-12 Teaching artists & teaching artist coordination

Read on to learn more about Jess’s experiences designing & stewarding K-12 folk & cultural arts teaching artist programs for working community cultural artists in Marion County, Ohio; as well as Jess’s own direct experience serving as a teaching artist in a wide range of documentary arts, folk studies, museum studies, oral history, & local history genres!

Jess has been a teaching artist and teaching artist trainer // folk arts school residency coordinator at the following schools & districts:

  • Marion City Schools (Garfield Elementary — Spring 2022; Grant Middle School — 2024-2025)

  • Pleasant Local Schools (Pleasant Secondary School — Spring 2023; Pleasant High School — 2023-2024)

  • Marion St. Mary School (Spring 2023; 2023-2024; 2024-2025)

  • River Valley Local Schools (River Valley Middle School — Spring 2023)

  • Ridgedale Local Schools (Fall 2024)

… and has developed curriculum frameworks, lessons, & delivered K-12 residency units & workshops on the following range of topics & hands-on arts genres:

  • Folk Arts // Folklife Studies: Intro to Folk Studies; Verbal Arts; Material Culture; Customary Practice; Public Folklore; Vernacular Architecture; Folk Art Environments

  • Documentary Arts: Oral History Interviewing; Photography

  • Local History: Local History Research

  • Museum Studies & Curatorial: Exhibit Development & Curation

  • Arts Entrepreneurship, Branding, & Graphic Design

ADULT EDUCATION: COMMUNITY ARTISTS & LIFELONG LEARNERS

Read on for more about Jess’s work stewarding innovative adult-education programs in both in-person & online settings: including my development & facilitation of Marion Voices’ Teaching Artist Training Program (2022, 2023), Jess’s development & coordination of Terradise Nature Center’s Terradise Environmental Arts Residency (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025), & more!

As an adult educator in community contexts, Jess has stewarded the following learning cohorts of working adults (30-80 years old) as a part of their career’s-long work as an arts organizer & administrator:

  • The Marion Voices Teaching Artists’ Training Program (2022, 2023): stewarded two cohorts of community teaching artists through an intensive, eight-week curriculum in teaching artists, to prepare community members to work in Marion County K-12 schools as teaching artists. Curriculum units included lesson planning, classroom management, an introduction to folklore // folk arts & the folk arts in education framework, histories & theories of art education, honoring diversity in the classroom, university design for learning, an introduction to State of Ohio teaching standards for the arts, teaching arts as a career // an introduction to Ohio’s Teaching Artist Roster, & more. 2022’s TATP was co-taught with Garfield Elementary Art Teacher Chelsea Dipman, with a guest lecture from Marion City Schools Family & Community Coordinator Johnnie Lewis Jackson.Each training program culminated in 1:1 lesson plan review. All sessions held online via Zoom.

  • The Marion Voices Summer Institute // Back to School Institute (Summers 2021, 2022, 2023): administered, booked, & facilitated two summer-long & one fall online lifelong learning course series, offered on Zoom & with registration managed via Eventbrite. The series featured six different instructors over three years; and included one-off & multi-part classes on topics ranging from intro to folklore, intro to local history, Afro-Futurism, non-profit board development, somatic anti-racism, environmental soundscapes, introduction to oral history, & more.

  • The Terradise Environmental Arts Residency at the Terradise Nature Center (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025): created, fundraised, developed, & coordinated this popular paid rural artists’ residency (non-residential) in interdisciplinary environmental arts for working artists in Marion, Morrow, Wyandot, & Crawford Counties in Ohio. Responsible for all program application & materials development, outreach, selection committee management, artist communications, organizational Mailchimp newsletters, co-planning of monthly showcase events featuring artists-in-residence, program evaluation, & grant reporting. From its inception in 2022 thru 2024, the Terradise Environmental Arts Residency served almost fifty artists working in diverse genres across North-Central Ohio.

SUMMER CAMP INSTRUCTION (K-8)

Read on for more about Jess’s experiences developing curriculum & serving as an instructor for campers aged K-9 at the Columbus Academy’s Summer Experience since Summer 2021!

Jess has served as a Summer Camp Instructor at Columbus Academy’s Summer Experience since 2021, serving as primary instructor or co-instructor (where noted) of a wide range of cultural arts, heritage, entrepreneurship, marketing, & STEM camps to campers ranging in age from kindergarten to rising 9th grade, including the following selected camps:

  • Arts Entrepreneurship (3-5, Summer 2024; 3-5 & 6-9, Summer 2025): This popular camp — rooted in principles of Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB) // choice-based arts education — gives older elementary school & middle school campers free reign of art supplies to create & design inventory for an arts booth. Along the way, campers learn about pricing, branding, & promotions. Camp culminates in an open arts marketplace, where campers & staff alike shop students’ unique creations!

  • Marketing 101 (6-9, Summers 2022-2025): The beloved returning camp for middle schoolers combines a 5-day bootcamp in Canva-based graphic design with principles of entrepreneurship, branding, & marketing … culminating in a Shark Tank-style camp competition for the best new brand! Who will win the coveted stuffed hammerhead shark?!

  • History Mysteries: Local History Sleuths! (6-9; Summer 2024): This camp explored the art of local history research — focused on the history of Columbus Academy itself! Students learned how to use newspapers.com, historic photography & map archives, deed records, & other resources to compile a working history of Columbus Academy; then worked together to produce & record a video historic walking tour of Columbus Academy’s scenic campus.

