Guitar/Ukulele Quick Tip

If you or your child attends lessons at Myriad Music School and Dance Academy, chances are you have received a "Quick Tips" email pertaining to your instrument. These are usually practice tips that you can work on throughout the week in addition to your assignment sheet. Please take the time to read these as they are written by our teachers specifically for you! Here is one that was sent to all of our guitar/ukulele students but can really relate to all instruments.

"Sharing your music with family and friends is a great way to practice the music you are learning. Get your family together once a week to share one or two of the songs you can play well. If you have friends who play an instrument, organize a get-together to share songs. You can learn a lot from sharing and listening to each other play music."

Please visit our Facebook page to see more useful tips and to keep up with what is happening at our school!

Professional Development Workshops: Learning Modalities

Here at Myriad we place a BIG emphasis on continuing education. One way we do this is to have clinics for not only our teachers but for interested teachers in our neighborhood! Our teachers had a great time together with author / educator / education clinician Susan Bruckner, from Cabrillo College. Her topic was  “Teaching Students with Different Learning Modalities". This clinic was part of Myriad's on-going Professional Development Workshops for our music and dance teachers.  Susan is a talented, seasoned teacher, with  a plethera of research and a great biblio to back up her findings. She presents clinics to educators at various conferences throughout the US. This is her second appearance at Myriad.

Her book is entitled The Whole Musician: A Multi-Sensory Guide to Practice, Performance and Pedagogy.  It's a great read for parents too, to better understand your child's learning modality.

DID YOU KNOW? A few highlights..

• We only know the world from our own experience. As parents and teachers, we have to determine how our child learns. 
• 
  Our culture values and rewards visual learners - what happens to the aural or kinesthetic learners? Do you know how to tell what kind of learner your child is?
• 
  If you learn to read the tell-tale signs, you can direct your child towards into activities, or learning experiences that will speak to them more authentically. Our teachers learned about some of the signs that can be typical of visual, aural, kinesthetic, olfactory and gustatory learners. We explored helpful, engaging strategies we can easily employ at the lessons / dance classes that will aid our students to take in information in a meaningful, lasting way.

Sincerely,
The Teaching Team, Myriad Music School and Dance Academy