Welcome to the FAME events page!
View a full calendar view of our upcoming teacher certification course classes and workshops below.
Take a tour through The Book of Movement Exploration by John Feierabend and Jane Kahan and actively discover the ten essential movement “themes” based on the work of Rudolf von Laban for inspiring creative movement in children of all ages. In this participatory session, we will experience joyful pathways to guide students in developing their personal movement vocabulary as we explore various ways to move: alone and with others, with and without music. This approach of learning through movement also connects students kinesthetically with the deeper, below-the-surface aspects of music, the “art” part, connecting community and culture as we endeavor to learn and grow musically together.
Once students are tuneful, beatful, and artful it is time to enter into part-singing! In this session, participants will experience a sequential approach to singing in parts. Beginning with partner songs and simple bass lines then moving into rounds and canons and finally harmony, participants will experience beginning part-singing strategies using age-appropriate literature suited to students in the upper elementary grades and beyond. Tried-and-true methods and plenty of examples will be shared to encourage singing in parts joyfully.
Begin by learning classroom-ready activities that follow the eight-part workout from First Steps in Music and integrate the Orff approach while gaining a better understanding of how to integrate these two approaches. Next, learn how to lesson plan using First Steps in Music with Orff Schulwerk and develop your own integrated activities to use in your teaching. Prior First Steps in Music and/or Orff Schulwerk experience is recommended but not required.
Jan. 21, Jan. 28, Feb. 4, Feb. 11, Mar. 4, and Mar. 11, 2025 6-7 PM EST, Online
1.5 credit hours or 22.5 PD hours
This course may be taken congruently with Conversational Solfege with Orff Schulwerk for 3 graduate credits or 45 PD hours.
Register Here
Discover ways to thoughtfully develop the musicianship of your students with activities that use a high level of engagement with creativity and student input. A close look and experience with the Feierabend Approach (Conversational Solfege) and the Orff Approach or Orff Schulwerk will be the focus for study as well as how to integrate them meaningfully into your teaching. This course will help you to reflect on your own teaching in a way that will encourage you to prioritize best practices regardless of the method(s) you use. Prior experience with Conversational Solfege and/or Orff Schulwerk is/are highly recommended but not required.
Jan. 21, Jan. 28, Feb. 4, Feb. 11, Mar. 4, and Mar. 11, 2025 7-8 PM EST Online
1.5 credit hours or 22.5 PD hours
This course may be taken congruently with First Steps in Music with Orff Schulwerk for a combined 3 graduate credits or 45 PD hours.
Register Here
Keeping the Beat! Creating ‘Beatful’ Students Using First Steps in Music. Having an intuition for beat and meter is the foundation for all later rhythmic development. In this session, participants will discover how to help children become ‘beatful’ using the “First Steps in Music” curriculum developed by Dr. John Feierabend. ‘Beatful’ people can gently rock on the beat while singing lullabies to their babies, joyfully dance at weddings, and enthusiastically clap with the crowd at spoting events. All children deserve the opportunity to become ‘beatful’, and to experience the joy and satisfaction that synchronizing with others on the beat can bring.
Transform your elementary students into confident choral singers with “Next Steps to Singing in Harmony.” This course offers practical strategies to seamlessly transition your students from early elementary Tuneful activities to upper elementary choral excellence. Learn how to repurpose familiar First Steps in Music and Conversational Solfege repertoire to build harmony skills, improve tone quality, and foster musical independence. This course is perfect for educators looking to maximize limited singing time and create a strong foundation for their choirs.
Learn More and Register now!
Conversational Solfege Upper Levels Overview Mini-course – “An Ear-First Approach to Harmony and Improvisation for Middle and High School Performing Ensembles”
Unlock your ensemble’s improvisation potential with the “Conversational Solfege Upper Levels Overview Mini-Course.” In this dynamic 3-hour session, you’ll explore John Feierabend’s Ear-First Approach to teaching harmony and improvisation to middle and high school ensembles. Learn how to guide students in tonal analysis, melody creation, and jazz-style improvisation, starting from the basics of “Discovering the Bass Line.”
This workshop is perfect for upper elementary, Middle, and high school ensemble teachers who have completed Conversational Solfege Levels 1-2 and aim to expand their curriculum and deepen their older students’ understanding of harmony and improvisation in an interactive “ear-first” way.
Learn more and Register Here
An Ear-First Approach to Musical Thinking, the Feierabend Way
Explore Feierabend’s Conversational Solfege™, a 12-step ear-first method inspired by Kodaly. Teach rhythm and tonal elements through listening, responding, improvisation, and engaging techniques.
Music and Movement in the Early Years, the Feierabend Way
Nurture children’s musical abilities with the First Steps in Music Workout. This interactive session develops tunefulness, beatfulness, and artfulness through songs, movement, and improvisation for ages 3-9.
