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Welcome to the new
Nevada's Desert Valley Chapter was founded in October of 1979 and chartered by AOSA at the 14th National Conference in Pittsburgh, PA in November of 1980.
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There are many different philosophies for teaching music to children. We embrace the Orff pedagogy. There are other pedagogies that are equally valid. Kodaly pedagogy focuses on folk songs and solfeggio. Dalcroze focuses on movements called eurhythmics. The Suzuki method tries to improve the learning environment. And even recently, Gordon Music Theory has developed. So why do Orff?
The Orff pedagogy is a philosophy that centers on student self-discovery. Its goal is facilitate the students as the creators. This is a tall-order and has its own challenges as mentioned in the last newsletter. But the beauty of this approach is that is can easily embrace other philosophies. Learning other pedagogies and methodologies doesn’t threaten or undermine what the Orff pedagogy is seeking to achieve. An Orff trained teacher can attend other pedagogy courses and still bring back to the classroom the same student centered learning with the new material. The classroom becomes even more enhanced with the infused ideas of the other pedagogies.
The world is full of diversity of people, culture, nature, and ideas. As humans, we seek for efficiency. We want things to work and to work well. Many times efficiency means stripping off all the bells and whistles. We boil things down until we get just the bare bones of what we want to happen and then get the job done. But in doing so, we often forget that the richness of life isn’t efficiency, it is diversity. The beauty of this world is found in the synthesis of diversity and efficiency.
So it is with pedagogies. We embrace Orff as our primary philosophy, but we can enrich it with the ideas of other pedagogies. Our curriculum then becomes a thing of beauty as we make it diverse, yet still efficient. No one understands this balance better than music teachers. We deal in an art form in which beauty is achieved by the balancing of structure and efficiency with expression and diversity. As Orff teachers, we embrace the ideas of other pedagogies and allow them to enrich, enhance, and propel us to new heights, all with the goal of giving our children the best musical experiences and education that we can.
For more from the March 2012 Newsletter, click here.
The aims and objectives of this organization shall be:
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