  • Oral History (6-9; Summer 2023): This popular camp introduced middle school campers to the art of oral history — from research to consent form development to creation of a baseline interview template, to the art of the interview itself. Along the way, students learned how to use portable audio recorders, and to create meaningful, themed audio clips from oral history interviews for interpretation & curation.

  • Soundscapes (6-9; Summer 2022): This hands-on camp introduced middle school campers to the history and art of environmental soundscape recording and ambient sound production. Students learned how to use portable audio recorders, and traveled the gorgeous Columbus Academy campus recording, then editing & producing, custom soundscape compositions.

  • BYOM: Build Your Own Museum! (6-9; Summers 2022 + 2023): This dynamic, hands-on camp guided middle school campers through a journey of creating their own mini-museum: from topics & exhibit brainstorming to accessions policy to display & graphic design to promotions, swag, & interpretation!

  • SwiftieCamp: The Eras Experience (3-5; Summer 2024): This fun camp — rooted in the career & works of Taylor Swift — immersed 3rd-5th graders in the art of fan culture: including creating original songs inspired by Taylor Swift’s oeuvre, exploring core components of Swiftie fandom like the creation of friendship bracelets, & production of original tribute music videos!

  • Camp Invention™: Served as co-instructor for the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame’s signature four-unit, week-long STEAM curriculum, teaching units on topics integrating live STEAM innovation with intellectual property, entrepreneurship, & creativity

All camp curricula were developed by Jess Lamar Reece Holler // Caledonia Northern Folk Studios, except where explicitly noted. Camp Invention™ is the intellectual property & holding of the National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHOF).

HIGHER EDUCATION (COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY) TEACHING

While Jess does not primarily or ordinarily teach in higher education context, read on for more about Jess’s past experiences serving as a teaching assistant & instructor of record for a wide range of college & university courses in the humanities, with specializations in culture studies, film & media studies, & science & technology studies; including many courses developed & delivered online — in both synchronous & asynchronous formats.

Jess has been an instructor of record or teaching assistant for the following institutions & courses:

  • Ohio State University — Intro to Humanities (Online; TA), Intro to Science & Technology Studies (Online; Instructor of Record); Cinema Studies — Italian Cinema // Mafia Movies (Online; TA)

  • The University of Pennsylvania — Comics & Graphic Novels (TA); Intro to Cinema & Media Studies I & II (TA); Intro to Japanese Cinema (TA)

 
 

K-12 Teaching arts: Marion Voices in the Schools (2022-2025)

Through the work of Marion Voices in the Schools (2022-2025), which I also coordinated for Marion Voices Folklife + Oral History, I had the pleasure of serving as lead teaching artist in five of Marion County’s six school districts, and selecting, training, & coordinating a team of almost twenty community teaching artists, for Marion County’s first ever folk & cultural arts K-12 residency program. For Marion Voices in the Schools & our K-12 partners, I developed three distinct curricula over the years: a mainstay folk & traditional arts curriculum with units in various genres plus a frame curriculum in folk studies & public folklore interpretation (documentation, photography, oral history, exhibit curation); a specialized high school curriculum in local history, oral history, & museum studies (Pleasant High School, 2023-2024), & a specialized middle school curriculum in media studies & creative writing (Grant Middle School, 2024-2025). Throughout the four-year run of Marion Voices in the Schools, I was pleased to serve almost a thousand students, & to coordinate & work directly with dozens of teaching artists, classroom teachers, principles, & administrators to design, schedule, coordinate, evaluate, & report out on a one-of-a-kind program.

Terradise environmental arts residency (2022-2025)

For four years, I was proud to conceptualize, design, develop, fundraise, & coordinate North-Central Ohio’s only paid, non-residential residency: designed to serve working artists without previous residency experience residing in, working in, or with deep ancestral ties to Marion, Morrow, Wyandot, & Crawford Counties. Based at the Terradise Nature Center along the mighty Whetstone (Olentangy) River near Caledonia, the Terradise Environmental Arts Residency built an annual cohort of 8-12 adult community artists; and provided structured professional development through each artist’s development of a unique environmental arts project utilizing Terradise Nature Center’s mission, history, property, or legacy; and curation of a shared public event by all artists in a given month. All told, the Terradise Environmental Arts Residency served almost fifty community artists, produced dozens of events, and infused almost $100,000 into the North-Central Ohio arts economy: providing expanded arts livelihoods opportunities & access to arts professionalization for the talented working artists of our community.

Summer Camps: Columbus academy’s summer experience (2021-2025)

Who doesn’t love summer? Through Columbus Academy’s beloved Summer Experience day camp program, I’ve developed over a dozen innovative, interdisciplinary summer camps for campers aged 4 to 14, at the intersection of the arts, humanities, entrepreneurship, pop culture, & STEAM. My camps have ranged from hands-on documentary arts instruction (oral history, soundscapes) to local history & museum curation methods to topics in entrepreneurship, branding, & graphic design; and almost all have included opportunities for campers to build real, self-directed skills in media arts production: including through the creation of mini-museums, exhibits, projects, brand kits, & camp videos. My camps always strive to integrate the environment: and featured daily hikes, plein air art opportunities, & documentary arts out & about in the woods & on the creeks on Columbus Academy’s stunning campus!

Photo Feature: “Art World Creations” Booth in Art Entrepreneurship Camp — Summer 2024