Summer Time

It's almost mid-summer (I'm being optimistic).  Flowers are blooming and the sun is warm.  I recently went to the University of Hartford -- Hartt School of Music in West Hartford, Connecticut.  Former Porters Point students may remember when we had Peter and Mary Alice Amidon for a week-long residency at our school -- maybe five years ago?? Anyway, I went to a week-long course at Hartt with the Amidon's designed for music educators.  What a GREAT week!  The course was called: "Rich Traditions and New Creations - Dance, Song, Storytelling and Literature in the Music Classroom".  Course requirements were to retell a story (no books allowed!!) and to create a song to sing to the group.  Quite a challenge.  I tell stories to my students all the time.  I love to use books to tell (or sing) a story.  This was different, though.  The "class" was all adults -- all music teachers.  I also had to write a song, and so I chose a personal subject -- my Mother.  It wasn't easy, but once I got started it was hard to stop.  It went very well.

Now the best parts of this class were all my classmates!  There were 30 people in the class and every one of them was excited to be there.  They participated all of the time.  We danced and sang harmony and just had a wonderful time.  Peter and Mary Alice are great teachers and they taught us all how to teach...  I'm so glad I took advantage of this opportunity with two fabulous people:  Peter and Mary Alice Amidon.