Arts & More Services

This store is dedicated to empowering educators with creative strategies to make academics come alive through movement and the arts. Rooted in the Kennedy Center’s approach to arts integration, our resources support inclusive, engaging instruction for all learners—especially students with disabilities. Explore our sample lessons, planning tools, and movement-based activities designed to help you bring joyful, accessible learning into your classroom. Kimberly Jarvis is the owner of Arts + More Services, LLC, a company dedicated to supporting arts organizations, educators, and creative professionals through strategic planning, program development, and administrative consulting. With a background in arts education and nonprofit leadership, Kimberly brings over three decades of experience helping organizations grow, adapt, and thrive. Her work is grounded in collaboration, equity, and a belief in the transformative power of the arts.

Kimberly Jarvis is a guerilla teaching artist—equal parts strategist, improviser, and disruptor—who designs her own high-impact methods drawn from lived experience rather than the rulebook. Trained with trailblazers like Anne Green Gilbert and influenced by Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, she has forged a bold, embodied approach to teaching rooted in clarity, connection, and growth. Her sessions hit like creative lightning—unexpected, always responsive, and deeply personal—inviting students to move, question, and construct meaning in real time. This is Inclusive Arts-Integrated Teaching at its finest: messy, magical, academically rigorous, and unapologetically human.

Kimberly doesn’t collect accolades—she collects students. Nearly 30,000 of them over 25 years. As a traveling teaching artist, she has spent her career darting from classroom to classroom, country to country, infusing everyday people with the confidence to move, interpret movement, and think differently. From Denmark and Ukraine to cities and small towns across the United States, Kimberly’s work is driven by people, not stages. She proudly serves as a Teaching Artist on Ohio’s Teaching Artist Roster—a collaborative initiative of the Ohio Arts Council, OhioDance, Art Possible Ohio, and the Ohio Alliance for Arts Education—where she continues her mission to democratize dance and empower learning through movement.

2021-2025 Ohio Arts Council Columbus, Ohio Professional Development 2021-2025 Lifetime Arts New York, NY Creative Aging Intensive 2021-2025 Kennedy Center CETA Columbus, Ohio Professional Development 2017-2019 Malone University Canton, Ohio Master of Organizational Leadership 2016 Expressive Arts Therapy Institute Akron, Ohio Brain-Wise, Trauma-Informed Expressive Arts Therapy in Medical Settings Certificate from Cathy A. Malchiodi, PhD Leaven Dance Company Stow, Ohio Dance & Play Therapy Educational Summit Ballet Magnificat! Jackson, Mississippi Kathy Thibodeaux, Jiri Sebastian, Teacher’s Forum Jacob’s Pillow American Dance Festival Becket, Massachusetts Merce Cunningham, Meredith Monk, Craig Patterson, Patricia Lent, Susanna Chaffey, Jennifer Way, Milton Myers, Dianne McIntyre Scandinavian Institute of Physical Culture Viborg, Denmark Independent study with Olav Ballisager; Thesis: Educating the Whole Person Diploma, Physical Culture Education Education Certification Preschool through 4th grade Lori Belilove Company New York, New York Isadora Duncan’s Repertory including Ave Maria` Odette Blum Intensive Columbus, Ohio Helen Tamiris’ Repertory including Negro Spirituals collaboration between Kent State and Ohio State University The University of Akron Akron, Ohio B.A.,Dance Lana Carroll-Heylock, Bella Lewitzky, Tom Smith, Marc Ozanich, Kaye Davis, Heinz Poll, Anne Green Gilbert, Lucinda Lavelli, Inna Strabova, Alexander Vedmedev Craig Patterson, Luigi, David Shimotakahara, Andrew Carroll

How Dance Sparked My Academic Transformation When I ran out of fingers to count on in first grade, my cheeks burned red with embarrassment. Math was overwhelming. Second grade brought weekly spelling retakes and no recess. By third and fourth grade, my teachers were exasperated with what they called my “complacency” and “lack of mental agility.” I didn’t love school—and my grades proved it. Earning a “C” felt like a major victory. Then, just before fifth grade, something quietly life-changing happened. A dance studio opened in our little rural Ohio village. My mom signed me up—not because I begged her to dance, but because I was severely pigeon-toed and on the verge of knocking myself unconscious trying to twirl a baton. That humble little studio became a place of peace, groundedness, and transformation. For the first time, I realized I had more than fingers to count with. I had rhythms to feel, measures of music to move through, and tap steps to mark time. Dance gave me a mental map that made sense—and suddenly, so did school. I could sit still through class, not because I had to, but because my brain was actively choreographing solutions, mapping math, and making meaning. My grades shot up to straight As. It was magic. Performance was never my driving force in dance. What really lit me up was the creative threshold—the place where symbolism, story, and struggle became movement. In college and beyond, as Artistic Director of Living Fountain Dance Company and a teaching artist, I found the same truth again and again: the most powerful dances are often never performed. They’re the unlisted ones. The ones born out of challenges, shared quietly between teacher and student. A movement here. A solution there. A sigh of relief. A sense of possibility. That’s what these courses are about—offering tools, lessons, and imaginative frameworks that connect math and science to the body, to story, to joy. I hope you’ll use it playfully and generously with your child, your classroom, or your community of remote learners. Let it be a jumping-off point—a place where you discover, together, that learning can move. Gratitude This journey has never been mine alone. Thank you to my family for allowing our life to always be “+ more.” Your love, patience, and support are the heartbeat of everything I do. To the mentors, colleagues, and friends who encouraged me along the way— Francine LeRoy, Wendy Turocy, Tom Smith, Lucinda Lavelli, Joanna Martinez, Robb Hankins, Lauren Stenroos, Jarrod Hartzler, Joshua Coy, the dancers of Living Fountain Dance Company, Dr. Racine, Roberta Looney, Jarrod Small, Chloe Harley, Dawn Daugherty, Milton Myers—thank you for believing in the dance even when it was “unlisted.” And thank you to Wayne Center for the Arts and every student, artist, and dreamer who joined in. My story isn’t unique. It echoes the lives of many kids growing up in the U.S. during the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s—kids who didn’t fit the mold. Thank goodness for mentors like Howard Gardner and Anne Green Gilbert who eventually gave language to what I’d already discovered: We all have gifts. And sometimes, the fastest way to find them… is to dance.