Tempo
Estevao Marques performs with Sandra Salcedo and Jackie Rago at the AOSA National Conference in San Diego. One does not go to a professional development conference for a philosophy lesson. And yet, that's the most important thing I brought back from San Diego. This was my third American Orff Schulwerk Association conference. After each of my previous conferences, I came home with a boatload of ideas which I eagerly transformed into lesson plans, some of them so productive that I got entire units. I went to San Diego hoping for more of the same, and I did, indeed, get some ideas that I'll be incorporating into my lesson plans. For once, though, the content was not the big takeaway. Maybe it's that I have had, for the first time in my career, enough time with the students I'm teaching, and enough experience with the methods I use, that finding new ideas for lessons is not a problem. Like most Orff teachers, I create my own curriculum, teaching concepts th...