A New Take on PD - Musical Mosaic©
Introducing Musical Mosaic© - A Summer Retreat for Music Teachers: Rest, Restore, Reignite
Summer professional development doesn’t have to feel like another obligation on your calendar. This year, imagine something different: a restorative, healing, and deeply inspiring retreat-style course designed for music educators and students. This inspiring program brings the elemental approach of Orff Schulwerk to life through play, collaboration, and community—a space where creativity is gently reawakened, musicality is nurtured, and you are centered again as an artist and educator.
After a(nother) year of giving your energy, empathy, and expertise to students, it’s natural to feel depleted. This summer course was created as an intentional pause—a chance to step away from performance pressure, assessment rubrics, and constant productivity, and return to the heart of why you fell in love with music education in the first place. Experience joyful music-making, creative exploration, and fresh ideas that will energize your teaching and musicianship across a colorful mosaic of integrated arts.
A Retreat, Not a Requirement
This professional development experience is structured like a retreat, not a traditional workshop. Days unfold at a humane pace, balancing guided learning with spacious time for reflection, rest, and creative exploration. Musical Mosaic© meets teachers where they are and offers appropriately leveled tracks, all unified through shared elemental values. Sessions are immersive yet gentle, blending elemental musical practice with practical, reusable, sustainable strategies they can immediately bring back to their classrooms.
Here, professional growth doesn’t come from pushing harder—it comes from listening more deeply.
Reconnecting With Your Musical Self
At the center of the course is the belief that great teaching flows from a nourished musician, creative, and human being. Participants are invited to reconnect with their own musical voices through improvisation, collaborative music-making, and expressive play—without the pressure of “getting it right.”
Whether you are just beginning your teaching journey, are a veteran teacher wondering how you can possibly keep going, or new to general music from another discipline, the focus is universal: rediscovering musical joy, curiosity, and emotional connection. Elemental technique and pedagogy are woven in naturally, but always in service of expression, meaning, and connection.
Healing Through Community
One of the most powerful aspects of the retreat is the sense of community. Music teachers gather not as experts who have it all together, but as whole humans—tired, inspired, questioning, and hopeful. In this supportive environment, shared experiences become a source of healing and validation.
Conversations are honest. Laughter is frequent. Silence is respected. Our goal is to empower teachers to shed shame narratives, build confidence, and grow within a supportive, collaborative community.
Inspiration That Lasts Beyond Summer
This course doesn’t just recharge you for August—it reshapes how you enter the school year. Teachers leave with renewed confidence, fresh creative ideas, and practical strategies for bringing restorative, student-centered musical experiences into their classrooms.
More importantly, they leave with a renewed relationship to music itself.
An Invitation to Begin Again
Musical Mosaic© - in association with Moravian University and EducArt, and accredited by the American Center for Elemental Music and Movement- is an invitation: to slow down, to breathe, to listen, and to remember that music is not just something you teach—it’s something that sustains you.
Come as you are. Leave restored, inspired, and reconnected to your creativity, your musicality, and your purpose.