NEW!
Workshops for Musicians led by
Lori Rosolowsky,PhD and Susan Berg,PhD
“Sound Insights: Whole Brain Thinking for Music Teachers”
Overview
We offer a series of two sessions for music teachers to understand and apply the principles of whole brain thinking and whole body learning to their teaching. The program is based on the whole brain research of Ned Herrmann and Herrmann International, Roger Sperry and numerous neuroscientists, and Paul Dennison, brain/body connection researcher and founder of the Educational Kinesiology Foundation.
We all have strengths and limitations, preferences and biases. Just as we are right or left handed, we also have right or left brain thinking preferences. Sometimes we get stuck in our preferences, and just as we work with a trainer to strengthen our physical skills and loosen up our bodies, we can develop our whole brain muscle, allowing our teaching and communicating skills to be looser and more versatile when we work with students.
This workshop series explores your thinking preferences and helps you see where you get stuck, how to “unstick” yourself, and how to apply that learning to your students. Beyond that, we practice and evaluate the use of metaphors as teaching tools, movement as critical to absorbing ideas, and other ways to “get it” at a physical, intellectual and emotional level. The second session builds on the first, but even attending one session will be an eye opener (indeed, a brain opener), and you will experience key concepts and tools in both sessions.
Session One: Your Thinking Style
A great music lesson starts with you. Therefore, in this upbeat, interactive session we will focus on you—your own thinking and learning style. You will more deeply understand your preferences in communicating, and how those preferences affect your teaching and student interaction. We’ll discuss teaching/learning situations and ways to work through struggles and stumbling blocks.
In the “application” month between this and the follow-up session, you will have tools and techniques to practice, and we will explore your experiences in the next session.
Session Two: Putting Whole Brain Teaching Strategies to Work
Experience a hands-on lesson and application of whole brain thinking to your students. Through a demonstration lesson we will engage in different approaches to teaching a concept. We will explore how a “walk around the brain” expands your tool set when you are struggling to find the right channel to reach a student. And we will have a rousing group discussion on your learning, questions and insights during the “application” month.
Goals and Approach
By participating in this workshop, you will be able to better understand your own thinking style and teaching method. You will identify characteristics of different thinking styles from your own and apply multiple ways of teaching a concept by using a “walk around the brain” tool. Last, we will demonstrate how to use metaphors, body movement, toys and tools to help explain concepts to students.
Our approach involves you in the learning process from the start–through self-assessment, as well as input and experience with whole brain/whole body learning. In addition, the live lesson demonstrates the concepts in action, and we’ll discuss it all in small and large groups.
Workshop Leaders
Susan Berg, PhD
Transition expert Susan Berg, PhD is an award-winning international consultant and author. Her career-long focus on creativity, whole brain learning, and managing change has won praise from Fortune 500 giants and renowned humanitarian non-profits alike. Today she coaches people through the minefield of 21st Century stressors and into new possibilities for the way they learn and work.
www.ChooseonPurpose.org, www.ChooseResilience.org
Lori Rosolowsky, PhD
Lori Rosolowsky, PhD is an Oberlin-trained classical pianist, piano teacher, lecturer, actor, singer/songwriter, and former scientist. Critically praised for “captivating” her audiences, she performs solo and with the Bucks County Symphony Orchestra, the Doylestown Heat Jazz Band and at the Phillips Mill Musical Comedy Shows. She is recognized for applying the versatile, whole brain approach she uses to perform and create music into effective learning strategies for students.