Music

Our Music teacher, Ms. Mary Holway
 
Mary Holway
Welcome to PBES! I am the music teacher with the best job in the world! A little about myself; I have two Bachelor’s degrees from UWF; one in Psychology and the other in Music Education/Voice. I enjoy singing in the community and am a member of the Choral Society of Pensacola, Pensacola Opera Chorus, and the St. Paul Lutheran Church choir. I am a member of the Pensacola Music Teachers Association, the National Association for Music Education, and the Organization of American Kodaly Educators. I am a teaching artist with Pensacola Opera’s educational outreach program, From Words to Music. We participate in this program at PBES every year with wonderful results!  I am Kodaly Level 2 certified. As a Kodaly music teacher, I employ many of Zoltan Kodaly’s philosophies, one of which is that we learn music first and best with our only natural musical instrument…our voice.  

“Let us take our children seriously! Everything else follows from this…
only the best is good enough for a child.” Zoltan Kodaly

We have fun in music class not only with singing but with listening (all different kinds of music), beat, rhythm, instruments of all kinds, music games of all kinds, and dancing. All of this facilitates the learning of not only music literacy and performance, but classroom literacy and learning across all the disciplines. I teach with the National Coalition for Core Arts standards in mind as well as the Sunshine State Standards; links provided below for your information. Also, check out these links for websites that are great for kids to explore and learn more about music theory and other facets of the musical world in a child-friendly forum.

Ms. Holway’s recommended links:

http://www.nationalartsstandards.org/

http://www.cpalms.org/Public/search/Standard

http://www.quavermusic.com/InfoCenter/InteractiveTeachingResources/KidsWebsite.html

http://www.musictechteacher.com/musicquizzes.htm

http://www.dariamusic.com/

http://www.jazzkids.com/

http://www.mtna.org/parent-and-student-resources/websites-for-kids/