My First Classical Music Book (and i-Pad app)
Genevieve Helsby’s excellent introduction for elementary aged children was published in 2009. Now, My First Classical Music Book can be used in conjunction with an i-Pad app ($4.99) that opens up the book’s pages into a lively animated encounter with elements of Western art music.
The 60-page book (including an audio CD) is published by Naxos. The i-Pad app can be explored in a brief YouTube video.
Professional Organizations
Most of the activity of national and state groups for music education seems to be focused on middle and upper school music — where the performances, competitions and budgets are concentrated. Annual membership fees for these groups can add up. However, all the organizations listed here offer valuable resources; in some cases non-members can have access as well, through the group’s website. See also the local and national professional groups listed under Kodály, Orff, and Dalcroze.
National Association for Music Education (formerly known as MENC) Memberships include subscription to several publications. A combination NAME/NYSSMA membership is $108 annually. The NAME website hosts a lively General Music discussion on-line.
New York State School Music Association (NYSSMA)
NAME and NYSSMA are a combined membership: when you join one, you belong to both.
Music Educators Association of New York City (MEANYC) $30 annually, 1st-year teachers free.
MEANYC hosts various workshops throughout the year, as well as sponsoring the adjudication of NYSSMA festival competitions around the city. Their latest newsletter, Crescendo, is available here.
Texas Music Educators Association TMEA is included here as an exemplary professional organization: see especially what’s available under the heading Resources.
The Children’s Music Network is organization of “teachers, performers, songwriters, radio hosts, and parents who care about the quality and content of children’s music.”
Professional Development
Organizations or schools in the NYC area which offer professional development: clinics, workshops, or certification training of relevance to elementary-level music teachers. Click the “Events” link to see what’s current.
Office of Arts and Special Projects (NYC-DOE) sometimes plans day-long clinics during the school year, focusing on the Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in the Arts.
Music Educators Association of New York City (MEANYC) has short (2-hour) clinics on Saturdays at locations all over NYC.
UFT Music Teachers Committee was dormant for several years, but recently resumed offering a program of full-day Saturday clinics for music teachers, during the year.
Orff and Kodály chapters in NYC sponsor day-long Saturday events in Manhattan, with L.I. Orff workshops at Hofstra University.
Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ, offers some one-day-only music education courses on Saturdays.
NYU’s Kodály Summer Institute is an excellent intensive program for Kodály certification held each year around first two weeks of July.
New Jersey City University has Orff certification classes in July.
National Board for Professional Teaching Standards has a certification for early and middle childhood music teachers. NBPTS certification is a rigorous process through which accomplished teachers earn a distinction after completing a course of assessments and portfolio submission. Information about the Music Educators certification and the NBPTS standards for early and middle childhood music can be downloaded as a PDF file.
Cross-Choral Training™ Workshop with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus
The Office of Arts and Special Projects just recently announced “Cross-Choral Training™,” an all-day Saturday workshop for NYC Department of Education choral/vocal teachers.
The clinicians are two master choral conductors: Dianne Berkun (right) Artistic Director and Founder of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and Jeannette 
LoVetri (left), BYCA’s Voice Specialist.
BYCA’s Cross-Choral Training™ method is functional voice training applied in a group setting, based on the latest information on voice science and knowledge of the young voice. Through the development of vocal registers and resonance adjustments, singers develop the capacity to perform music of diverse genres and styles authentically, and to respond to musical and expressive demands of the most challenging choral repertoire.
The workshop will be held at the Brooklyn Youth Chorus Academy, 179 Pacific Street, Brooklyn (near the F train stop at Bergen Street) from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM on Saturday, January 28.
A live music calendar for NYC students
Music for a Sound Future is a site that helps students find free or low-cost performances of live music in all five city boroughs, with detailed descriptions of each event including a map to each respective venue.
The calendar is an initiative of the Council for Living Music in partnership with the American Federation of Musicians Local 802. It’s part of their effort to counter 
the trend among Broadway producers toward using canned music in place of pit orchestras for Broadway shows. The site uses GoogleCalendar and includes many Juilliard recitals and some drama as well as music.
