Description: Teachers often conceive of improvisation, arranging, or composition as culminating steps of a learning experience that was developed solely to showcase the student creativity through performance. While this is an excellent way to demonstrate student-centered skills, another approach involves eliciting smaller creative responses everyday throughout daily learning experiences for which the final product may not feature the improvisation. Sometimes the magic of “everyday improvisation” exists only in the classroom and may, or may not, make its way to the stage, but it is still equally important in student development. Participants in this workshop will experience learning activities that include such choices and opportunities to elicit everyday student choice and creativity through movement, body percussion, untuned percussion, recorder, and mallet instruments.

Michael Chandler is an Assistant Professor of Music and Coordinator of Music Education at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, TN, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in music education and supervises student teachers. Michael taught elementary general music in Texas public schools for 16 years, during which his student groups performed as invited ensembles at the Texas MEA conference in 2005, 2007, and 2013. He was a collaborative pianist for the Children’s Chorus of Greater Dallas (CCGD) for 10 years and is currently the founding conductor of the Clarksville Children’s Chorus. Michael teaches all three levels of Orff Schulwerk basic and recorder during summer AOSA-approved teacher education courses, and his work has appeared in The Southwestern Musician, Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, The Orff Echo, and Orff-Schulwerk International.