Unlock the power of music literacy for your students with Conversational Solfege! This transformative course, designed by Dr. John Feierabend, equips educators with research-based methods to teach rhythm, melody, and improvisation across all levels—from elementary classrooms to collegiate ensembles. Dive into a literature-driven curriculum that makes reading music notation as natural as speaking.
This course is ideal for educators who want to adopt a proven, research-based method for music reading that enhances listening, responding, and improvisation skills. Get ready to feel inspired and motivated to elevate your teaching and your students’ musical thinking!
Learn more and register for the course
Description:
Multiple Intelligence in the Music Classroom: Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligence suggests that individuals do not have just one intelligence but, rather, possess a portfolio of intelligences, Music being one of them. What is becoming increasingly evident is that while developing our students’ music ability, we are also helping to support the other intelligences. When we invite our student to sing, move, play instruments, and respond expressively, we are helping to nurture, strengthen and develop their Verbal, Linguistic, Logical, Mathematical, Bodily, Kinesthetic, Visual Spatial, Interpersonal, and Intrapersonal intelligences, as well. Because our content is developmentally appropriate, almost everything we teach in the music classroom can have an equally significant impact on the general classroom. Feierabend will discuss the Theory of Multiple Intelligence and its implications and applications in the general music classroom, and also explore ideas and lessons designed to be shared with classroom colleagues in their classroom.
John Feierabend’s 2018 reissued book Conversational Solfege Level 3 (a.k.a. “Upper Levels” or just “CSUL”), is the same Ear-First Approach to thinking musical thoughts that sets Conversational Solfege apart, and it’s geared towards MS/HS performing ensembles. CSUL picks up the sequence where Level 2 left off, guiding students to think, read and write in most keys, meters, and regions of the staff. CSUL also offers a curriculum to teach musicians a conversational knowledge of major and minor diatonic harmony, and its application to teaching improvisation and composition with performing ensemble classrooms. Building on the conversational skill of “discovering the baseline” to create a harmony, introduced in Level 2, this curriculum leads students to use a bass line to inform tonal analysis to reveal the corresponding diatonic chord tones, and the many melodic contrapuntal possibilities that weave harmony together. Come prepared to sing.
Introduction to the 12 Steps of Conversational Solfege – Saturday, February 15, 2025. 8:00AM
Introduction to the Vocal Parts of the First Steps in Music Curriculum – Saturday, February 15, 2025, 12:30 PM
Introduction to the moment parts of the First Steps in Music Curriculum – Saturday, February 15, 2025, 2:00 PM
Introduction to Beginning Part Singing in the Elementary and Middle School Grades – Sunday, February 16, 2025, 9:30 AM
Music educators plant seeds for a lifetime of music making but teachable moments do not always happen in the classroom. Fortunately, the school year offers many opportunities to create experiences outside of the music schedule. By doing so, we also make them accessible to our greater community. When families, faculty, staff, administrators, friends, and community businesses are invited to participate, everyone becomes invested, not only in the growth and development of our students, but of the music program, as well. It is our responsibility to create opportunities for all members of our community to become involved with music on a continuous and consistent basis throughout the day, the month and the year. This session will share a dozen ways to enrich the musical growth and development of all, while providing experiences that just might capture the soul of a young child and inspire a lifelong love of music.
Clapping games are immediately engaging, language is not even required and yet laughter abounds. You are never too young or too old; they are simply too much fun. But take a closer look; clapping games are profound. They deepen and enrich all the intelligences and are of significant benefit to the development of our mind, body, and spirit. The cooperation required has profound implications on a global scale, as well. Humor, love, kindness and joy are universal. Sharing music with others builds a bridge where we are offered a window into another culture and delighted to find ourselves looking back. A country’s musical culture also offers insight into its history, spirit, and heart. This experience can lead to greater awareness and understanding. This lively session will explore countries and cultures through their clapping games; join us as we meet wonderful people through the gift of their music. The world just might become a kinder, more tolerant place if we all sang, danced, and clapped together.
OAKE Nat’l Conf. | Folk Songs for Instrumental Settings with Carol Swinchoski & Jessica Pietrosanti
Description
Folk songs in instrumental settings – CS for Band!
Date and time to be announced.
Description
Listening to stories is an incredible way to broaden our understanding of ourselves and others. By incorporating a story with an attached song, John Feierabend’s First Steps in Music 8-part musical workout gives students a “cool down” time while the teacher models expressive singing and storytelling for the students. Want to enhance your musical storytelling? Join teacher trainer John Crever and learn powerful musical techniques to take your expressive storytelling skills to the next level.
