Category Archives: Podcast

Karla Bell: The Graceful Educator | S02E06



 

Karla Bell, the Graceful Educator, joins Missy on the podcast to talk about the work she does every day in her program to lift up and nurture students, helping them grow into the learners and leaders that they need to be. You’ll hear about what it means to focus on equity and antiracist practices through a trauma-informed lens while also learning how to lessen the temptation to be a “perfect teacher” in a time when we need to strike a better balance in life!

Karla Bell, The Graceful Educator, is a veteran Music educator, serving more than 15 years in diverse settings, serving grades Kindergarten through 12th grade and post-secondary education. She currently serves as the Choral Director William Penn High School in Colonial School District in New Castle, Delaware. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music Education from Delaware State University and a Master of Education degree in School Leadership from Wilmington University.

Karla is a mentor and teacher’s teacher. Using equity, anti-racist, and trauma-informed lenses, she facilitates graceful learning spaces for scholars and empowers fellow educators to do the same. She leads and serves on equity and curriculum teams and facilitates professional development at the school, district, and state levels. Her professional memberships and affiliations include the National Education Association, National Association for Music Education, Delaware State Education Association, and Delaware Music Educators Association.

Karla is a native of Dover, Delaware. She enjoys traveling, live performances, reading, and days at the beach. She is happily married to her husband Calvin and they have one daughter. Karla believes in the gifting and potential of every person she encounters. She is a catalyst. Her passion is removing barriers for uninhibited access to opportunity and laying a strong foundation for present and future generations.

The Graceful Educator Website: https://www.educatingwithgrace.com/
The Graceful Educator Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thegracefuleducator
The Graceful Educator Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thegracefuleducator/

Taylor Kurilew: CS – Let’s Get Back Into It! S02E05



 

Missy talks with Taylor Kurilew, a teacher in the first years of using John Feierabend’s Conversational Solfege music literacy program for elementary students. In a former podcast, Missy and Taylor spent 3 episodes talking about the mechanics of CS as well as how to roll it out for the first time in her classroom. In this episode, they catch up on what happened right after those episodes debuted, since COVID entered the scene and caused Taylor (and all of us) to pivot! Also, Missy talks about the impact of a book she’s reading called There There by Tommy Orange.

Taylor Kurilew is a native of New Jersey, and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education from Montclair State University and a Masters of Music Degree in Voice Performance from Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts. Aside from being in the classroom, Ms. Kurilew has performed in operas and musical theatre shows and has attended operatic training programs from NY to Italy and continues to perform and gig outside of school. Taylor is the K-5 general music teacher and choral director at Cedar Hill Elementary School in Basking Ridge, NJ and also teaches voice in the central NJ area. She continues to work on her craft and her teaching career and loves using these experiences and trainings to keep her inspired and share the love of music to her students in every aspect she can, in and out of the classroom.

The Artists, the Teachers, the Dreamers: A Pandemic Journey, an article from July 2020 on the Art Pride NJ website:

 


Austin Martin: Rhymes with Reason | S02E04



 

Austin Martin is the founder of Rhymes with Reason, an online interactive platform helping students study vocabulary words through hip hop music. Austin talks to Missy about his enduring love for hip hop and why it seemed like a natural fit for truly meeting students where they live. Along the way, there are some fascinating moments regarding the disconnect that students can feel between the music of their lives and what happens in their school music classrooms.

San Diego (CA) native Austin Martin is the creator and founder of Rhymes with Reason (RwR), an e-learning resource that helps students learn words and boost reading skills via hip-hop & popular music.

In 2014, at Brown University, Martin founded Rhymes with Reason after he discovered that 67 of the top 100 words on the SAT were detectable in recognizable hip-hop lyrics. Since 2017 RwR has been used in 150+ schools/education programs across the United States and has been covered by Bloomberg, NPR, EducationPost, RevoltTV, Huffington Post and other media outlets. RWR has also collaborated with Chance the Rapper’s SocialWorks, and was awarded the 2019 Echoing Green Fellowship, Martin was selected as one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in Education and is currently an Ed.M candidate at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

 

 

Website: https://www.rhymeswithreason.co/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rhymeswithreason1

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rhymeswithreason/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/rhymeswreason

A lecture at Brown University (part of their Hip Hop Lecture Series in 2019): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3oArIVSWWA


Natasha Verhulst: Changing the Narrative About Indigenous Music | S02E03



 

Natasha outlines a few important considerations as teachers create lessons for Native American Heritage Month in November. She also shares some of her own favorite modern Native artists who are helping break stereotypes for students (and teachers!)