Performing Arts in NYC
The many performing arts organizations in New York City can be a great resource for teachers and students. Some of the links listed here also appear on the Professional Development page. Most of these organizations offer extensive outreach (visiting artist) programs for NYC schools, or offer print and audio curriculum materials for teachers. Some even host websites where children can explore music on their own.
- Carnegie Hall has a program for 3rd through 5th graders called LinkUp! and one called Music Explorers for grades K through 2. Each program combines learning soprano recorder and trips to attend (or even participate in!) concerts at Carnegie Hall. Their Online Resource Center is a rich collection off videos, lesson plans and other materials (free, but you have to register on-line for access).
- Metropolitan Opera offers a variety of opera programs for schools, as well as partnerships and professional development through the Metropolitan Opera Guild including the Urban Voices initiative.
- American Ballet Theatre is listed here because the music is such an integral part of the experience, and they offer free schooltime concerts, as well as free tickets for students to attend regular performances in the Spring.
- New York Philharmonic has a variety of programs listed. Their School Day Concerts get booked very quickly each year.
- Jazz at Lincoln Center has programs for schools and teachers, as well as a jazz curriculum website for children to explore on their own.
- Brooklyn Philharmonic offers excellent school time concerts in the BAM Opera House and at other locations.
- JazzReach usually schedules a few of its outstanding multimedia performances with the Metta Quintet in June at Manhattan’s John Jay College.
- Young People’s Chorus of New York City, the resident chorus of the 92nd Street Y and WNYC, successfully emphasizes choral work from multicultural sources. Every spring, YPC hosts a big choral directors workshop.
- Juilliard School of Music has several programs to support music learning in public schools. See their Morse Fellowship.
- Brooklyn Conservatory of Music has a Music Partners program which takes the place of a full-time music teacher in some public schools (P.S. 29 in District 15 is one). In some cases the partnership can be arranged to work along-side of a regular DOE music teacher. The BCM’s Music Partners director is Dorothy Savitch.
The NYCDOE’s Office of Pupil Transportation enables schools to reserve buses on-line. Each school is assigned a UserID and Password, for access.
“Arts Achieve:” New York City’s arts education assessments
This past year, the city’s Department of Education joined with a group of local arts organizations and won a multimillion dollar “Investing in Innovation Fund” (i3) grant from the US Department of Education. The project, called Arts Achieve: Impacting Student Success in the Arts, is spearheaded by the longtime DOE arts-partner Studio in a School, and includes Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute; ArtsConnection; 92nd Street Y/Harkness Dance Center, Dance Education Laboratory; and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, which is a branch of the Smithsonian Institution. An additional partner is Metis Associates, a consulting group that provides research, 
evaluation, program development and information technology services.
According the Arts Achieve grant application, the project is meant to create “standardized ways of assessing student achievement in visual arts, music, theater, and dance in benchmark years: 5th, 8th, and 12th grades.” Hopefully, the assessment results will translate into better classroom instruction and higher student achievement. Use of digital technology features broadly in the project and in its eventual wider application, in tools for communication, for assessment feedback, and for accessing arts curriculum.
Music Educators’ Workshops for 2011-2012
The fall season always brings new workshops of interest to elementary music teachers. One series is presented by MEANYC and the UFT Music Teachers Committee:
On Saturday, November 19, from 9AM-1PM, Jim Frankel, a presenter from the Soundtree company will host a workshop on ways to Integrate Technology into Your Music Classroom, exploring new software titles, hardware, websites, and curricular resources across grades K-12. 
On Thursday, March 15, 2012 from 4:30 PM-7:30 PM, Marisol Ponte-Greenberg will lead a workshop on Traditional Music of Argentina: Music Styles, Instruments, Folk Songs and Choral Repertoire for Children. Packets with transcriptions of songs, translations and teaching techniques will be available, and Ms. Ponte-Greenberg who teaches chorus and general music at the Abigail Adams P.S. 131 School in Queens, will give a PowerPoint talk on her recent research as a Fulbright scholar in Latin America.
