Jennifer Ristvedt-Hille
Jennifer Ristvedt-Hille is a K-5 music educator in West Valley School District in Spokane, WA and a board member of the Inland Empire Orff Association. She earned her B.S. in Elementary Education from Concordia University in Seward, NE and her MAT from Webster University in St. Louis, MO and has taught general music, choir, piano, flute, oboe, and voice in public, private, and studio settings for over 30 years. Her youngest students have been newborns and her oldest 80 years young! She is passionate about communicating through and blending the arts into all subjects. She enjoys marching with the Perfection Nots in the 4th of July parade, performing on stage with Coeur d’Alene Summer Theater, singing with Chorale Coeur d’Alene, and being an active supporter in her adult children’s music education careers, performances, and creative works.
Jennifer’s rich and diverse teaching portfolio ranges from working with inner-city elementary students in Kansas City and emotionally disturbed high school students in Clear Lake, Texas, to teaching English speaking skills in China. Her entrepreneurial artistic, music, and education gigs include being a voice talent for audio-books, leading Music Together classes, tuning pianos, speaking at and leading educational workshops on social-emotional learning and developing curriculum for the IdahoSTARS under her Art SMARTS label. In addition to developing The Joe Family from Grand Staff series, Jennifer has been a student of sync songwriting and eagerly anticipates co-writing and producing her own work in her home studio.
In 2018 Jennifer was nominated to join the Idaho Coaching Network to create an ELA unit for the State Department of Education through the University of Idaho. While other writers wrote curriculum from published works, Jennifer designed her unit from dramatized lessons she taught her students which was fueled by a desire to make music education accessible to students of all learning styles and abilities. Throughout her years of teaching, she discovered that while students are able to learn how the letters of our alphabet are used to create words and words are used to create sentences that can be read and comprehended, a majority of students struggled to read and comprehend music notation, preventing them from enjoying and advancing in their love of music and the study of it.
Encouraged by students, parents, administrators, and colleagues she is developing The Joe Family from Grand Staff series based on her dramatized lessons which combine story, movement, and math to teach students how to read, compose, and perform music.
