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Teacher In-Services

Classroom Teacher In-Service

Too often classroom teachers are unable to attend Fonziba’s classes with their students and therefore have little idea what the students are gaining. However, an in-service with Fonziba will give teachers the opportunity to sample the exciting, enriching and engaging learning experience that their students enjoy during a residency program.

The in-service starts with Fonziba's documentary video, Gifts from Mother Africa, which follows her journey to West Africa in 2003, where she lived and drummed with a family of traditional drummers. Afterwards Fonziba shares heartening stories of students' reactions to the video and answers the teachers' many questions about African culture and drumming. Finally, teachers learn to drum and discover for themselves the uplifting and energizing effects of drumming together in a group.

Every teacher who has attended Fonziba’s in-service felt it was extremely worthwhile, not to mention thoroughly enjoyable. Many also felt that the in-service allowed them to correlate the valuable information they received with appropriate aspects of their classroom curriculum.

Cost: $100 additional

 

Area Music Teachers In-Service

This in-service significantly supports the efforts of music teachers to bring more rhythmic development and percussion into their music programs. It is also a direct and powerful way for teachers to discover African drumming and polyrhythms.

During the program, all participants play West African hand-drums. Fonziba teaches several African polyrhythms that can easily be adapted to other percussion instruments, and gives everyone hand-outs with each rhythm written in drummers' notation.

Music teachers often have a varied collection of percussion instruments in their classrooms, many of which they don’t know how to play. Frequently, they also don’t know how to integrate these instruments into their music curriculum. To address this challenge, Fonziba asks the music teachers to bring one each of all their percussion instruments to the in-service and, after the drumming, shows everyone a way to play them that is simple for their students to learn. Fonziba then teaches everyone how to adapt the African polyrhythms she has just shared so that they can be played on the classroom percussion instruments. Finally, in small groups, teachers explore additional ways to use the instruments.

Through this process, music teachers greatly increase their confidence in their ability to find creative and effective ways to use all the percussion instruments in their classrooms and gain a rich and lively, experiential introduction to African drumming and rhythms.

Cost: $200 additional ($400 if booking alone)

 

Fonziba Teacher In-Service

Fonziba teacher in-service

Fonziba Teacher In-Service

Fonziba Teacher In-Service

     

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