March 2026 Newsletter
Dear Medley friends and colleagues,
Thank you and welcome to everyone who has joined us in our first month in social media land. We hope that you have already found some ideas that will positively impact your classroom– and we would love to meet you in a training and share more!
Classroom activity videos and supporting materials below! Let’s start the information roundup.
Online Professional Development Opportunities
Sunday, March 8th, 6-7 pm Eastern Time: FREE office hour with Jen and Jess
Spend an hour on Zoom with Jen and Jess and a small group of other like-minded music educators on music education access, inclusion, belonging, adaptation, affirmation, and more. We will reflect, troubleshoot on behalf of our students, answer questions, and build community together. Bring your own inquiries, or just listen and discuss with colleagues. Advance registration required. Limit ten participants. Click here to register.
CANCELED: Thursdays April 2nd, 9th, & 16th, 6-8 pm Eastern Time: Intro to Adaptive Music Education
Our signature six-hour course filled with ‘greatest hits’ demo activities!
Sunday, May 3rd, 6-7 pm Eastern Time: FREE office hour with Jen and Jess
Description above. Click here to register.
In-person Learning Opportunities
April 10-12, presentation time TBA. The ABLE Assembly conference, Berklee College of Music, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Registration and info.
July 17-19, presentation time TBA. The Feierabend Association for Music Education (FAME) conference, Chicago, Illinois, USA. Registration and info.
July 27th-31st, 8:30 am-4:30 pm. Save the dates to take our weeklong graduate course! Introduction to Adaptive Music Education, Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford, West Hartford, Connecticut, USA. 3 graduate credits. Additional info will be found here.
Favorite adaptive music teaching tool interviews with our adaptive music teacher friends!
DIY instructions for an adaptive guitar pick to support student strumming (video and blog)
An adaptive ukulele strategy for students who use only one hand, by our friend Miles Wilcox
The value of simple, live classroom accompaniment (video and blog)
All about the autoharp as an accessible classroom instrument (video and slides)
Our favorite quiet sensory tools for the music classroom, with more listed in the Teacher Resources section of our website.
An introduction to joint attention and what it means in the music classroom. This is our most popular video on TikTok so far!
Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite social media platforms (links below) and please help us reach more teachers by interacting with our content. We are so grateful to be in this important work with you!
Enthusiastically yours,
Jess, Jen & Jon
Bumpy Ride– a Medley original by Jon and Jess! This is the first downloadable activity bundle in our online store that includes notation, written instructions, audio, video, and original ready-to-print choice boards and choice cards by artist Isaiah Eddington (artwork featured in this newsletter!). The song is a catchy one in Mixolydian mode that incorporates each child’s name and transportation choice while they travel around the classroom or beyond. Click here to hear the song and download the materials.
Fizzy Drink– another Medley original by Jon and Jess. This movement scarf activity mischievously shakes a “fizzy drink” until the cap is twisted open and it sprays everywhere, represented by throwing the scarf into the air. Kids love doing it faster and faster. See Jon and Jess perform it together for students here.
Compadre Cómpreme un Coco, a.k.a. Poco Coco, a Dominican song found in De Colores and other Latin American Folk Songs for Children by José Luis Orozco. This video demonstrates how short tunes like this can be used to structure creative playing of claves or rhythm sticks.
Two-chord songs– specific strategies for using familiar songs harmonized by two chords as an access point for playing simple pitched instruments.