Professional Development Day
PMEA District 7
Join us! Monday, October 9 at Ephrata Middle School
On-site registration will be available with current PMEA and/or PADESTA member card for the $40 member fee.
PMEA and/or PADESTA Members $40
Non-Members $75
Collegiate Members $15
Schedule at a Glance:
7 - 8 a.m. - Registration and Continental Breakfast
8 - 8:15 a.m. - Welcome
8:15 - 9 a.m. - Opening with Cocalikuimba
9:00 - 12:10 p.m. - Morning Sessions
12:10 - 1:00 p.m. - Lunch - provided in cafeteria
1:00 - 3:30 p.m. - Afternoon sessions
FEATURING:
Peggy Dettwiler - Mansfield University
Travis Weller - Messiah College
Angela Guerriero - West Chester University
Anne Stuart - Millersville University
Robert Gillespie - Ohio State University
Reading Sessions for Band, Choir, and Orchestra - All levels
* Act 48 credit will be available
* Bring your instrument for sessions - see descriptions.
Sponsors: PADESTA, Menchey Music, J.W. Pepper, Hal Leonard, and Losers Music Store
Register online here......Deadline September 30
SESSION TRACKS
Special Performance by Cocalikuimba African Dance & Drum Ensemble
Cocalico School District’s African dance and drumming ensemble Cocalikuimba is proud to bring our community a Traditional West African dance and drumming program. The program features West African singing, dancing and drumming as would be performed traditionally in the villages of Ghana and Guinea. All music and dancing is learned aurally and visually. The instruments are authentic to traditional West African music and are mostly handmade. The main instruments are the Djembe, Gonkogui, Shekere, and Dununs. The traditional costumes worn are handmade in Guinea, West Africa.
The performers are 6th, 7th and 8th grade students at Cocalico Middle School in Denver, PA. The students pride themselves in providing a program that is not only entertaining, but educational as well. Each student has gained extensive knowledge about this vibrant culture through its music and dance and hopes to share that knowledge through the performance.
Headliner Presenters
Dr. Peggy Dettwiler
The Choral Director as Voice Teacher
Choral directors, who have a basic knowledge of vocal pedagogy, can work very effectively within the rehearsal to develop the vocal ability of all singers. The majority of choral ensemble singers do not study voice privately; thus, many common performance problems result from underdeveloped vocal skills. Vocal techniques can improve the tone quality and intonation of the entire ensemble and address the stylistic interpretation of choral repertoire from the Renaissance to the Contemporary as well as capture the sounds of other cultures. The voice is capable of changing tone color, singing with healthy technique in both the modal and head voice register, executing contrasting dynamics, performing melismatic passages with great agility, achieving precise intonation and blend, and producing non-traditional vocal sounds. This presentation will demonstrate techniques of posture and breathing, head- and chest-voice resonance, flexibility, range and dynamics, bright and dark vocal colors, and will apply these techniques to specific choral works.
Dr. Travis Weller
Even Directors Need P.R.A.C.T.I.C.E!
Eight aspects of the responsibilities of the director are outlined and discussed in this "Director's Toolbox" session. Items include Planning, Repertoire, Assessment, Concerts, The "T's" of the rehearsal, Instruction, Creativity, and Ethics and Emotion aspects of Ensemble Playing.
Concerts That Connect!: Interdisciplinary Units and the Large Music Ensemble
We want our students to have an experience in our large ensembles that is unique. We want them to see the practicality of the music we study beyond the rehearsal hall walls. By seeking out our connections with other academic subjects and the arts, we can provide enriching and rewarding experiences that strengthen our standing in our schools and our communities. The use of interdisciplinary units of study for our large ensembles are one such way to offer this opportunity to our music students.
HS Band Reading Session - A View Behind the Score
Selected band literature ranging from grades 3-5 will be discussed. Please bring an instrument.
Dr. Robert Gillespie
Quick Fixes: Diagnosing Students' Most Common Bowing Problems
Principles for recognizing, determining the cause, and prescribing strategies to fix the most common bowing problems–from simple detache to spiccato to sautille – will be presented. Strategies are designed for heterogeneous string class teaching from beginning through advanced students.
Essential Elements: The Latest from Hal Leonard’s Essential Elements Interactive for Strings Series
Presenting the always developing, latest resources for teaching strings through Essential Elements for Strings Interactive—the most used string method series in the world. No, you do not have to be a computer guru. Easy, user friendly for both you and your students. Come and see the latest new features. Always free if you use EE for Strings!
Hal Leonard New String Orchestra Music Reading Session - please bring an instrument.
Hands on learning
Amanda Narehood presents West African Drum and Dance: Play it, Shake it, Teach it!
This session will provide participants with materials, techniques and resources, including live demonstrations, to teach West African Drum and Dance in the classroom and ensemble settings. Participants should be ready to drum and dance!
