Collegiate Sunday.(Forum focus: collegiate chapters)

To encourage members to participate in the Collegiate Chapters sessions during the MTNA National Conference, MTNA is offering all programming except the Forum on "Collegiate Sunday."

Collegiate members will be well represented in several sessions. Many wonderful proposals were received for consideration, and two were chosen for the upcoming conference. Both sessions were proposed, written and submitted by collegiate chapter members. This is the second year collegiate chapter sessions will be presented by collegiate chapter members.

The Arizona State University collegiate chapter will present the first session on Sunday morning: Why Did I Decide to Do This? Being a Graduate Student, Teaching Assistant and Private Teacher/Six graduate students will present the session that focuses on the demands and stresses graduate students with teaching assistantships face as they work toward their degrees. Topics will include differences between bachelor and master degree demands, how to set priorities and balance the new demands, as well as the benefits of having teaching assistantships while being full-time students. Six students will present the session, including chapter president, Kassandra Jenkins. Their chapter advisor is Janice Meyer Thompson, NCTM.

A second session will be given by the University of Michigan collegiate chapter, tided Putting the "Play" Back into Playing the Piano: A Survey of Effective Games for Private and Class Piano Instruction. The capacity to learn and retain concepts and perform with confidence greatly increases when students are having fun. The cognitive and developmental groundwork for the use of games in education will be briefly discussed before presenting a wide variety of games for beginning and intermediate students. Video clips of lessons and classes will show the excitement of games in action. In addition to classifying the games according to the skills and concepts presented, the presenters will highlight the approaches on which each game is based. Attendees will receive a guide to the games, listing details for the use of each game, such as the difficulty level and pedagogical approach. Presenters will be Veena Kulkarni, Sonoko Kambara, Aya Higuchi, Marnie van Weelden, Pei-Ming Lee, Polina Khatsko, Christina Thayer and Daniela Flonta. Their advisor is John Ellis.

A third session focusing on young teachers will be presented by Lori Rhoden, NCTM, titled Common Challenges for Dung Piano Teachers. The purpose of this session is to recognize some of the common traits of teachers with limited teaching experience, and to provide strategies to help inexperienced teachers.

A Collegiate Chapters Reception will be held Sunday afternoon, March 28, 2004. This is an opportunity for all collegiate students to meet and socialize with one another. A ...