I’m headed to beautiful San Antonio Friday morning for the MTNA National Conference. This will be my fourth conference with MTNA. I attended 2010 Albuquerque, 2011 Milwaukee, and 2014 Chicago. Baltimore is up next!
As always, the conference is jam-packed!
Indiana Events
The Hoosier state especially has lots of events to be excited about. Both our state President and President-Elect (me!) will be presenting.
- My session The Wild West of Marketing: How Do You Know What Really Works, will be Sunday afternoon at 2:15pm. If you’re attending, I would love to see your face! I have lots of ideas and tons of resources to share with you on how to grow your studio. If you’re unable to come, please feel free to download the handout.
- Our state President, Christina Whitlock, NCTM will present her session The Varsity Musician’s Playbook: Commitment-Building Strategies from Team Sports to the Studio Monday at 9:55am. I’m super excited for this session in hearing ways I can continue to build community within my studio! Her handout is available on the MTNA website.
- Indiana student, Maya Kilburn will be competing in the Junior Strings competition. Her parents, Ray and Yoko Kilburn will be her collaborators. How special! Dr. Ray Kilburn is also a professor at Ball State University where I did my masters work and is an incredible teacher!
- The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s first-ever and current resident ensemble, Time for Three will be giving the opening recital Saturday at 7:30pm.
Other highlights
Other events I’m especially anticipating:
- The screening of Seymour Bernstein’s film Seymour: An Introduction.
- Masterclasses with Seymore Bernstein and Bruce Berr (I absolutely love reading his “ad-lib” column in the American Music Teacher Magazine I get with my MTNA membership.
- Piano Safari launching Level 3.
- One of the tracks on Pedagogy Saturday is called Music Learning Theory: Exploring How We Learn Music. This track is especially important to me as I will be attending training at the Gordon Institute for Musical Learning for two weeks in August. Robert Duke will be presenting If We Learn Like That, Why Do We Teach Like This? I’m currently working on his book Intelligent Music Teaching: Essays on the Core Principles of Effective Instruction – a book I would highly recommend to ALL music educators whether you’re a band teacher or a private violin instructor.
More than any of that, though, I am simply looking forward to five days amongst colleagues and friends, many of whom I only get to spend with in person a few times a year!
If you’re going and see me please say hello!