NAfME National Conference

Join your fellow music educators in Orlando, where we’ll come together to lead our profession’s direction, engage with each other as colleagues, and inspire one another to guide our music students to excellence. Don’t miss powerful sessions, rousing student performances, and the chance to connect with music educators from around the nation! NAfME is also excited to bring the All-National Honor Ensembles back to the National Conference. Join us for “Amplify the Future of Music: Opening Doors for All Students,” the 2019 NAfME National Conference! Earn 15 hours of professional development.

FEATURES AND NEWS

Appropriations for Well-Rounded Education Funding in the New Federal Fiscal Year

It’s October 11 – Happy Federal Fiscal New Year! It’s a new federal fiscal year (FY20), and we have started another year without final allocations for federal agencies and programs, including federal funding for a well-rounded education. The federal budget and appropriations process for FY20 has been complicated, to say the least. The House of Representatives began their appropriations process early in the year but did so without an overall budget agreement with the Senate and the President. The absence of a “topline” budget amount resulted in generous education funding…

3 Strings UnLoCkeD guitar ensemble group photo with members posing with their string instruments

A Bigger Life: An Open Letter from a 3 Strings UnLoCkeD Southwest Parent

A Bigger Life An Open Letter from a 3 Strings UnLoCkeD Southwest Parent By NAfME Council for Guitar Education in collaboration with Parent Ms. Sarah Shea “Michael finally fell in love with high school, and I truly believe it all started with that little music class. Ruth made his life bigger.” The NAfME Council for Guitar Education would like to share an open letter to the NAfME membership from a music student parent of Ruth LeMay. Ms. LeMay is the Director of Guitar Education and founder of 3 Strings…

Creative Expression through Free Improvisation

Creative Expression through Free Improvisation Increase Creativity, Connection, and Communication By NAfME member Carole Ott Coelho and Tadeu Coelho Free improvisation has been shown to increase creativity, connection, and communication in both vocalists and instrumentalists. Often, musicians are intimidated by improvisation due to lack of training, tools, and experience. How can we help our students and ourselves put aside fears about improvisation? What techniques exist to draw out our innate creativity? Our NAfME National Conference session will give music educators concrete tools by which to introduce free…