Walden School - Teacher Training

Overview

Workshops

What

History

Faculty

Development of the Teacher Training Institute

The Walden School Musicianship Course was conceived more than 50 years ago by Grace Newsom Cushman, a great artist in the field of music education. Mrs. Cushman developed an entirely new way to teach Musicianship to young people by integrating basic elements of music theory with specific methods of ear training and infusing the whole process with clever and artful activities. Keyboard, singing, listening, and analytical exercises help students develop understanding and fluency, and improvisational and compositional activities develop a personal, creative voice.

After initiating a program at The Peabody Conservatory in 1950, Mrs. Cushman continued her work in the summer at her Vermont music camp in 1953 known as the Junior Conservatory Camp. After her death in 1972, The Walden School was founded to carry on Grace Cushman's important work in creative music education.

"I feel like I am leaving this seminar with a heightened awareness of how I approach music and music education. Thank you for this invaluable experience!"

For many years the students of Grace Newsom Cushman have dreamed of bringing her time-tested pedagogical method to a larger audience of music educators. Indeed, The Walden School has nurtured this unique curriculum during its summer sessions for the past three decades, and each generation of Walden faculty have enriched it with new drills and creative activities, while simultaneously honoring Grace Cushman's philosophy and original approach to music education. This accumulated body of wisdom, which in the past could only be passed on orally and experientially to incoming faculty members, was given tangible form in 2002, with the publication of The Walden School Musicianship Course: A Manual for Teachers . (For more information about the Manual please read a review written by composer Randall Davidson and published in Soundingboard, the journal of the American Composers Forum.) This text was recognized as a valuable tool for imparting the collective wisdom of past and present music educators associated with The Walden School, and plans for a Music Educators Workshop were quickly underway.

In June 2004, at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, CA, The Walden School launched the first event under the auspices of its new Teacher Training Institute -- Developing Creative Expression: The Walden School Musicianship Course Music Educators Workshop. This highly successful weekend workshop, made possible through the generous funding of The Braitmayer Foundation, offered music educators from all over the country, and from many different educational settings, new skills for working with young musicians to develop their creativity.

In July 2005, The Walden School Teacher Training Institute offered its first week-long Intensive. Held on the campus of Keene State College, in Keene, New Hampshire, music teachers gathered from all over the country to explore ways of enhancing their teaching with creative activities. The teachers kept to a rigorous schedule that included three hours of Musicianship, one hour of Solfége/Rhythms, and ninety minutes of Computer Musicianship each day. The curriculum also included several evening Improv classes and a Composers Forum. Among the participants were choral directors; public and private school teachers; collegiate music theory instructors; studio instrumental teachers; and teachers with special credentials such as Waldorf, Montessori, Suzuki, Orff, and Kodály.

With the 2005 Intensive, The Walden School Teacher Training Certification Program was also launched, and Institute faculty are in the midst of guiding several certification candidates through collaboratively designed nine-month Practica. Specifically, candidates are being closely mentored as they apply Walden School philosophies and methods to their particular educational settings.

Highly positive feedback from the participants of both workshops and the first class of certification candidates allows Institute faculty and administrators to know that The Walden Schoolªfs creative, activity-based approach is greatly desired and deeply needed by music educators across the country. The Walden School Teacher Training Institute is committed to continuing and expanding offerings to meet this desire and need.