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Cecil Adderley, Chair
DEPARTMENT : Music Education Department"Teaching in the Music Education Department, you have to prepare people to do it all. Most state certificates for music educators are not area- and grade-specific like those for English or science. As a public school music teacher in Massachusetts, your certification will be K–12, all ages, all levels. So Berklee students who plan to enter public education need experiences that will help them become proficient in teaching brass, voice, strings, and woodwinds. Plus, if the school where they are teaching has a football team, nine times out of ten they will be responsible for the marching band. So they have to have all of these experiences."
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"I had the opportunity to audition for a performance job at Old Sturbridge Village, which is a living history museum in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. I worked there both in a solo capacity and performing in small ensemble groups. I did recordings of early American folk music, specifically ladies' parlor ballads. The more I worked in that genre, the more interested I became in how women work in music and how folk music is such a powerful influence in so many women's lives. It was a way for women to express themselves, and it became a way for me to express myself, as well, and to sing, which is important to me."
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Peter Cokkinias, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Music Education Department"I love teaching. I really love it. When you're talking to a student and you see her make a connection—that's a wonderful feeling to have as a teacher. And I just want to pass that on to my students: that you have to love what you're doing. If you can't sell yourself to the students first, no matter what good things you say, if you don't show that you want to be there, you won't reach them."
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"I spent 16 years teaching in New Jersey middle and high schools. One of my goals is to train future teachers—to keep it going, pass it along to next generation.
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- Teacher, conductor, and performer on early instruments
- Has taught in the Lexington Public Schools for 15 years
- Named Director of the Year (2005) by the Massachusetts Chapter of the American String Teachers Association
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John Hagon, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Music Education Department"I'm teaching my first love: conducting. To be able to develop future conductors and their techniques is really very exciting. I'm teaching students to be conductors because part of what they have to do in a school situation is conduct ensembles. This is a different slant. They're actually teaching but they have to have the conducting skills to do it, teach through the medium of performance. They have to develop the conducting skills to be able to communicate with their students. From the beginning of the semester to the end of the semester, it's nice to see students' development."
Read More- B.S., Lowell State College
- M.M., Boston Conservatory of Music
- Appearances with Boris Goldovsky and the Boston Opera Company
- Leader of the Deanna Kidd Swing Group
- Featured vocalist with 16-piece big band Stage Door Canteen
- Former chair of elementary music and instructor in music in Massachusetts public schools
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- Music educator, clinician, author, and consultant
- Member of the Technology Institute for Music Educators (TI:ME) Advisory Board
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Faith Lueth, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Music Education Department"I taught at all levels in the public schools for 36 years. There are a lot of things I learned the hard way that I wish somebody had told me when I was an undergraduate—for example, that you can achieve great things at all levels, not just high school. I had to develop a vision for what students at all levels can achieve and search out resources. There are also organizational tidbits that nobody ever tells you, like what you need to know when you take a choir out of the school to perform. These are the kinds of things I give my students to make their road easier."
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"Choral Rehearsal Techniques is a really fun class. I structure it like a lab. I give students scores that they would use in a typical middle or high school choir, and they prepare them to teach. They learn the parts, the text, the conducting; they plan the most effective and efficient way to teach them. Then they actually teach and conduct the work, over a series of weeks. They get up in front of their classmates and teach them as if they were teaching a middle or high school class. They need to think a little differently, to imagine that they are not working with their professional peers, but rather with developing musicians. For example, they need to think: 'How would I approach this particular piece with middle schoolers, who have some reading skills, but maybe not extensive reading skills?'"
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