Get up to date information by signing up for the Whittier eNewletter. It will have clickable links to make finding things easier. Scroll to the bottom to enter your email address. Use this site to learn about the activities that your child will be doing in Music, musical opportunities, performances, pictures and videos of student work, National and State Music Standards, etc. Let me know if there is anything else that you would like to see in this section.
Please take the time to complete a survey. This helps me know what families/students value. You are my customers. Your input is very important. It helps me make decisions about how I juggle the demands on time in the Music Classroom. I would greatly appreciate your feedback. News and Opportunities will be posted as they occur. Please refer to this occasionally, as I will list musical opportunities as they come along. If you are on the PTA mailing list, you will get information more quickly in their newsletter.
MUSIC IS - from Barbara Rice, Seward
Music is a science. It is exact, specific, and it demands exact acoustics. A conductor's full score is a chart, a graph that indicates frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody and harmony all at once and with the most exact control of time.
Music is mathematical. It is rhythmically based on the subdivision of time into fractions that must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper. Music is a foreign language. It is a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. Music is the most complete and universal language. Music is History. Music usually reflects the environment and times of its creation. Music is physical education. It requires fantastic coordination and control of all muscle groups allowing the musician to respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets. Music is all of these things, but most of all, Music is Art. It allows a human being to express and evoke emotion. That is why we teach music. Not because we expect you to major in music. Rather so you will be able to play or sing all your life. So you will recognize beauty. So you will be human. Most of all music is love. Love of family, and love of community. This is why music is "a circle of friends".