At Music Theory Playground™, we believe that excellence in music education involves eight core principles:
Music Theory Integration Practical and technical skills on an instrument are aided by a firm foundation and integrated understanding of music theory. We believe that music teachers of all instruments, formats, styles, skill levels, and ages should be supported to integrate music theory into lessons and classes, in a way that connects to and complements practical and technical learning at the instrument.
Excellent Quality Resources We provide teachers with high quality, excellent materials and resources, so that they can know that they are filling gaps, fostering creative thinking, and sparking musical connections in the minds of students, all the while ensuring that students learn a variety of topics, approaches, and skills. All of our resources are made by the human brains, hands, and eyes of music educators, and the utmost care has been taken to ensure that resources are of the highest quality.
Ease of Access Music teachers are busy, with long to-do lists! We prioritize finding materials with ease, ensuring that teachers can browse our catalogue, find the resource for which they are looking, choose their options, make their payment, and download their resource, all within only a couple of minutes. Our goal is to save teachers’ time, so they can spend more time doing what they love.
Massive Quantity While every student is different, often, one page of theory practice on a new topic is not enough to create an integrated understanding. We have seen that practice makes perfect, and drills create skills. That’s why we provide large collections of the same activity, with varied designs, questions, and answers. We want to ensure that teachers never run out of materials to help a student practice a theoretical concept.
Variety For music education, variety is the magic word. Variety reinforces understanding from within multiple contexts, improves retention, and keeps students interested, engaged, and curious. We value providing a wide range of topics and levels, within which we provide a multitude of resources for differing teaching styles, learning styles, and student ages.
High Educational Standards We believe that students of all ages can achieve goals that are far beyond what their teachers may expect from them. In addition, we have seen how high educational standards, for their own sake (not for the teachers’ or parents’ sake), presented to students with a clear path for their achievement, provide true fulfillment and a feeling of mastery, once realized in music learning. This feeling of mastery contributes to students’ ongoing motivation, drive, and commitment to learning music. We want to provide teachers with the right resources to offer their students rewarding challenges.
Joyful Teaching, Joyful Learning We know that joyful teaching provides the proper space for the natural state of learning, which is itself playful and joyful. We value making resources that use a variety of vibrant colours, characters, animals, and scenes, each appropriate to the age and skill level of the resource. We want each resource to support teachers in the beautiful pursuit of creating joyful learning environments, in turn leading to students’ joy: lighting up their eyes, igniting their imagination, sparking their intrinsic motivation, and calling on their natural intelligence.
Every Minute Counts We think that “Never a dull moment!” should be every music teacher’s studio or classroom motto. Helping teachers fill every minute with learning activities is our goal, so that students have every opportunity to improve, teachers can avoid the potential chaos that comes from dead space, and parents can feel confident knowing that they are getting top-quality service. Our resources can be used as in-lesson practice, take-home work, and waiting room activities, enabling teachers to offer as much learning to their students as possible.
Thank you for choosing Music Theory Playground™, and feel free to contact us at any time with your questions, thoughts, and ideas!
Juilliard School graduate and two-time winner of Juilliard’s Honors Recital, pianist Bronwyn Schuman is currently completing her Doctor of Music degree at McGill University, where her doctoral research is in play-based and collaborative learning approaches within music pedagogy. Bronwyn is a two-time winner of the Canadian Federation of Music Teachers Association's National Essay Competition at the doctoral level with her writing in pedagogy and music education. Other areas of Bronwyn’s musical career have included over fifteen years of teaching music to individual students and within group classes; creating and teaching her own pedagogy course for new piano teachers; substitute teaching in the public school system; working as judge and panelist for competitions and grant committees; coaching singers in art song and opera; performing in venues such as Alice Tully Hall at The Lincoln Center (NYC) and in WQXR’s The Greene Space (NYC); delivering piano pedagogy workshops and presentations; giving academic presentations on topics ranging from Ear Training Pedagogy to The Book of Hanging Gardens to Britney Spears; writing articles for music teacher association newsletters and other journals, including The Juilliard Journal; leading and conducting choirs and small ensembles; and editing, administrating, and publishing music through Canada’s Palliser Music Publishing. Visit www.bronwynschuman.com to learn more.
