Convention of Fun

On Sunday afternoon, I arrived at the MSU Convention Center/Hotel to attend a vocal music conference until Wednesday. Although it has been difficult to be away from my family AGAIN, I know that I should be here learning and refining my vocal music teaching techniques so that when I walk into the classroom in September, I am "new and improved". Just like toilet paper!

The conference is set up so that about three sessions run simultaneously and focus on a varied palette of musical choices. Yesterday, we (Cheryl and I) were able to attend a few reading sessions (previews of music), listen to a clinician talk about how to make a proper "AH" sound for 45 minutes, sing through new elementary musicals, and peruse the stacks of endless sheet music in the exhibit room. I even listened to a very funny man tell us how "20th Century music has a place in our high school choir". I am sure you can guess from my descriptions which sessions I found boring or sort of useless.

Cheryl and I are both quite tired of spending lots of money and then getting here and finding that the clinicians address choral programs that really don't exist in the public schools. We find that the things they talk about are far out of reach for the "normal choir". In order to remedy this, we came up with some conference titles that we would like to see at next year's conference.

So without further adieu, here is the new workshop list for our summer workshop '09:

1. "Your Entire Musical Repertoire Chosen for You".

2. "Elementary Lesson Plans--Step by Step Notebook".

3. "Movement Videos to go with Workshop numbers 1 and 2!

4. "All MSVMA Forms and Fees already submitted for the year ahead".

5. "Fund Raising made simple--Chat with Oprah and Donald ".

And now, I am off to attend another session....hopefully it will be a good one!