Teaching Music in Waldorf Education
In our sessions, we will consider the many ways music lessons can become medicine for children. Through understanding the twelve senses and how they relate to and depend on each other, we will discuss ways to craft activities, content, repertoire, and classroom management strategies that intend to help balance and regulate students rather than just control them. We will investigate the benefit of keen observation and how we can transform what we observe to meet individual and class wide challenges, thus easing the flow of the learning process and infusing joy back into our teaching. Lastly, we will look at what Steiner describes as the Seven Life Processes and consider ways we can curate impressions of goodness, beauty, and truth as a strategy to strengthen etheric wellness, helping to give the young people in our care access to their highest selves and all we wish to bring to them.
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Meet the Music Team!
Meet the Music Team!
We are honored to be working with an amazing team of music teachers who are coordinating and leading this portion of the conference!
Jayanthi Bunyan
As the general music and chorus director at the Brooklyn Waldorf School, Jayanthi Bunyan teaches students of all ages, organizes student performances, and leads communities in song. Jayanthi’s curriculum strives for an embodied approach to music making through movement, play, and active listening. With over fifteen years of teaching experience, she has worked in public schools in Colorado, New York, and Kolkata, India. As a classically trained Western vocalist, Jayanthi has performed at numerous venues, including the Boettcher Concert Hall at the Denver Performing Arts Center and the Kolkata Jazz Festival. Jayanthi has a BA from SUNY Fredonia and an MA from CU Boulder, both in Music Education.
Melanie Whitney
Melanie is a song leader, composer, singing voice specialist, and music educator currently living in Western Massachusetts. She is a mom of two, director of the Spirit Song Singers, facilitator of various music share events in the Pioneer Valley, and teacher of K-12 music at The Hartsbrook School in Hadley, MA where she serves as the Music Department Chair. Melanie holds a BM in Music Education from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ and a certificate of Waldorf Music Education from the Sunbridge Institute in Chestnut Ridge, NY.
Music has always been a driving force in Melanie’s life and she is so immensely grateful for the meaningful and connective experiences she has been afforded because of its many gifts. Over time, she has come to know music as a wise and ever present healer, a dear friend, a distant memory, a soul salve, a humble teacher, a thought provoker, a truth seeker, a story teller, an expression of culture, and a manifestation of human evolution. Most importantly, she views music as a divine force that brings people together and brings us home to ourselves. Melanie feels blessed, daily, to be using music for healing and humanization in this broken world.
