You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'Bill Pearce' tag.
This weekend, my school sponsored a what could be compared to an in service day or staff developement day; a bunch of music education teachers/experts were invited to speak about different topics in the education field. I found all of the workshops I attended to be very informational, and a I got some great ideas for my own classroom someday, but two seminars really stuck out at me.
These two seminars were given by a man named Mr. Bill Pearce, a band director in Pennsylvania, and a man with a very serious degenerative disorder that will eventually cause him to be completely deaf. He explained to us that despite one major brain surgery to cure him of his vertigo, he was still 100% deaf in his left ear and 75% deaf in his right ear. And despite all of this, and with very little assistance, Mr. Pearce still runs a very successful high school band program along with being on the board of directors for PMEA (Pennsylvania Music Educator’s Association) ANYWAY, Mr. Pearce gave two lectures on teaching music to those with special needs. Although he didn’t really go into much detail about certain disabilities and common techniques, he did give us a FABULOUS website that he and few others created. The website is http://www.keyarts.ws . Along with some other great resourcses concerning music education, there is a tab on the left that says “special strategies”, and from here you can click “students with special needs”. After you have clicked this, click on the box that says music, and you’re in. In this portion of the site there is information on a large variety of different disabilities, how to adapt your lesson for these students, and what kind of accomodations can be made. Much to my excitement deaf students are not discluded from this list of disabilities. Take a look at this site! It’s really very informational!
