CMEA February E-Newsletter

The 2020 CMEA Clinic Conference was FANTASTIC!

Great Job Everyone!

Is it really only a few weeks ago we were all returning to "real life" after the 2020 CMEA Conference?  I hope you were able to re-establish your routines and begin to utilize things you learned at the Broadmoor this year.  I can say thank you to everyone for helping to make the onference a success.  I can say that there were few if any issues and it seemed like everyone I saw was engaged in listening and sharing.  Thank you also for committing to professional development that directly impacts music education in your school.  

As I stated at the Presidents Concert, this conference has developed over time from a single 45 minute event per council each hour with a lunch break, to a conference that has, at times, a dozen or more choices for attendees to choose from.  Our ability to try and meet the needs of the membership takes a great deal of time, planning and cooperation between our four councils as well as technology, advocacy, research, Tri-M, etc., to put as much into the schedule and available Broadmoor meeting space as possible.  My job is to make sure everyone has as much opportunity to present clinics and concerts in the best places possible.  I hope you enjoyed and appreciated the diversity that we were able to offer. Profound thanks to  Craig Westwood, Todd Dicamillo  (and his student helpers) , Elizabeth Ford  and  Tracy Doyle  for their countless hours of work, planning, guidance, vision and leadership for this year's conference.  Each council chair listed above also had the equally untiring help and expertise from their councils and chair-elects  Peter Toews, Tanner Oharah, Cathy Keller  and  Mark Montemayor .  We also owe thanks to  Andrea Meyer ,  Michael Paulez ,  Carla Aguilar  for their work in helping to fill out our conference by scheduling and hosting sessions that were not council specific but important topics for our membership to have access to.   Michelle Ewer  deserves special thanks for taking a risk in revamping some of our Tri-M Leadership Conference schedule to accommodate suggestions from past attendees to help make that portion of our conference more pertinent to our school age membership.  The performance aspects of the conference do not happen without  Tom Bruszewski  and his students who find magical ways to maneuver equipment to each location and help keep our performance areas moving smoothly.

Several of us had a "hard hat" tour of the new exhibition area of the Broadmoor conference section.  We will be working to get as many of the council officers to see what it is like once finished so we can find ways to utilize the new area.  I think there are some exciting things about the new area as well as ways we are going to have to modify what we have been doing in the past to make things work.  As I have said before, this conference has never been static.  It is constantly evolving to meet the needs of the membership as well as the space we have available at the Broadmoor.

I want to thank a couple more people that make this conference work smoothly.  I was so glad and very lucky that  Rick Shaw  could agree to serve as Interim President-Elect for the past 6 months or so as Mark Walters recovers.  We found that there are things that must change before our next election and you can count on several articles to help everyone be ready for this fall.  This association functions smoothly due to all the work that  Bill Kohut  does and has done to make the process of planning the conference and running the financial side of CMEA easy, successful and transparent.  Now that he is retired we have the advantage of his full time attention which will be wonderful moving forward to next year's changes.  I want to acknowledge  Ken Anderson  and  Gary Sidel  who have worked the exhibit side of our conference for more years than much of the membership has been alive.  It is an important part of our conference, both informational and financial, and they are stepping down from those positions.  I don't think there are words I can put together well enough to adequately thank them for the job they did.  Ken and Gary, thank you and we will miss you.  

We have continued to move forward to make the schedule as digital as possible and I am thankful for and admire  Margie Camp's  ability to learn and master the Guidebook app.  I heard on several occasions how appreciative people were when a schedule change had to happen and it did so swiftly and easily.  I hope that as we learn to make use of the advantages Guidebook gives us that you will appreciate it more and more each year.

There were two disappointments for me this year and the biggest was attendance at the Presidents Concert Thursday night.  I thank everyone, of all ages and musical tastes, who came to me during the week and commented on how much they enjoyed the performance by  VSQ .  We used to have performances both Thursday and Friday nights and have recently dropped the Friday night concert due to lack of interest.  There are suggestions now that perhaps we need to consider the same thing for Thursday.  In the coming months we will be asking you to participate in a survey to help guide us in the direction of live professional music in the evening so please plan to participate and share your vision for how we spend that time and money.

As we head toward summer, through these weeks of all-state and honor groups as well as MIOSM, festival performances and local concerts I hope you continue to strive to serve your students, districts, and communities in the profession of music education.  There are few other professions that are as rewarding and none that are as profoundly important to our children.