Creating Original Music Opportunities for Beginning Music Students

Join us for our annual NAfME Council for Music Composition fall webinar! Join us to hear presentations from Janice Smith and Patrick Blim-Hockberger (Mr. B) about working with our youngest and beginning general, choral, and instrumental musicians.

Patrick Blim-Hockberger is a music teacher at Louisville Elementary School in Boulder, Colorado. After studying music composition at Northwestern University, he was a freelance musician in Chicago, produced an award-winning podcast called “synesthesia,” wrote children’s musicals for the Chicago Park District based on The Princess Bride and David Bowie’s Labyrinth, and earned master’s degrees in audio production and music education. His most recent album is a collection of piano improvisations recorded during COVID lockdown titled Dead Ends & New Beginnings. He draws on his career as a musician to design learning experiences that educate and engage students to build strong relationships with every child.

Janice Smith joined the music education faculty at the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College, New York, after a 30-year career as a general music specialist in the public schools of Maine. Her research addresses the impact of teacher imposed structure on children’s musical compositions, with a focus on the revision process in children’s compositions and the effect scaffolding can have on that process. She is co-author of the book Minds on Music: Composition for Creative and Critical Thinking and co-editor of Composing our Future: Preparing Music Educators to Teach Composing. She has published widely in academic journals and has presented at many conferences around the nation and abroad. With Michele Kaschub, she has written a series of books for teachers including Exploring Music Composition in Grades K- 2, Exploring Music Composition in Grades 3 – 5, and Exploring Music Composition in Middle School General Music.

NAfME presents this live virtual event at no charge to all as a service to the music education profession. To register, you must enter your NAfME member information or create a nonmember account. After registering, check your email for instructions. A recording of this program will be available to all registrants for one week following the live event. Members can also view archived NAfME webinars in the NAfME Academy. The views expressed are those of the presenter; they do not necessarily reflect the views of NAfME.