Elementary Instrumental
Timothy Bupp presents
Maximizing Time With Your Beginning Musicians
With time of the essence in the beginning band and orchestra lesson, unearth a new way of approaching your teaching. Learn how you can teach proactively, make connections and learn EVERYTHING a piece has to offer while empowering
your students to become lifelong musicians.
Be Part of the Music!
Be Part of the Music is a revolutionary method that aims to give band and orchestra directors high quality tools to help attract as many students as possible to their programs. With limited time and dwindling resources, it's getting harder to effectively and efficiently communicate to students and parents what we already know: Music Is A Life Changing Activity! Be Part of the Music has the answers you are looking for!
Elementary Band Reading Session
Please bring a band instrument!
Technology
Dan Beal presents iPads in the Elementary Music Room
This presentation will introduce and/or reinforce all the ways that iPad apps can enhance an elementary music curriculum. Several categories of music apps will be demonstrated and discussed, such as creating music apps, music theory apps, ear training apps, and a great number of instrumental apps. Other apps that will be discussed are teacher apps for classroom organization, saving and exporting student work, creating a YouTube account for your classroom seamlessly with the YouTube app, and apps that allow you to record your students singing and performing. Audio and video examples of iPads in action will be provided as well, and there will be a comprehensive handout.
Young Composers Night - An All iPad Concert Event for Your Students
Young Composers Night is an all iPad concert event that occurs twice a year at my building. This 6 week process consists of students creating a song on iPads using GarageBand, learning how to play iPad instruments, and in concert, sharing their song and playing along with their iPad instrument simultaneously. This experience allows students to become composers as they make decisions about instrumentation, genre, texture, tempo, key, special FX, and program notes. They also learn how to play iPad instruments and discover their musical identity through improvisation. In this session, I will go over all the details of how to create an event like this and make it happen at your school. This presentation will go into more detail of how to use the GarageBand app for iPad. Audio and video examples will be shown, and there will be a comprehensive handout.
Ukuleles
Drue Bullington presents User-Friendly Ukulele
The Ukulele is able to be seamlessly integrated into your elementary, middle or high school classroom fitting hand-in-glove with the approaches and curricula already at play there. Everyone is a little bit happier with a ukulele in their hands!
How fast and easy is it for students to go from holding a ukulele for the first time to strumming chords and singing? How about playing melodies? Reading tablature? Improvising? Accompanying other instruments and singers? Great questions! In this workshop, you’ll quickly see how the Ukulele brings new levels of interest and excitement to your music classes.
Reaching Students With Special Needs
Dr. Angela Guerriero presents Access to Music Learning: Keys to Meaningful Inclusion
Meaningful music curricula, instruction, and materials can be designed to be as accessible as possible for students with IEPs, and implemented in the inclusive music classroom for the benefit of all students. Participants in this session will come away with methods to include students with IEPs in their music classroom, including ways to use Universal Design when writing lessons, designing flexible lesson plans, and adapting to meet students’ needs.
Teaching Students with IEPs in the Music Classroom: Tools for Educators
This session is designed for music educators to learn about decoding an IEP, creating appropriate strategies for the inclusive music classroom, and about where to go for help regarding teaching music to students with IEPs. The history and philosophy of inclusive music education will be discussed. Students with IEPs may be included in any setting from general music to performance classes. Become more aware of the disabilities that may be present in these music classrooms, learn to justify adapting lessons, and come with questions!
Choral
The Choral Rehearsal: Process to Product
Peggy Dettwiler
Successful performances are grounded in a creative, yet systematic, rehearsal process that builds confidence through vocal development, musical knowledge, and security in musical performance. The process should involve layers of learning centered upon the elements of music: rhythm, pitch, harmony, texture, and tone color, combined with articulation, dynamics, and cultural understanding. The workshop will focus on specific concepts related to each musical selection and will demonstrate rehearsal techniques that define an efficient and effective rehearsal process resulting in a musical product that is grounded in healthy vocal technique and musical understanding.
High School Choral Reading Session
One of the most important tasks for choral conductors is selecting repertoire for their choral ensembles. The vast amount of repertoire combined with numerous considerations for selecting a program may seem at times to be an overwhelming task.
Conductors need to thoughtfully review all selections under consideration to include a variety of styles, tempi, and key centers in order to increase the aesthetic experience and maintain the interest in every rehearsal and performance. This session will offer a variety of repertoire selections for SATB choirs with pedagogical goals in mind.
Unison/2 part (Elementary or Young Choirs) - Judtih Shepler
Middle School - Stephanie Magaro
High School - Peggy Dettwiler
Jazz
Dr. Elizabeth Trez
Improvisation Through Groove-Based Music Instruction
Groove-based music instruction is a term developed by Dr. Trez to describe teaching music through the use of a rhythm section. This type of instruction is very useful to teach improvisation techniques as the students learn to "feel" the grooves. This session will explore improvisation techniques for grades K-12 and discuss different tools to incorporate grooves into improvisation learning.
