Facilitators: James Harding, Andrew Ellingsen, Matt McCoy (absent)
The Ft Worth conference kicked off a year-long celebration of AOSA’s 50th anniversary, where the focus of this session for teacher educators focused on the history of AOSA and how it can be shared with students in Teacher Education Levels courses.
Led by James Harding, “The Timeline Game” challenged participants to put six historical AOSA facts in correct chronological order, underlaid by the chant, “Timeline, timeline, running through the history; timeline, timeline, where it ends, a mystery.” The game emphasized the importance of putting the history of the Schulwerk in context with world events.
Michael Chandler shared a condensed version of his session, “How Orff & Keetman Transformed Music Education”. Combining text with authentic audio and video recordings was very interesting and also stressed the importance of maintaining historical context when studying the roots of the Schulwerk.
Based on her in-depth research, Esther Gray shared anecdotal information about Carl Orff and how the Schulwerk developed. This included background about Gunild Keetman, early radio and TV programs, Karl Maendler, and Orff’s first wife, Gertrude, who provided support behind the scenes.
The session concluded with participants breaking into five discussion groups – Basic (Levels I, II, III), Movement, or Recorder – where they discussed ways to include and address the history of the Schulwerk in their Levels courses.