"Everyday Improvisation" with Dr. Michael Chandler

Teachers often conceive of improvisation, arranging, or composition as culminating steps of a learning experience that was developed solely to showcase the student creativity through performance. While this is an excellent way to demonstrate student-centered skills, another approach involves eliciting smaller creative responses everyday throughout daily learning experiences for which the final product may not feature the improvisation. Sometimes the magic of “everyday improvisation” exists only in the classroom and may—or may not—make its way to the stage, but it is still equally important toward students’ development. Participants in this workshop will experience learning activities that include such choices and opportunities to elicit everyday student choice and creativity through movement, body percussion, untuned percussion, recorder, and mallet instruments.

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Dr. Michael Chandler is currently an Associate Professor of Music and Coordinator of Music Education at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in music education and supervises student teachers. Dr. Chandler taught elementary general music in Texas public schools for 16 years, where his student groups performed as invited ensembles at the Texas Music Educators Association (TMEA) conference in 2013, 2007, and 2005. He was a collaborative pianist for the Children’s Chorus of Greater Dallas for 10 years and is the current founding conductor of the Clarksville Children’s Chorus, which was recently featured as an invited choir at the 65th annual convention of the Tennessee Music Educators Association. Michael teaches all three levels of Orff Schulwerk basic pedagogy and recorder in AOSA-approved teacher education courses at the University of Memphis (TN), Southern Methodist University (Dallas), and in the San Francisco International Orff Course. His work has appeared in The Southwestern Musician, Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, The Orff Echo, and Orff-Schulwerk International.

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