VMTA 2023 Quad State Conference

If you haven’t registered yet, there’s still time!  Register by October 15.  The process is a breeze by using these links to the online registration form and payment process:

VMTA is once again offering a unique opportunity for students at the upcoming Fall Ensemble

Festival. Pianists are often asked to accompany singers or instrumentalists. Collaboration

between musicians is both fun and educational opening up a new dimension in music making.

The next Fall Ensemble Festival is scheduled for November 12, 2023 (3pm) at the Richmond

Library. Friends and family members of a student who studies with a VMTA member are

invited to participate. Chamber music, solo instrumentalists accompanied by students, piano duets and piano trios are examples of music to be performed at the Festival.

Teachers may enter 15 minutes of music for the performances and may add more if time allows.

A fee of $5 per student or $10 per family will be charged.

Previous participants enjoyed the challenge of a different experience. No memorizing and group participation make this opportunity enjoyable for students.

Click here for the registration form.

Contact Marie Johnson at 879-8863 or mdjkiln@gmail.com if you have questions.

"The goal of the Choose to Teach initiative is to help educators connect with the impact they have on their students, schools, and community, as well as reconnect with why they decided to become an educator. It's brought to you by the Music Achievement Council. Educators can receive more free content, just like this, and tips to recruit and retain more students at www.msfq.org/guide. "

Noteflight Learn Enrollment and Resources

One of the perks of VMTA membership is access to the Noteflight Learn online program for teachers to

develop lesson content for composition, performance, and theory (for example), and for students to

explore composing, sharing, and collaborating as part of their music study. More details and links can

be found on the VMTA website under Teacher Resources. In addition, many interesting articles from

the Noteflight BLOG (no login required) are available here. The most recent article is called “How

Backward Chaining Can Help Novice Composers.”

Look for details and resources at the following links:

Contact Sarah Williams or complete and send the Enrollment Form on the VMTA website page.

   The VMTA will hold the biennial play-a-thon on January 27 and 28 at the University Mall. Please save the dates and be sure to get your students excited about sharing their music!

   More details will be sent out in early December with information about reserving time for your students to play. This year's recipient of donations will be the Ronald McDonald House. They are very excited to be working with the VMTA. 

I traveled to Cincinnati during the weekend of September 8-10 to represent Vermont in the annual MTNA Leadership Summit, standing in for our President, Laurel, who was unable to attend this year due to a conflict. The event had a packed schedule informing representatives from almost all of the 50 states about activities and initiatives of the national Association, providing opportunities for discussion and networking, highlighting some special topics of current interest, and celebrating the work of music teachers across the country.

The MTNA leadership, among other things, reported on an increasing array of benefits made available to members, ranging from extensive professional development resources to support for entrepreneurial and business success as well as discounts from many national firms. These discounts are available to

help teachers both professionally and personally. I confess that some of the benefits outlined – which are too numerous to list here – were unfamiliar to me, such as discounts on rental vehicles and hotels (and many others).

I encourage you to visit the MTNA website (www.mtna.org), log in as a member, and explore under the Member Benefits links.

Of course, these benefits relate to a concern that we all have – building membership in our small state.

The wide range of member benefits certainly gives us opportunities to engage non-member colleagues in a conversation about why they should consider joining us (one of the Summit presenters demonstrated how the available benefits can easily cover the cost of membership!). However, the

Leadership Summit also included many other discussions about strategies for building membership. These often come back to one-to-one contact between active members and potential new members.

An exciting and growing strategy both to engage existing members and to encourage new ones centers around the idea of “virtual” MTNA chapters. This is especially of interest to those of us in small-population and rural states; the Summit included a small-group session divided by state membership size, and the group into which Vermont falls had an interesting discussion of this “virtual chapter” idea; in addition, one of the main sessions of the full Summit featured a presentation by a North Carolina teacher, living in the rural and dispersed western part of that state, who has collaborated with colleagues to create a new MTNA chapter that meets virtually and offers to members across a wide

geographical area an exciting range of opportunities for connection and professional development. Clearly this is catching on in other states as well. Please see a separate item in the Newsletter inviting interest from Vermont teachers who might explore this idea.

Finally, several aspects of the Summit made it clear that the theme of our upcoming Quad State conference resonates with a national trend. In addition to the “virtual chapter” session, another presentation to the full Summit focused on expanding an inclusive view in our approach to teaching and

musicianship. Even more vivid were the results of an invitation that MTNA President Peter Mack issued to Summit attendees prior to the Summit: participation in a recital at the event. The response to this was resounding, resulting in over 20 Summit participants performing, with recitals on both Friday and Saturday evening. The most interesting thing was that, although not the focus of Peter’s invitation, the repertoire performed on the recitals represented a wonderful exploration of new and unfamiliar pieces,

with very few we would call “standard repertoire.” We heard pieces recently composed, pieces from the past written by members of historically underrepresented groups, and less familiar repertoire from

composers we know well.

So our upcoming Quad State celebration of an expanded repertoire, led by

Artina McCain (who, from conversation at the Summit, is in demand across the country) and our own Claire Black, is timely and important.

There is much more I could say about the Summit but I’ll stop here for now, and invite you to contact me if you have further questions.

It was a pleasure to represent Vermont among colleagues from across

the country on Laurel’s behalf at the 2023 Summit.

As noted elsewhere in the Newsletter, my recent attendance representing Vermont at the annual MTNA Leadership Summit brought to my attention a growing trend in some other states toward the formation of “virtual” local chapters, something that has gained interest especially in states like ours where a dispersed rural population makes local chapters outside urban areas very challenging.

The MTNA Summit included an exciting presentation by Victoria Fischer Faw from North Carolina, who has led the way in creating the “VLMTA” (Virtual Local Music Teacher Association) of Western North Carolina. Victoria and some of her colleagues noticed that, while North Carolina has a number of very active local associations in and around its urban areas, there was no opportunity within a long travel distance for teachers in the mountainous and mostly rural western region of the state. So she and a small group of leaders worked to create what is now a way for teachers in the region to meet virtually,

enjoy professional development sessions, connect with each other, and provide mutual support. This chapter, now in its second year, is up to 26 members, exceeding all expectations. The MTNA national office has worked supportively with them and is making it easier for this new kind of local association to form and affiliate.

Perhaps in some ways this is a lucky outgrowth of the potential we all realized during the pandemic for virtual connections, but its goals go beyond that, helping to connect teachers who are separated by geography but still would benefit from things that local groups traditionally offer. The Western NC

group has been able to engage nationally-known presenters for workshops with members at a fraction of what it would cost to bring them to a session in person, for example, and regular meetings offer the member teachers the chance to share ideas and questions with each other.

In another session at the Summit where states with small populations met together, I learned that this idea is either in place or being explored by other states. Wyoming, as you likely know, has the lowest state population after Vermont in the country, and shares with us a predominantly rural population

(although over a much, much larger geography). That state is now exploring the idea of a virtual chapter to better serve teachers separated by long distances.

All this made me wonder if there might be interest in a virtual chapter for Vermont teachers who live outside the one area currently served by a very active local chapter, Burlington. I wanted to share this with you, and invite you to contact Laurel or me if you have an interest in exploring the idea further, or if

you have questions. I can also tell you that Victoria Fischer Faw, whom I heard at the summit, offered generously to be in touch should there be interest in learning more from her experience, and I know that the MTNA national organization is willing to be helpful as well. Please consider this and let me know!

Allan H. Day, R.P.T. Piano Service