Description
“Often a single experience will open the young soul to music for a whole lifetime. This experience cannot be left to chance. It is the duty of the school to provide it.” Zoltán Kodály: Children’s Choruses, 1929
Introduction to the Movement parts of the First Steps in Music Curriculum – Friday, March 7, 2025, 3:30 PM
Introduction to teaching part singing the upper elementary and middle school grades – Friday, March 7, 2025, 12:30 PM
Introduction to the vocal parts of the First Steps in Music curriculum – Saturday, March 8, 2025 9 AM
This course is perfect for upper elementary general music, as well as middle school and high school choral and instrumental teachers.
Description
Introduction to the Vocal Parts and Movement Parts of the First Steps in Music Curriculum.
The exact dates and times are to be announced.
Description
Transitioning from unison to part singing can be challenging for upper elementary and middle school students. Proven strategies for developing part-singing by ear and eye are critical for the preparation of choral singing in the later grades. But where to begin? And how? This session will address the part-singing challenges that upper elementary and middle school students encounter while transitioning from unison to parts and from ear to eye in the development of part-singing competency. When we set up an appropriate sequence of learning, all of our students can be on their way to not only singing with understanding and joy during their school years but will have the necessary skills to sing independently and with others throughout their lives.
Improvisation plays a crucial role in music development, but when to begin, and how? With appropriate prompts, engaging methods, and active participation, even young children can successfully improvise. “The Nutcracker ” (Movement Exploration) and “Hansel and Gretel” (Arioso; vocal improvisation) provide two distinct opportunities, and the inspiration and tools necessary to aid creativity. What a wonderful way to start, even our youngest students, on their path to a life-time of confident improvisation. Join us as we dance each character and discover the delight of moving expressively and musically to many of the Movement Exploration themes in “The Nutcracker,” and explore the many opportunities for Arioso in “Hansel and Gretel.”
This course will provide participants with insights and practical knowledge to implement developmentally appropriate musical activities for children under three years old. Folk songs, rhymes, and Classical music are highlighted as primary source materials. Research findings and pedagogical techniques will be discussed, giving participants a solid foundation to support very young children to become Tuneful, Beatful and Artful.
Learn more and register for this event
Conversational Solfege™ is a pedagogical approach used to intuitively develop notational literacy skills with students of elementary age through adults who are tuneful, beatful, and artful. Through carefully sequenced activities, Conversational Solfege™ first develops an understanding of music through the use of rhythm and solfege syllables at a “conversational” level, then gradually evolves into reading, writing, improvisation, dictation, and composition skills. Teachers will learn how to enable students to joyfully assimilate the skills and content necessary to be musically literate, as well as learn various techniques to allow the acquisition of these skills. This Conversational Solfege™ course will address lesson planning, unit planning, and assessment and applies to music educators in most music educational settings (classroom, choral, and/or instrumental) elementary through college.
Humor, love, kindness, and joy are universal. Community music-making builds a bridge where we are offered a glimpse into another culture and are delighted to find ourselves looking back. A country’s musical culture can also offer insight into its history, spirit, values, and heart. We can appreciate and begin to know a little about people when we move in their footsteps, sing their songs, and play their games. These delightful gifts, traversing not only cultures, but generations, can lead to greater awareness and global understanding. This lively workshop will explore fifteen cultures through their folk dance, rounds, passing games, play parties, clapping games, and literature. This course applies to all grade levels. Join us as we meet wonderful people through the gift of their music.
Conversational Solfege™ is a pedagogical approach used to intuitively develop notational literacy skills with students of elementary age through adults who are tuneful, beatful, and artful. Through carefully sequenced activities, Conversational Solfege™ first develops an understanding of music through the use of rhythm and solfege syllables at a “conversational” level, then gradually evolves into reading, writing, improvisation, dictation, and composition skills. Teachers will learn how to enable students to joyfully assimilate the skills and content necessary to be musically literate, as well as learn various techniques to allow the acquisition of these skills. This Conversational Solfege™ course will address lesson planning, unit planning, and assessment and applies to music educators in most music educational settings (classroom, choral, and/or instrumental) elementary through college.
Conversational Solfege™ is a pedagogical approach used to intuitively develop notational literacy skills with students of elementary age through adults who are tuneful, beatful, and artful. Through carefully sequenced activities, Conversational Solfege™ first develops an understanding of music through the use of rhythm and solfege syllables at a “conversational” level, then gradually evolves into reading, writing, improvisation, dictation, and composition skills. Teachers will learn how to enable students to joyfully assimilate the skills and content necessary to be musically literate, as well as learn various techniques to allow the acquisition of these skills. This Conversational Solfege™ course will address lesson planning, unit planning, and assessment and applies to music educators in most music educational settings (classroom, choral, and/or instrumental) elementary through college.
First Steps in Music Certification with Stephanie Schall-Brazee
August 6 – 8, 2025
8:00 – 5:00 PM (24 HOURS) FACE TO FACE