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UB Media Advisory: Music teachers go to summer school to better teach rhythm and tone to toddlers
Release Date: July 30, 2014 This content is archived.
BUFFALO, N.Y. – Over the summer, more than 50 music educators from across the world traveled to the University at Buffalo to learn how to teach the language of music.
Their first students: a curious – and adorable – group of toddlers in UB’s Early Childhood Research Center.
Tomorrow (July 31) at 10:30 a.m., 23 instructors will guide their potential prodigies through a series of songs without words and fluid movements to cap off their summer course. The class will be held in 15 Baldy Hall on the North Campus.
Media are invited to attend.
The activities foster the children’s tonal and rhythm skills, as well as improve their understanding of flow, weight, space and time.
The teachers, who come from schools as close as Rochester and as far as New Zealand, are a part of the 2014 class of the Summer Music Education Institute held through the UB Graduate School of Education.
Through the program, they improved their musicianship and learned principles of music learning theory, a concept developed at UB in 1976 by former professor Edwin Gordon that explains how people understand music.
“UB is considered the birthplace of music learning theory, and we are proud to continue a rich tradition of providing practical courses to help teachers shape their student’s musical education,” says Elisabeth Etopio, summer coordinator and clinical assistant professor in the Department of Learning and Instruction.
The institute, created in 1998, partners with the Gordon Institute of Music Learning to welcome a community of learners to participate in four courses: Elementary General Music, Instrumental Music, Piano and Early Childhood Music.
Courses focus on improving the teachers’ musicianship, developing audiation – the musical form of imagination — and refining performance skill and educational content knowledge for classroom activities.
For more information about the Summer Music Education Institute, visit gse.buffalo.edu/org/summermusiced.
Media Contact Information
Marcene Robinson is a former staff writer in University Communications. To contact UB's media relations staff, email ub-news@buffalo.edu or visit our list of current university media contacts.