Natasha Verhulst is a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and a descendant of the Menominee Nation. She is currently teaching 4K-5th grade general music at Keshena Primary School in the Menominee Indian School District on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin. Natasha is also currently a graduate student at Lakeland College where she is finishing her Masters of Music Education with emphasis in Kodaly. Natasha is passionate about bringing Native music and culture to the music classroom setting for children to experience and learn from. She presents regularly about approaching Native American music for districts, organizations, and institutions nationwide. Natasha worked with PBS on their project “ReSound: Songs of Wisconsin,” creating a diverse curriculum of different cultural music for educators throughout the state. The National Indian Education Association (NIEA) is featuring Natasha’s lesson plans on their website so that educators throughout the country may use them in their classrooms. Recently, Natasha worked with Lawrence University Music Education students as a mentor, where she guided the students in creating a lesson plan centered around Wisconsin Indigenous music for the Backyard Groove program. She was a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access committee member for the Feierabend Association of Music Education. Natasha was named a 2021 Herb Kohl Educational Foundation Teacher Fellow, and recently became a member of the WMEA State Standards Committee.  Natasha also enjoys spending time with her husband and family, performing, crocheting, and beading.

Mentioned in the Episode:

Amy Burns: Virtual Performance? Help! | S02E02



 

Missy sends out another tech SOS to Amy Burns who, as always, steps up in a big way to help Missy think through attempting a virtual performance with elementary students. They discuss the most basic approach to doing this for the entire school when they have very limited singing time and no in person assemblies as well as more sophisticated ways to put together this type of performance.

 

Amy M. Burns has taught PreK-grade 4 general music for over 20 years at Far Hills Country Day School. She has authored four books on how to integrate tech into the elementary music classroom. She has presented many sessions on the topic, including four keynote addresses in TX, IN, St. Maarten, and AU. She is the recipient of the 2005 TI:ME Teacher of the Year, 2016 NJ Master Music Teacher, 2016 Governor’s Leader in Arts Education, and the 2017 NJ Nonpublic School Teacher of the Year Awards. Her most recent publication, Using Technology with Elementary Music Approaches (2020), published by Oxford University Press (OUP) is available from OUP and Amazon.

 

 

Mentioned in the Episode:

Easyvirtualchoir.com

Wevideo.com

Soundtrap.com

canva.com

 

Find out more about Amy and her resources:

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/elmusedtech

http://amymburns.com/

https://mustech.net/author/amymburns/

http://amymburns.com/tema


Franklin J. Willis: Digging Deep While Pressing Forward | S02E01



 

Season 2 kicks off with a great discussion between Franklin and Missy about how teachers can find ways to dig into their own creative wells as musicians while also finding ways to joyfully draw out musicality from students…even in a pandemic.

 

Franklin Willis, music educator and instructional coach with Metro Nashville Public Schools equips teachers with instructional support and necessary resources to strengthen their professional acumen and enhance their classrooms. Through his work, he has developed a passion in the cultivation of musicianship for young minds as every child has musical potential and deserves a music teacher who will see the best in them. Willis believes that music education is a vital tool to teach students about other cultures, create community, and inspire a love for learning. Willis has created and facilitated professional development sessions for music teachers of all grade levels sharing his unique and relevant teaching practices. Through his work Willis has received national recognition for his commitment to student learning, his passion for the profession and his innovative teaching practices. He is a three-time recipient of the CMA Foundation Music Teacher of Excellence Award. (’16, ’18, ’19)

 

 

 

Mentioned in the Episode:


Mark Peters: Telling a Different Story: a New Approach to Music History | S01E18



 

Missy talks to Trinity Christian College Professor Dr. Mark Peters about the transformation of his introductory music listening/literature course. This class, often called “music appreciation” in many universities, has been renamed “Music in Context” at Trinity. Dr. Peters describes how he’s moved on from the story that has most often been told to undergrad students in music history, that of European white men, to instead tell the story of all human persons.

Mark Peters is professor of music and director of the Center for Teaching and the Good life at Trinity Christian College. Peters is author of A Woman’s Voice in Baroque Music: Mariane von Ziegler and J. S. Bach and co-editor with Reginald L. Sanders of Compositional Choices and
Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach. His other publications include articles in Bach: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute and the Yale Journal of Music & Religion and the monograph Claude Debussy As I Knew Him and Other Writings of Arthur Hartmann (University
of Rochester Press, 2003), with Samuel Hsu and Sidney Grolnic.

 


Books read in the Honors seminar Remembering Rightly: The Ethics of Memory (Spring 2020).