For all the UFT/MEANYC workshops, there is a $10.00 fee with advance registration/$15.00 at the door, and refreshments will be served.
Other workshops in 2012 include “Music & Dance,” Musical Theatre, a New York Pops brass and woodwind workshop, and a presentation on the Little Kids Rock guitar program. Details will follow here.
All of these workshops satisfy hours of Professional Development Credit and the necessary forms will be available at the workshops.
Click HERE for a registration form to print out and mail in. For more information, visit the MEANYC or the UFT Music Teachers Committee websites.
NYC DOE Resources
Teaching of music in NYC schools is supported and directed citywide by the The Office of the Arts and Special Projects, in the Department of Education’s headquarters in Tweed Courthouse on Chambers Street. Dr. Barbara Murray is the Director of Music Education.
The Office of the Arts and Special Projects is set up to support and enhance instructional programs in art, music, dance and theater, in grades preK-12. Each school receives a budget line for arts education based on pupil enrollment. How these funds are spent is determined by the school’s principal, in accordance with established guidelines. During the reorganization of the Department of Education, budgeting is a far more transparent process than it was in the past, and a great deal of information about how schools spend money is available publicly, on-line.
The OASP site is an on-line source for several critically-important documents:
the curriculum guide Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in the Arts (it’s a PDF file, heavy in color and graphics: not practical for downloading and printing). Note: The Blueprint “strands” on Music Education are also available in a more practical poster format (both are available for purchase; see below).
Getting the Blueprint:
Your school’s principal can order it through FAMIS: E-Catalog, search under the category “Internal Services” with the following item numbers:
TLAR10032- Music Blueprint Book- $7
TLAR10033- Music Blueprint Poster- $3
Include specific contact information on the purchase order for the delivery of materials. The necessary funds should be scheduled in Object Code 0998. For a free download of the Blueprint in a PDF file, click here.
The DOE’s brief Benchmarks for Music Learning can be examined online — a series of general statements that summarize expectations for children’s learning and abilities in grades 2, 5, 8 and 12.
In addition, the OASP page offers much valuable information on ArtsCount. This is the Department of Education’s program to ensure that arts education is not overlooked in the drive toward accountability in city schools (see post below). Components of this program include the Annual Arts in Schools Report, the Learning Environment Surveys, and Annual Compliance Review. Some of this information can be accessed on each school’s DOE-hosted website, if you click on the link to “Statistics” on the left column.
The OASP site offers links to many other valuable resources including grant sources and activities for students, including the Mr. Hollands’ Opus Foundation, and VH1′s Save the Music Foundation.
Learning Support Organizations
Each school is associated with one of the School Support Organizations (SSO). Music teachers should seek to contact the arts coordinator for their school’s SSO, and to be aware of any workshops or other SSO initiatives to promote arts education.
Citywide Professional Development for 2011-2012
Two events are available for music teachers on November 8 (Election Day). One is listed below and the other can be found on the page for Teacher-Directed Staff Development.
MUSIC AS TEXT: ANALYZING MUSIC FOR PERFORMANCE AND APPRECIATION
As in the past, the 2011-12 school year offers a series of professional development events for music teachers in New York City public schools. There’s a cost for the series that must be paid for by the school at the pleasure of the principal, and participants must register on-at a dedicated website (CVENT). The cost of the series is $100 per elementary school participant for the full workshop series (3 days).
All workshops will be held at Frank Sinatra School of the Arts High School, 35-12 35th Avenue in Queens, on Tuesday, November 8, 2011, and then on Monday, January 30, and Thursday, June 7, 2012, from 8:30 AM — 3:00 PM.
This year’s series will provide “will provide practical, performance based strategies for articulating and demonstrating the ways in which music empowers students to ‘decode’ complex text.”
“These three sessions will focus upon one, specific aspect of the music specialist’s mission: to encourage students’ appreciation and participation in music thus developing their ability to read music-related text. In doing so, the goals and outcomes for our students contained within the Music Blueprint and Common Core standards are supported.”
Participants are expected to attend all three workshop days. The registration deadline for this workshop series is Tuesday, October 31, 2011.
The Fine Print: (more…)
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