David Knott
Developing Meaningful Improvisation Strategies for Beginning Soloists
A methodical approach of strategies to use with beginning improvisers.
Tim Thompson
Jazz Band Reading Session
Come discover helpful jazz band music appropriate for teaching middle and high school bands. Bring your instrument to play. Sponsored by Central PA Friends of Jazz & Menchey Music.
Beth Lavender
Starting Strings Right: A "Beginner Week" Approach to the First Five Lessons
Participants will be given an overview of a "Beginner Week" curriculum for string students, including the rationale for the approach, and specific lesson plans for an effective and engaging start for beginning string students.
What Cellists Wish Non-Cellists Knew: Remediating and Moving Forward
Have you ever encountered a cellist in your middle or high school orchestra who is struggling or "just doesn't look right?" This session will provide insights and resources to help teachers diagnose and correct elusive technical issues, with the focus on getting to the root of problems that are holding back your cellists.
Drue Bullington
Inspiring Musical Experiences from Famous Artworks and Sculpture
Using an array of famous artwork as the inspiration for creativity, participants will explore visual artworks to discover descriptive words, phrases, movement gestures, moods, meters, and so much more! Pieces from the Orff Schulwerk Volumes and supplementals will serve as models of possibilities for development with participants and students. The workshop centers around the wordless poetry of the visual arts and how to bring the silence of pieces like “Christina’s World” by Andrew Wyeth, “Starry Night,” by Van Gogh, “The Great Wave of Kanagawa,” by Hokusai, to more abstract paintings by Kandinsky and modern art sculpture by Keith Haring to life in music and movement.
Paul Fox
Make a Big Splash! Supercharge the School Musical
This "brainstorming session" is for building student and community support and appreciation of theater: a session of "best practices" sharing several “tricks of the trade” that have worked for more than 30 spring musicals and 29 fall plays produced at the Upper St. Clair High School in Pittsburgh, PA.
Ethics and Music Educators
“Thou shalt not stray!” – Definitions, problems, scenarios, and tips for maintaining recommended standards and appearances of professionalism, morality, and ethical codes of conduct in the school workplace.
Informing, Inspiring, Engaging............
The presentation is an overview of research and strategies for transitioning the sometimes-bumpy passage from full-time work to a happy, healthy, and meaningful retirement, coping with life-style changes/altered expectations, and finding creative new ways to self-reinvent and thrive. We will explore ways to find meaning and the three BASIC NEEDS that work fulfills and which are essential to retirement: purpose, community, and structure. This session is for retired, retiring, soon-to-retire, and other music teachers who want to achieve purpose, satisfaction, and peace-of-mind throughout their post-employment years.
By learning you will teach, by teaching you will learn. - Latin Proverb
Instrumental
Rob Shaubach presents Trading Reeds for Rosin: Teaching Orchestra as a String "Foreigner"
This session is designed for those with little or no experience in stringed instrument performance and pedagogy who find themselves teaching string classes and conducting orchestras. Strategies, insights, and discoveries to help you thrive in unfamiliar territory will be presented by a twenty-year veteran of string teaching who did not major (or minor!) in a string instrument.
Bill Powers presents "Recruitment + Method + Retention = Success!"
Combining positive recruiting, effective methodology, and successful retention strategies can lead to a rewarding experience for all shareholders.
Justin Presley presents The Basics of MARCHING (Band)
This session will concentrate on the marching aspect of marching band. Concepts covered will include marching fundamentals (posture, technique, movement), drill design, and cleaning drill.
Strings...........PCMEA........
More to come...............!
Kristin Myers
The Double Reeds Demystified
Today’s presentation will offer practical tips on how to start oboe and bassoon students in not only elementary school but through high school as well. Detailed information on embouchure formation, reed care, and selecting students will be discussed. Advice on commercial and handmade reeds will be provided as well as sources to purchase instruments.
Jordan Shomper
PCMEA: That First Year
So you’ve landed and accepted a position in a new district…now what?
Between setting up your room or choir, meeting and connecting with colleagues, and experiencing an entirely new school climate, that first year in a new district is hard.
This session will provide a guide to succeeding in the first year as a new teacher in a school district as well as tips to be accepted into a full-time position. It will present real-world situations and how to find success in the situations presented throughout the entire year. It will attempt to address the toughest parts of a full-time, teaching position. This session will enable teachers to feel confident going into new positions and provide innovative ideas for veteran teachers.
Anne Stuart
A Cognitive Approach to Music Education K-6
An interactive session which will give a glimpse into creating engaging and active lesson plans using a cognitive approach to learning.
PCMEA: I've got an interview! How should I prepare?
This presentation will focus on the music education college student/graduate who would like tips to prepare for a successful interview.