Awards & Honors
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Featured PResenter
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I love teaching music to kids! When I'm not actively teaching students I'm often thinking about how I can teach better, creating materials/decorations to make teaching easier, and working with other people to learn more about how to teach well.
I do my best to connect with other music educators around the country. I have been writing about music education for the last seven years on my blog: MakeMomentsMatter.org I share teaching ideas on a podcast, through weekly LIVE videos, by connecting through local music education organizations, and through in-person training/presentations. I've presented workshops and clinics as a featured presenter at annual conventions for state music education associations in Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Saskatchewan, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Texas. Next year I've been selected to present at a national music education conference for the American Orff Schulwerk Association. I've also been asked to present workshops at the local level for school districts and music education organizations around the country and Canada.
Photos and captions (right) from recent workshops and clinics. |
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Grants Awarded
Total Grants awarded to date: $33,700
Major donors include:
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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
VH1 Save the Music – Keys + Kids Award Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Keeping the Blues Alive Foundation OshKosh B'gosh |
NASCAR Foundation
National Education Association Foundation Chase Bank Foundation MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Starbucks Charitable Giving |
Special Grants
CHEROKEE COUNTY
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How the Ukuleles are usedOur new class set of ukuleles are used throughout the school year and have truly fostered a culture of collaborative creation in the music classroom. Fourth and fifth grade students learn the ukulele in weekly music classes and have the opportunity to join the Woodstock Elementary School Ukulele Ensemble. Class time includes learning chords, strumming to known songs, accompanying while others sing, and playing along with well-known pop or rock songs.
One huge impact of the ukuleles is collaborative learning and creation. Playing the ukulele requires hand-eye coordination and can be quite tricky for beginners. You need to put your fingers in the right place on the fretboard to make a good sound and that can be difficult for young learners. What I've found is that students often help other students figure out hand position, strumming paterns, and rhythms. It's amazing to see students creating together. Once students learn three or four chords, they can use their skills to create new songs, come up with song variations, decode and play songs they already know, and much more. 
Ukulele ensembles present the perfect opportunity for students to combine all the singing, rhythm, composition, and ensemble skills and standards that they’ve been learning in their music classes. On top of that, students develop important social skills as they learn to play, sing, and perform in small and large groups.
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VH1 Save the Music
Frances Willard Elementary School (Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools) was named a winner in the Keys + Kids grant program sponsored by the VH-1 Save the Music Foundation and singer/songwriter Sara Bareilles. As a winner, the school received $10,000 worth of equipment to support music and arts programs -- including a new Yamaha Hybrid piano and Yamaha StagePass Audio System
See the video announcement from VH1.
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NASCAR Foundation
The NASCAR Foundation generously donated to the students of Frances Willard (KCKPS) when they provided the school with a Zoom Q4 Handy HD Video Recorder and 32GB iPod touch to capture creativity and a 3 TB hard drive to store our video creations!
The technology in this project helped to make something intangible, like an improvised song created on the fly, something concrete. It gave the students a chance to go back and think through their work, making their practice so much better. These materials allowed us a chance to capture our creativity and learn to make even more fantastic creations every day. What made the donation even more special was when NASCAR contacted our school to see if their driver Jamie Dick could come by and talk to the student body about being an entrepreneur and driving for NASCAR. Jamie talked candidly to students on the importance of education and told them a little bit about the business aspect of owning your own cars, touring the country, and managing a team. |
