(Kemptville) – The Upper Canada District School Board’s Summer Institute teacher training program offered classroom teachers two music-oriented workshops this year to help provide them with the skills they need to incorporate music into their classrooms this fall.
Teaching Classroom Guitar and ORFF for the Classroom Teacher were two four-day workshops that took place at South Branch Elementary School from August 13-18. Coordinated by Secondary Education Coordinator Jim Palmer, the two workshops were targeted at classroom teachers – with or without prior musical knowledge – who wanted to introduce students to engaging ways of learning through music.
“We had people in the Teaching Classroom Guitar workshop who literally never touched a guitar before and some who were very experienced,” said Palmer. “These workshops allowed teachers to feel more confident teaching music in a classroom setting.”
Teaching Classroom Guitar was targeted at grades 7-12 teachers and taught by Bob Denney of Teaching Guitar Workshops (TGW). The goal was to prepare teachers with a range of musical backgrounds to deliver an engaging guitar instruction program in their classrooms. ORFF for the Classroom Teacher was targeted at primary and junior teachers and taught by Leslie Bricker, past president of Carl Orff Canada. This program was developed by Carl Orff Canada in response to the needs of classroom teachers who were seeing the disappearance of the elementary music specialist. It introduced song, speech, movement, body percussion, drama, instrumental experience, basic theory and more. The course focused heavily on the links between music and other areas of the curriculum, particularly Drama/Dance, Visual Art and Balanced Literacy.
Palmer said the workshops were part of the Upper Canada District School Board Arts Charter, a three-year initiative that was created to ensure all students from across the Board have equal access to meaningful, effective and authentic experiences in the Arts. Palmer and eleven other teachers and administrators are part of the Arts Charter Working Group, a group that organizes and implements new arts programming, as well as provides funding for schools looking for Arts supports. The Board has set aside $300,000 per year for the next three years specifically for the Arts Charter.
“We’ve started with music this year because of feedback we received from teachers and because music literacy is a great skill in itself,” he said. “But we do want to branch out next year into more Drama, Dance and Visual Arts.”
Denney, a 20-year music teaching veteran and Fine Arts and Technology head at John McCrae Secondary School in Ottawa, said he’s been instructing TGW in Canada since 2008. He said guitar instruction at a classroom level has been so successful at his school that he now teaches it full-time to 130 high school students.
“The guitar touches kids where they live,” Denney said. “It’s something that students can take away for themselves or a band and it doesn’t matter what genre of music they like. Teaching the guitar also helps students learn patience, effort and dedication. And, it doesn’t have a negative impact on instrumental music. Students can do both.”
Denney said most teachers leave his workshops re-energized and excited to return to teaching in the fall.
“Teachers say,” I can’t wait to get back to try this,’” he said. “I emphasize the fact that they don’t need to know it all to bring it to the classroom. If the kids know that you’re learning too and having fun, they’ll be on your side.”
Angela Raycroft, a grades 7/8 teacher at Rothwell-Osnabruck School and Teaching Classroom Guitar participant said she couldn’t believe how much she had learned in only a few days.
“I knew a few chords before but that’s it,” she said. “Now I feel like I could teach the course!”
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For more information please call:
Jim Palmer
Secondary Education Coordinator
Upper Canada District School Board
613-213-4568
jim.palmer@ucdsb.on.ca