Societies/conferences:

Resources:

Trinity’s Music department page https://www.trnty.edu/academic-program/music/ and facebook https://www.facebook.com/TrinityChristianCollegeMusicDepartment

Mark’s books:


Katie Wardrobe: Teach Me Your Ways – Part Two | S01E17



In Part 2 of Missy and Chris Anne Powers’ interview with Katie Wardrobe of Midnight Music. Chris gets a chance to ask her questions about using tech in the music classroom, including what Katie thinks are the “must haves” for tech in the music room.

Katie Wardrobe is a music technology trainer, consultant, blogger and podcaster who is passionate about helping music teachers through her business Midnight Music (www.midnightmusic.com.au). She runs hands-on workshops, presents regularly at conferences in Australia and overseas and she offers online training and support to music teachers all over the world. Katie’s workshops and courses focus on incorporating technology into the music curriculum and practical tips for resource creation and productivity.

Katie has been a Keynote speaker at the Australian Society for Music Education National Conference, the Music Education New Zealand National Conference and the ACT Music Educators Network Conference.

Her online music technology professional development learning space – the Midnight Music Community – was launched in 2016 and has hundreds of members from around the world. She also runs a series of free webinars once a month which have been attended by more than 20,000 teachers in 2020 alone.

Katie is the author of the keyboard and technology program for middle school students titled Studio Sessions (published by MusicEDU) and she publishes a popular annual guide called the Ultimate Guide To Free Music Tech Resources on the Midnight Music blog. Katie is also the host of the Music Tech Teacher podcast which was launched in early 2017 and has more than 125 episodes.

Some of the resources Katie mentions in this episode:

Katie Wardrobe: Teach Me Your Ways – Part One | S01E16



 

Missy once again complains about her very up and (mostly) down relationship with technology to the queen of tech, Katie Wardrobe of Midnight Music. In Part One of the conversation, in which they are joined by FAME Teacher Trainer and Midnight Music fangirl, Chris Anne Powers, the ladies talk about the stressors involved with trying to utilize tech and what to do when things go wrong.

Katie Wardrobe is a music technology trainer, consultant, blogger and podcaster who is passionate about helping music teachers through her business Midnight Music (www.midnightmusic.com.au). She runs hands-on workshops, presents regularly at conferences in Australia and overseas and she offers online training and support to music teachers all over the world. Katie’s workshops and courses focus on incorporating technology into the music curriculum and practical tips for resource creation and productivity.

Katie has been a Keynote speaker at the Australian Society for Music Education National Conference, the Music Education New Zealand National Conference and the ACT Music Educators Network Conference.

Her online music technology professional development learning space – the Midnight Music Community – was launched in 2016 and has hundreds of members from around the world. She also runs a series of free webinars once a month which have been attended by more than 20,000 teachers in 2020 alone.

Katie is the author of the keyboard and technology program for middle school students titled Studio Sessions (published by MusicEDU) and she publishes a popular annual guide called the Ultimate Guide To Free Music Tech Resources on the Midnight Music blog. Katie is also the host of the Music Tech Teacher podcast which was launched in early 2017 and has more than 125 episodes.

From the Episode:

Midnight Music: http://midnightmusic.com.au/
Video Creation for Music Teachers online course https://midnightmusic.com.au/vcmt/
Create Beautiful Teaching Resources Fast (with Canva) online course https://midnightmusic.com.au/cbtr-enroll/


Tiffany Barry: Filipino Songs & Culture in the Music Room | S01E15



 

Are you seeking ways to better represent all students in your classroom, or looking for some great and engaging repertoire to use during Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month as well as all year long? Tune in to hear Missy chat with author and teacher Tiffany Unarce Barry about her new song collection, “Songs of the Sun”, a song collection featuring music and activities from her own cultural heritage as a Filipina.

Tiffany Unarce Barry taught general music, ukulele, choir, orchestra, and band for 14 years in the California public school system. She completed Orff Schulwerk certification through the San Francisco International Orff Course and received her bachelor’s, teaching credential, and master’s degrees from the School of Music and Dance at San Jose State University (SJSU). Mrs. Barry is a performer, presenter, and published author. She is also an adjunct professor in
Music Education at SJSU, currently serving as the administrative coordinator of the Three-Summer Master in Music Education Program and the course director of the Orff Schulwerk Teacher Training.

 

 

 

 

Resources mentioned in the episode:

Tiffany’s book: https://www.beatinpathpublications.com/TBarry/home.html

QR code for a 20% discount on the book!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Website for Aimee Curtis Pfizner: https://ofortunaorff.blogspot.com/

Instagram: @barrutiff