Intro to Adaptive Music Education: Our signature PD
Click here to hear this blog post read in Jess’ voice.
The first professional development workshop that Jen and I ever offered together was a one-day workshop that we called Intro to Adaptive Music Education. Years later, having taught it both in person and online many times, this course is still our most popular offering! That’s because it’s the starter pack for music teachers who need concrete assistance in working with students who have high support needs. It includes research, background information, general classroom strategies, music class-specific strategies, and a heavy dose of anti-ableist philosophy to give structure to work with this student population.
It also includes a crucial element that helps all the theory come alive: like all of our PD sessions, Intro features a number of participatory demonstrations of some of our favorite music class activities with accessible and adaptive elements modeled. Participants are given access to notation, lyrics, chords, written instructions, and ready-to-print visuals and choice boards when applicable for these activities so that they can replicate these games in their own classrooms on Monday morning.
The demo activities consistently receive profuse positive feedback in course evaluations. Participants tell us that not only do the model activities help them to understand what effective accessible/adaptive music education looks like, but they also enjoy participating in them. In fact, our most consistent constructive feedback is that people wish we had time for more repetitions of the songs and games during class! We carefully select these activities to be ones that are satisfying and enduring and appeal to a range of ages. We also use these activities to provide variety in the class format, breaking up the presentation parts of the session.
Always a team!
Jess and Jen take a selfie while on a break from teaching an in-person session of Intro.
Alternating between presenting and demo activities was not our original concept for formatting a PD. Looking back at my twenty-something years in music education, I can very easily point to the course I took that had the biggest impact on me: First Steps in Music training with John Feierabend. I first took it in 2010 at Gordon College, then again in my Kodaly training at Hartt School of Music in 2015. First Steps training immediately made me a better teacher because, while explaining all of the reasons behind it, Dr. Feierabend showed me anew what playful, effective, developmentally-appropriate musical teaching could look like. I didn’t have to invent something original for Monday morning; I could start by imitating what I had seen and then figure out as I went how to modify it to suit my specific classroom situation, including my own strengths and interests, district expectations, and individual student needs. It was important for my own comprehension and growth that at that point I had several years of classroom experience. I had a solid framework on which I could hang First Steps ideas. I had mental pictures of real live students whom I knew well, and not just abstract notions of generic, theoretical children. In short, I was more ready for this type of learning than I had been when I was an undergraduate Music Education major who, at the time, was planning to have a career focused on conducting performing ensembles.
We hope that we can be the right training at the right time for teachers who need these ideas and activities. Intro to Adaptive Music Education is meant to be focused, balanced and powerful. We know that your time is valuable and taking a full graduate course in this area isn’t always feasible. (To be honest, we try to make all of our offerings more useful than many of the 60 graduate credits I’ve earned since my Masters degree.) If you can only fit one PD about supporting disabled and neurodivergent students into your life, we recommend this one! And if you have time and interest in more, we hope you’ll consider our other offerings. Make sure to join our mailing list so you’ll receive announcements about upcoming PD opportunities including online sessions, in person workshops, conference presentations and graduate courses. We look forward to working with you!