Choirs advice

I received this Barbara Harlow at Santa Barbara Music. They publish an arrangement of Music in my Mother's House. I thought it was great advice for singers in general. Holding the notes, indeed.

Your harmony works really well when you're all on the same beat.
Your upbeats are somewhat in dispute.
Everyone has an idea what those two 16ths are—we can duke it out.
Right in the middle of the note is where you want to land.
Keep the note alive, like a ping pong ball floating on water.
Pull the tone back to where your wisdom teeth used to be.
Sopranos are used to being beautiful but not always accurate.


from the 8-page program from the Jan.
11th memorial for Diane Loomer at the Chan Centre for Performing Arts.
It includes  a full page of "In her own words— Word for Word”

Arts Integration

Arts integration is gaining ground as an approach to teaching. Check out this link http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol8/808-toc.aspx?utm_source=ascdexpress&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=express808 for some great work being done around the country.

Children's Music Network

Last weekend at the Children's Music Network we celebrated 25 years. I've been connected with the network for most of those years, and I have consistently found inspiration, rejuvenation, ideas, and friendship there. If you are looking for a good source of material and support, I highly recommend joining. More information here. You'll find well known musicians and those who are just beginning. The most important part for me is that it's an organization that keeps the love and joy in singing alive, for kids and grownups. Priceless...

David Brooks "The Social Animal"

An article in which David Brooks discusses his book The Social Animal. He is usually identified as a conservatively biased columnist for the New York Times. However, in this book, he writes about scientific discoveries that support the importance of relationships, early childhood care and education, and creativity. Well worth a read if you are interested in education.

Early Childhood education in Wyoming

I just returned from leading some training in Wyoming for Early Childhood teachers and providers. I was doing work on music, but also on professional attitudes with my "I'm A Teacher Not A Babysitter" program. http://imateachernotababysitter.com/ Two things struck me deeply.

The first is that the Wyoming Legislature is generally unsympathetic to young children and their needs. As one example, the Legislature was considering changing licensing for care of young children in people's homes. Changing is the wrong word. Getting rid of is more accurate. Apparently, there would have been no requirement for any licensing for someone caring for up to five kids in their home. Back to the days of the neighborhood babysitter. It was good enough for the 1950s. The measure to remove licensing failed by one vote.

The Legislature has cut other funding as well, and just doesn't recognize the need for well trained and regulated early childhood care and education. This kind of short sighted thinking is increasingly prevalent all over the country, as competing priorities battle for funding. The effect on people who work in the field is depressing and demoralizing, and the long term effect on children is unknown, but clearly not positive.

The second thing is more hopeful. I've recently begun working with Faye Stanley (http://www.clappingdog.com/) who is a fantastic teaching artist in North Carolina. We're working on a couple of projects, but in my most recent training I incorporated a technique I learned from her about group creativity in early childhood. I had small groups in the session come up with adaptations and expansions on Susan Salidor's (http://www.susansalidor.com/)   wonderful song Peace in My Fingers. The engagement and energy in the room was sparkling, as people worked with each other in a way that we might also hope that children would. The adaptations were great, including winking, dancing, and eating. Faye's work has helped me to see that for young children, very small pieces are opportunities for creativity, and being involved in the process regularly at an early age may lead to a lifetime of creative exploration. I saw the power of this work in Wyoming, in particular in how motivating it was for teachers to be genuinely engaged in the creative process, as opposed to being recipients of knowledge.

The central idea of this piece of work is that rather than simply sharing songs that work with kids and hoping that teachers use them and maybe expand on them, we actually explored the process of that expansion. It makes it far more likely that the lesson will stick and be integrated into practice.

What's missing is the opportunity for long term sharing and growth. When people come together once a year, it's hard to have an ongoing learning community. One question is whether or not online work can make a difference in this way. Can technology connect people in the Early Childhood field in a meaningful way? One of our projects seeks to explore that question.

In the meantime, let's wish our colleagues in Wyoming well as they grapple with the impact of regressive thinking and short-sighted laws. Or lack of laws. One outcome of the training was an emphasis on advocacy, on stepping up for children. Powerless children need powerful friends.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lkWM35PLCQ

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Play. Fortunately, people who work with young children see its importance. In this excerpted article, you can find relevant brain research about the importance of play and how it works in the brain. Find it at http://dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=39402

In this article, adapted from Dr. Sam Wang and Dr. Sandra Aamodt's book Welcome to Your Child's Brain: How the Mind Grows from Conception to College (Bloomsbury USA, 2011; OneWorld Publications, 2011), the authors explore how play enhances brain development in children. As Wang and Aamodt describe, play activates the brain's reward circuitry but not negative stress responses, which can facilitate attention and action. Through play, children practice social interaction and build skills and interests to draw upon in the years to come.

School Shows

Everyone I know says that their bookings in schools are down. It's easy to see why. Between government budget cuts to schools and teachers, a focus on testing, literacy, and technology, and audiences that have more experience with screen time than face time, a school assembly begins to seem like a waste of money, a waste of time, or a cute anachronism, a throwback to earlier times.

It's easy to see this in a self-centered light, where my business and the business of my friends and colleagues is affected, and that is certainly true. But it's equally true that children lose when they have no experience with live performances. I believe that sitting together in the same space listening and watching and reacting together is a fundamental human skill and pleasure, and I regret deeply that many children rarely if ever get this opportunity.

Singing together is an art that is fading, and has been for a long time. Listening to stories, or watching a dance performance, or visiting a museum gallery are all on the endangered list of school experiences, and in the lives of most people. We say we want community and creativity, and yet we invest less time in those things. And it's particularly true for schools.

I don't believe that a focus on testing that excludes time for science, recess, gym, the arts, and social studies is good in any way for students, and yet we see schools around the country that have given up or limited each of the above in order to raise scores. Too many children will not know how to think critically, to be creative, to interact socially and care for each other because the focus has shifted.

I think the answer is actually simple. Raise taxes on the upper 1 or 5 percent of the population, and fully fund education. And let "fully funded" mean time for genuine arts experiences of all kinds. We need kids who can read. But we need a lot more than that, not for ourselves, but for the future of our country, and the planet.