Early Childhood Education Prenatal and Baby Years Stage 1 teacher training with Dorothy Jones will be held Thursday, May 22 (2 PM) through Monday, May 26 (12 NOON). If you register for the ECE course, you will be able to attend quite a bit of the Conference as well as the course itself. Required classroom hours and observation hours are interwoven into the Conference schedule. The required introductory course, Every Child Can!, will be offered on Wednesday evening. Please register separately for ECC!
At the 2006 Conference in Minneapolis, 28 teachers registered for Stage 1 of the Suzuki Early Childhood Education: Prenatal and Baby Years training. This was a new initiative of the SAA and proved to be a very exciting addition to the conference. We are happy to announce that at the upcoming 2008 conference we will again be offering Stage 1 training in the area of Suzuki Early Childhood Education. Plans are underway to include more observation classes with parents and their babies/toddlers.
As we consider our theme for this conference, “Expanding the Vision,” we hope to encourage young Suzuki teachers to consider “expanding” their instrumental studios by implementing Suzuki ECE classes. There will be an ECE session describing our vision for Suzuki ECE concerts using our common curriculum and involving hundreds of babies and toddlers. Another session will highlight a ‘Grandparent’s perspective’ of the impact of Suzuki ECE classes. The topic of how to incorporate Suzuki ECE classes and teacher training in the Summer Institute setting will also be addressed.
We would encourage Suzuki ECE colleagues to consider other session ideas and to contact either Sharon or Shirley with your thoughts or proposals. Please mark your calendars and plan to attend. We need you to make the 2008 SAA Conference our best ever!
—Sharon Jones and Shirley Koch, Early Childhood Education Coordinators
