me arts ed

Workshop: Help! I’m “Music K-12” And I Thought I Was A Band Director  and User Friendly Essentials For Teach BOTH by  Beth Whitney

As one who always saw herself as a band director, I jumped at the chance to attend Lynn Brinckmeyer’s session  “Help! I am Music K-12 and I Thought I was a Band Director” as well as her session on “User Friendly Essentials for Teaching General Music” at the Arts Conference in Northport on October 9.   I’ve only been doing the “K-8 everything” routine since 1986.  There’s still lots to be learned!

Lynn is a wonderfully energetic presenter who didn’t let her lost luggage (including all her handouts and hands-on materials for the sessions) get her down.  She had us up and moving (and wagging our tails to Huckleberry Hound Dog bow-wow-wow) in no time, in the “User Friendly Essentials” session as well as passing the beat and hissing our little hearts out.  It was to bad that the pipe cleaners were in the missing luggage but I suspect we can still figure out how to make the pipe cleaner quarter notes she suggested.  In the “Help! I am Music K-12″ session, Lynn gave us some great suggestions to try with both our choruses and our general music classes.  She even spoke in band director language!

The best part was trying out the ideas at school the following week.  I tried them at a variety of levels, K-6.  My students loved the songs, chants (quite an upgrade from our usual 1971 Exploring Music books!) and the rhythm exercises.  All I have to do is pantomime holding that ball and start the t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t, ch-ch-ch-ch, ssss-ssss, shhhhhhhh, and they’re all with me.  Funwa Alafia has become a favorite of my students from grades 1-5!  I’m not sure the West African words were intended this way but we do have FUN and LAUGH with FUNwa a-LAUGH-ia!

I hope that someday I cross paths with Lynn again so I can tell her how much my students gained from her suggestions.