Kari Gilbertson

Kari Gilbertson has been teaching choral music for the last 22 years. She has teaching experience at the elementary, middle school, and high school levels. The last 14 years Ms. Gilbertson has taught at Forest Meadow Junior High in Richardson ISD, a suburb of Dallas. During her tenure there, she has directed many Sweepstakes and Award winning choirs. She has also had the privilege of receiving such professional honors as “PTA Lifetime Member,” “PTA Teacher of Excellence,” and was “Secondary Teacher of the Year” for Richardson ISD in 2001.

Ms. Gilbertson has a Bachelors Degree from Concordia College in Moorhead, MN. While there, she sang for Rene Clausen in The Concordia Choir for four years. She also has a Masters Degree from Southern Methodist University and in the future, Ms. Gilbertson hopes to pursue her Doctoral studies in Music Education or Educational Psychology.

An active soloist, adjudicator, and clinician, Ms. Gilbertson is also a contributing author for the textbook series Spotlight on Music and Experiencing Choral Music. Most recently, Ms. Gilbertson was named a Lead Author on Glencoe/McGraw Hill’s latest choral textbook. She is a member of ACDA, TCDA, TMAA, and TMEA. Ms. Gilbertson is proud to serve as the current JH/MS Vice-President for the Texas Choral Directors Association.

“The Real World=The Choir Room….Realistic Choir in a Reality TV World.”  Have the Real Housewives shown up in your soprano and alto sections?  Are your basses and tenors acting like they have been voted off Survivor Island?  Do you feel like things that you used to do in your classroom don’t work anymore?  The world is changing and our choir world has to adapt as well.  We will explore what are the characteristics of effective teachers in this new frontier of education.  Also, how to form relationships and foster leadership in a world of socially engrossed and yet socially detached “choral consumers.”

"Mixing it Up:  Behaviors and Strategies for Teaching in the Culturally Diverse Choir Room":  Certain behaviors and instructional strategies enable teachers to build a stronger teaching/learning relationship with their culturally diverse students.  Many of these behaviors and strategies are just standard practices of good teaching and work with all students.  Others are specific to working with students from diverse cultures.  You’ll leave with quick, relevant, humorous and practical ideas for rehearsals to inspire and engage adolescent singers.

“Just Shift! Paradigm Shifts in the Choir Classroom”: Are the countless teaching demands wearing you down? Does it seem the surroundings of our teaching world have changed and the approaches you have used in the past are becoming less effective? Perhaps it’s time for a paradigm shift. Making changes to your approach to discipline, communication, administration and rehearsal strategies can save your time and sanity throughout the school year. You’ll leave this session with practical creative and humorous approaches to managing a traditional choral program in a less and less traditional world.

Derrick Fox

Derrick Fox received a Bachelors of Music Education from Arkansas State University and a Masters of Music in choral conducting from the University of Missouri - Columbia.

He was the choral director at MacArthur Junior High School in Jonesboro, Arkansas and Parkway North High School and Maryville University, in St. Louis, Missouri. Mr. Fox often serves as an adjudicator and clinician for regional and state choirs from the junior high to the collegiate level. He has worked with ensembles in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Michigan.

As a soloist, Derrick has collaborated with various organizations, among them are the Arkansas Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Columbia Chorale, the University of Nebrasaka at Omaha, Univeristy of Missouri and Michigan State University.

He can be heard singing selections from Porgy and Bess on the compact disc In This Hid Clearing, available on the Naxos Classical Music Label and he debuted with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Meredith Monk’s Night, for eight solo voices and orchestra.

Derrick is currently a recipient of the prestigous University Enrichment Graduate Fellowship award and is pursuing a Doctorate of Musical Arts in choral conducting at Michigan State University. He is a conducting student of Dr. David Rayl, Dr. Sandra Snow and Dr. Jonathan Reed and has served as the assistant conductor for the MSU Mens Glee Club, the MSU Chorale Union, State Singers and has taught assisted with undergraduate conducting courses.

His research interests include assessment in the choral classroom, a topic on which he has presented in Michigan and Missouri, South African choral music and shape note singing in the African American communities of the southern United States.

This summer he will co-lead a Junior High/Middle school choral workshop for teachers on the campus of Michigan State University, and will lead professional development sessions for state ACDA summer conventions in Missouri and Arkansas.

Sharon Burch

Sharon Burch began teaching general music in 1987. Constantly pursuing the best methods of educationally connecting with students, she is a certified teacher with the International Piano Teaching Foundation, earned a master’s degree as a Professional Educator and uses a combination of strategies to enable kids to experience concepts in the classroom.

Teaching creatively, Sharon introduced Freddie the Frog to her classroom of music students in 1995 and discovered the magic of games, storytelling and puppetry in teaching. She authored Freddie the Frog and the Thump in the Night, Freddie the Frog and the Bass Clef Monster, Freddie the Frog and the Mysterious Wahooooo, and Freddie the Frog and the Secret of Crater Island as the first of several adventuresome stories introducing fundamental music concepts.

Collaborating with jazz double bass player and elementary educator, Sherry Luchette, the next book introduces jazz through scat and improv in an interactive story—Freddie the Frog and the Flying Jazz Kitten. Sharon and Sherry serve on the Jazz Education Network Elementary Jazz Committee.

Sharon enjoys sharing her teaching strategies at music conferences and clinics with teachers around the globe and teaches general music to the K-3 students in the Centerville Community School District in Centerville, Iowa.

SESSION DESCRIPTIONS
Teaching Tips: Beyond the Freddie Books—author Sharon Burch shares tips on using a story which gives a puppet a personality and creating a relationship with the listener. The puppet becomes real. Kids are now connected. This connection is a key factor to everything else. Now, the chosen puppet becomes a wonderful tool for teaching music and more!

Introducing …Rhythm Beat and Tempo to… Kids—through teamwork and the use of games, participants are shown how the puppet is used to establish a tempo game; and in notating rhythms, followed by an easy assessment.

Jazz for Kids, Easy and Fun!—Scatting and playing jazz music in its simplest form, develops creativity and synergistic collaboration for the greater good of the whole. Students of jazz practice skills needed for today’s world and the next generation of adults.