Music Matters: DEMT Inservice

When most public school teachers are scrambling to get grades done during a planning day that has been specifically set aside for this purpose, Resource Teachers (Art, Music and PE) are off-campus participating in what is commonly called an "inservice." An inservice is a day of training in your specific content area. Because training at the school level does not always cover our content areas, we must seek out other opportunities for professional development that specifically address the content areas that we teach.

Dale Choate, the DCPS Music Supervisor for Vocal and Elementary Music teachers, is responsible for organizing and recruiting music educators and presenters from various arts organizations to come and share their expertise with us. As President of Duval Elementary Music Teachers, I am called upon to facilitate the day for our teachers from across the district. Our quarterly inservice was held on Friday, January 21st. We met at Hendricks Avenue Elementary School in San Marco.

Our day began with a presentation by two National Board Certified Elementary Music Teachers who spoke to us about "GamePlan." It has been approximately 10 years since Duval County has adopted a new music curriculum for its teachers and our current materials are outdated. This presentation was like a breath of fresh air for all of us.

GamePlan is authored by Jeff Kriske and Randy DeLelles. Their materials are user-friendly and are sequenced on a month-to-month basis throughout the school year. GamePlan covers National Music Standards in grades 1-5. The kindergarten curriculum is currently being written and field-tested. The writers of this curriculum will be presenting at the State Orff-Schulwerk conference on February 5th in Melbourne, Florida. I am now hoping to secure a funding source for next year to purchase a starter kit for my classroom.

Another session was taught by several music educators who are trained in the Kodaly method.

Zoltan Kodaly was a 20th century Hungarian composer that worked with pre-school aged children. He felt that the human voice was the most beautiful of all instruments and was easily accesible for young children. Along with vocal training came ear-training. The use of Hungarian folk songs to teach young children was paramount to his teaching methodology. We sang, clapped, played and moved to the music during this session.

We also heard from Mr. Lindsey Dank of "Didgeridoo DownUnder." He brought his didgeridoos with him and played a sampling of pieces from his program. Our teachers were also able to give it a try on a didgeridoo made out of PVC pipe. His program integrates music and social studies curriculum and is appropriate for elementary grades K-5.

Lindsey Dank of Didgeridoo DownUnder

Teachers trying out the PVC didgeridoos

And finally, one of our own elementary music teachers brought in "Books of the Month" that had been used at his school over the last several years. He had written songs to go along with each of the books and created electronic accompaniment on Garage Band to accompany the songs. He then gave us an opportunity to choose a book and create our own song to go along with it. We celebrated the conclusion of our day together with various renderings of the books in a performance group setting.