2022 Colorado Music Educators Association Conference
Thursday, January 27, 2022
Practicum to Student Teaching to Interviews
The time has come to start putting the skills you have been developing into practical applications. This session will cover topics such as choosing a location for practicum, expanding your experiences during student teaching and showcasing your strengths during an interview. Come and explore this journey through the eyes of a public-school teacher and adjunct professor at CU Boulder. Regardless whether or not practicum is right around the corner or still in the future, this session is for you. Feel free to ask questions along the way.
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Native American Music into the General and Choral Music Classrooms
This presentation will include an introduction to Native American music, culture, differentiation, and history from tribes in the United States, as well as lesson plan ideas, songs, and resources for implementing Indigenous music into the general or choral music space. The audience will also receive critical insight into the lives of First Nations students, and how teachers can make these students feel validated in their classrooms in any age group.
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Teachers Matter Too: Recognizing and Reducing Teacher Burnout
Balancing work and home life is difficult for most music teachers. In many instances, music teachers sacrifice their personal well-being and time with their family so they can provide their students with quality experiences. This unhealthy divide was only exasperated during the pandemic. In this session, I will discuss the internal, external, and physical factors that cause teacher burnout, how to recognize the signs of burnout, and strategies for reducing teacher burnout. Attendees will also share their solutions for balancing their work and home lives.
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Friday, January 28, 2022
The First Three Years
The first three years of teaching are an important and often challenging transitional time for all new music teachers entering the profession. This panel discussion will explore the experiences of music teachers currently navigating this early career stage. Panelists Andrea Austin, Hannah Harm, Celeste Landy, and Tristan Peterson will share lessons they have learned in their journey from college to the classroom. Moderator David Rickels will also invite questions from the audience. College students, new teachers, and experienced teachers who mentor new educators will all benefit from this dialogue about experiences in the first three years.
Research Session 1 - Faculty and Doctoral Student Research
Presider: Dr. James Austin, CMEA Research Chair
Presenters:
Dr. H. Ellie Wolfe (Drake University) and Dr. Lisa Martin (Bowling Green State University) – “Mindfulness Practice in Academia: A Collective Self-Study”
Charles Oldenkamp (University of Colorado Boulder) – “Self-Efficacy in Middle School Jazz Instruction”
Jennifer L. Grice (Windsor High School and the University of Northern Colorado) – “Prominent Women Wind Conductors in Higher Education: Trials, Triumphs, and Recommendations for Improving Gender Equity in the Field”
Dr. Eric Wallace (Western Oregon University) – “Epidemiologic Survey of a Unique Type of Task-Specific Dystonia in Brass Musicians”
Gentry Ragsdale (University of Colorado Boulder) – “A Survey of Texas Music Educators’ Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices”
Teaching Music to Students with Trauma
We all have trauma-- but as education grows and develops, we are finding better ways of helping students to heal from trauma through the classroom interactions we have every day. In this session you will learn what a young brain does when it has experienced trauma, how Adverse Childhood Experiences can be at the root of a lot of frustrating behavior, and the best ways to help students whom you may not have had any clue what to do with before. We will also discuss how a music educator's personal healing from trauma is crucial to helping your students heal from theirs.
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Alliance for Music Education Equity: Supporting Music Experiences and Music Educators for Diversity
Looking to dive deeper into the content of the session? Check out these supporting materials:
Being a Culturally Responsive Educator: Starting with a Personal Approach
The call for culturally responsive educators has risen in the last few years. Educators such as Zaretta Hammond (2014) and music educators such as Vicki Lind and Constance McKoy (2016) have championed this call. What does it mean to be a culturally responsive educator? Where can teachers start to understand the aspects of being culturally responsive? The core of being a culturally responsive educator begins with the teacher in the classroom understanding themselves. In this session, we will discuss four personal areas that educators can attend to in order to better understand themselves and how they approach teaching. These areas are privilege, intersectionality, implicit bias, and fragility. Using these areas, we will discuss ways to understand ourselves and how we can best approach teaching from a culturally responsive lens.
Looking to dive deeper into the content of the session? Check out these supporting materials:
Saturday, January 29, 2022
I Have To Teach What? - Popular Music Courses at the Secondary Level
Whether a push from administrators, the community, or as a necessary class to fill out FTE, many secondary music educators are being handed popular music courses as part of their teaching loads. Often educators are assigned these courses with little to no curriculum support or training. This session will look at taking these classes and turning them into a robust program of study in popular music in a way that honors why students take these classes, acknowledges their limits as electives, and respects the time and energy of a secondary music educator that is already spread thin. Topics will include courses (guitar, history, and recording and songwriting), curriculum development, assessment, and recruitment and scheduling.
Looking to dive deeper into the content of the session? Check out these supporting materials:
Research Session 2 - Graduate Student Research
Research Session 2: Graduate Student Research
Presider: Dr. James Austin, CMEA Research Chair
Presenters:
Maddy Cort (Colorado State University) – “An Investigation of Emerging Music Courses in Colorado Secondary Schools”
Garrett Graves (University of Colorado Boulder) – “How Pre-College Music Mentors Influence Preservice Teacher Identity: A Pilot Study”
Kyle Liss (Frederick High School and the University of Colorado Boulder) – “Teaching for Intonation Accuracy: Techniques and Scaffolding in SVVSD Secondary Orchestra Directors”
Christy Go (Aurora Public Schools and the University of Colorado Boulder) – “Getting Beyond the ‘Pink’ and ‘Blue’: Support for Transgender Students in the K-12 Music Classroom”
Note: The final 15 minutes of this session will be devoted to a discussion of alternative research session formats (paper, paper with discussant, roundtable, poster) to be considered for the 2023 CMEA Clinic Conference. Attendees also may respond to a brief, anonymous questionnaire.