2017 National In-Service Conference

The NAfME National Conference is the only music education conference where you can connect and collaborate with music educators from all over the world. NAfME can offer tools and techniques to help your students learn and create in new and inspiring ways. Earn micro-credentials. Room block rate deadline: Oct. 27.

Learn More

FEATURES AND NEWS

Differentiated Portfolios in the Music Classroom

Differentiated Portfolios in the Music Classroom Serving All Students Well  By NAfME Member Peter Briggs When I began teaching high school, I was in a school with just one band and one orchestra serving students in grades 9-12. I tried to manage the skill spread by teaching to the middle, but I ended up serving almost no one well. My content was too advanced for some and also too easy for others. And after being at the school for a while, I realized that I had given upperclassmen the same…

A Recruiter of Excellence: Member Spotlight

A Recruiter of Excellence Member Spotlight: Vanessa Bliley By Lisa Ferber This article originally appeared in the October 2017 Teaching Music. Vanessa Bliley started playing oboe in her freshman year of high school when her band director made a request of this then-clarinetist. Bliley recalls, “My teacher said, ‘We don’t have a lot of oboists. Would you like to play oboe?’ And then I started taking lessons, got more involved in band, and all the magic happened.” A student at Central Washington University looks back at her Collegiate successes and forward to…

The 21st Century Music Curriculum – Why Guitar?

The 21st Century Music Curriculum – Why Guitar? By NAfME Member Scott Seifried Article originally posted on OUPBlog  In her keynote speech at Vision 2020: The Housewright Symposium on the Future of Music Education held at Florida State University in 1999, composer Libby Larson shared the story of her daughter’s experience playing saxophone in middle school band. “By the end of her second year in band,” Larson lamented, “the music in her was so stifled by the pedagogy of the curriculum that she quit. I noticed that almost every other musically gifted…