2026 MMEA Fall In-Service Conference

Start the school year with repertoire that builds both musicianship and community. This reading session highlights accessible and engaging SAB and SATB selections designed to foster connection, confidence, and artistic growth in developing choirs. Participants will explore music that is pedagogically sound, culturally responsive, and immediately usable in middle school, high school, community, and collegiate settings. Whether rebuilding an ensemble, strengthening vocal independence, or cultivating a sense of belonging, these selections provide meaningful opportunities for singers to grow musically and personally. Discover repertoire that is accessible enough for success and beautiful enough to inspire singers throughout the year.

Music educators juggle rehearsals, performances, parent meetings, and yes, even cafeteria duty. Advocacy can feel like one more task, but it doesn’t have to be. Learn how to build relationship capital through everyday interactions with colleagues, administrators, families, and community partners. Discover practical, time-efficient strategies to increase visibility, grow support, and celebrate success for all students. Attendees will leave with immediately usable steps to create lasting impact and strengthen support for their music program in any school setting.

There is an unspoken myth that middle school bands have to sound underdeveloped. As well as having quality middle school performing ensembles in minorities' communities tends to be undervalued. The purpose of this presentation is to highlight the need for strong musicianship and ensemble training at the middle school level. This presentation will discuss the methods, strategies, philosophy, and pedagogy necessary to develop healthy, high-performing middle school instrumental ensembles. The primary focus is to develop a curriculum using the “Wisconsin CMP Method” (Conceptualize Learning). The initiative of this presentation is to address the importance of strong individual musicianship training, ensemble training, performing ensembles, and music programs in minority communities at the middle school level, and that they are often overlooked and unrepresented. The goal is to debunk the myth that middle school ensembles “must” sound underdeveloped or cannot perform with strong musical fundamentals. Lastly, this presentation will help to edify the developmental pipeline of musicians from communities of color (elementary, middle, high, collegiate, professional, etc.) Throughout this presentation, topics of discussion will be a “nuts and bolts” approach that focuses on developing ensemble sound using musical concepts such as tone quality, intonation, ensemble blend and balance, articulation, and dynamic contrast. The primary vehicle of this method is developing the ensemble through the warm-up process and sequenced topic lessons using a “Private Lesson” format approach. The presentation will also include developing group/individual musicianship and technique building. Middle school-aged students will benefit from this teaching method as they will gain more confidence in themselves as young people and musicians, become more motivated to continue in a performing ensemble, and gain autonomy as musicians to make intelligent musical choices on their own, independent of the conductor, and be more fulfilled making music. In conclusion, this presentation will benefit college professors in the development of future music educators by encouraging them to take a more comprehensive approach to developing middle school ensembles and place a higher value on strong performing middle school ensembles in minority and underrepresented communities, while equipping them with the tools necessary to develop those ensembles and scholars.

You want AI to organize your library, help bring your ideas to life, assist you in planning, and help facilitate how best to teach particular skillsets. You don't want it to create your music for you, think for you or mentor you. In this session, we will visit a few AI tools and how to use them to augment what we already do without handing over our responsibility to think. AI can be a powerful assistant when used ethically. We can also teach our students to use it this way too!

Need to challenge your top students? Have a group with unusual/limited instrumentation? Want to help build fundamental skills with struggling students? Want students to have better part independence? The answer to these questions and more is: Chamber music! During this session we will discuss ideas for how to include chamber music in the large ensemble classroom using materials and methods new and old. Resources for finding diverse repertoire and Classroom management strategies for how to accomplish this will also be discussed. Get ready to dust off those Rubank ensemble books and watch your students make music independently!

As a music teacher, you may teach all the students in your school, including students who do not primarily speak English. Each year, this group of students do a test called the ACCESS test. While this test provides great insight on how these students understand the English language, how can we understand the test results for ourselves and apply it to our classes? Please join me in this session as we learn to understand the ACCESS testing system and how we can apply this new understanding to our music classroom through discussions, strategies, and more!