LIVE and Virtual Training Offerings:

-Half-day Workshops (3 hour),

-Full-day (6 hour) workshops and

-Full certification courses (24 Hours of instruction) in

First Steps in Music and 

Conversational Solfege Levels 1 / 2

We can also customize training for the needs of your district and staff.

New FAME “Electives” cover special topics related to both First Steps and Conversational Solfege. Electives are typically delivered in two-hour or half day formats but can be bundled to create a full day of training.

What is ESSA?

ESSA, or Every Student Succeeds Act, is federal legislation consisting of nine “titles” that govern elementary and secondary education in the United States. Titles I, II, and IV connect to  music education.

Title IV-A, also known as Student Support and Academic Enrichment (SSAE) grants, is another of the opportunities created by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). SSAE provides supplemental funding to school districts to improve school conditions for student learning and to provide students access to a well-rounded education, which now specifically includes music. 

This grant has significant potential to improve access to music education for students and to support student success including assessments, instructional materials, software, hardware, professional development, connectivity, teacher pay, and summer school activities.

For more info visit: 

https://nafme.org/advocacy/essa/ 

Some ideas for funding use from the ESSA:

• Opportunities to bring students into well-rounded learning experiences and rekindle their enthusiasm about returning to school. (12)

• Addressing the needs of low-income students, students with disabilities, English Language Learners, migrant students, students experiencing homelessness, and children in foster care. (11, 12)  

• Enrichment activities in music (11)

This can include professional development and materials for music programs.

Learn More About FAME Course Information

Dr. Feierabend’s teaching has provided thousands of teachers and their students with the materials and techniques to help build community through music by evoking enthusiastic participation. His approach strives for all people to become tuneful, beatful and artful through research based and developmentally appropriate pedagogies while building community through singing, dancing, and music making. 

FAME was born July 28, 2012 with the purpose of promoting and supporting the work of Dr. John M. Feierabend through collaboration, advocacy, training, and resource sharing. A group of passionate and dynamic music educators came together around one table that day to create an organization dedicated to the belief all people have the potential to become tuneful, beatful, and artful and that skills in these areas should be developed as early as possible in childhood. 

Developing these skills will contribute to a society of musical people who seek opportunities to sing together, dance together, and who are moved by expressive music.

What are First Steps in Music and Conversational Solfege?

First Steps in Music (™) is a research-based, curricular framework combining the development of singing and movement skills in order to maximize musical aptitude in young children, typically grades PreK-2. The eight-part “workout” is designed to encourage musical independence and creativity through joyful activities and experiences shared with others while developing the prerequisite skills needed for music literacy: singing in tune, keeping a steady beat, and developing sensitivity to the expressive elements of music. First Steps is a developmentally appropriate music education framework for instruction with techniques that provide pathways to meeting students where they are in their musical development, no matter the age or ability. 

First Steps also provides students with the foundational skills for future music literacy as well as building community through music. 

Conversational Solfege (™) is a pedagogical method to be used with children who

have already developed tuneful, beatful, and artful skills and are ready to develop a deeper understanding of melody and rhythm. Conversational Solfege develops the comprehension of music through the use of rhythm and solfege syllables aurally, at a conversational level, then gradually evolves into written music notation. Through carefully sequenced activities, Conversational Solfege enables students to joyfully assimilate the skills and content necessary to be musically literate. Through various techniques, Conversational Solfege allows the acquisition of musical reading and writing, dictation, improvisation, and composition in an intuitive manner. This course is applicable to general music, choral, and instrumental teachers. 

What does it mean to teach with a Feierabend Focus?

• Teaching with a 30-year plan in mind. All people should be able to enjoy singing together, dancing together and listening to beautiful music together, in turn building community through music, the 30-year plan that students will see themselves within and they themselves perpetuate”

• Striving for all students to become musically independent so they can musically synchronize with others.

• Preserving and promoting aural/oral traditions by first learning music first by ear. Then, later on, learning there is a way to see music… called “notation.”

• Expressing music THROUGH instruments rather than using instruments to HEAR music.

• Understanding that being tuneful, beatful and artful is important for all people. Learning notation and playing instruments is important for some people….  but only after they become tuneful, beatful and artful.

FAME Endorsed Teacher Trainers provide in-person and virtual professional development