What A Rockness Teacher Workshop Feels Like

If you're a preschool or early childhood director thinking about music PD for your staff, you probably want to know what the time actually looks like and what your teachers will be able to do afterward. Here's both.

A director once asked us, pretty directly, what her teachers would be doing for three hours. It's a fair question. Most PD means sitting and listening. Ours is mostly standing up, playing, and trying things with the people you work next to every day.

We start with the teachers' own music

Before we hand anyone a drum, we ask teachers about songs that have mattered to them. A song a parent sang in the car, something from church, a record an older cousin played on repeat. People usually have more to say than they expected.

We start here because every teacher already has a history with music, whether or not they'd call themselves musical. Talking about it gets people relaxed and gives the group something in common before anyone plays a note. Nobody needs to read music or have taken lessons to do any of this.

Then it's hands-on

Most of the session is doing, not watching. Teachers will:

• Drum together and pass rhythms around the circle
• Clap patterns, then build them into games
• Try out simple instruments and talk about when to use them
• Learn songs they can lead with a group of kids
• Use puppets to bring a song or a transition to life

We keep it moving and we keep it practical. If something won't work with a room of two-year-olds on a Tuesday morning, we don't spend time on it. You can see the rest of what we bring to schools on our school programs page.

It changes depending on the room

An infant room and a room full of three-year-olds need different things, so we work through each one.

Infant rooms. Here the focus is on calming sound. We practice humming, using nature sounds and classical music, and choosing instruments that are safe for babies to hold and mouth.

Movers. Toddlers and older preschoolers need to move, so we work on activation and rhythm. Teachers are often surprised that syncopation is within a toddler's reach. Kids this age can feel an off-beat pattern and clap it back if you give them the chance.

Mixed-age rooms. These are the hardest, because you need calm and active in the same space at the same time. We help teachers plan for both, using items the school already has instead of buying new equipment.

How the sessions are spaced

With Catholic Charities, we ran three sessions of three hours each. Spacing them out gives teachers time to go back to their rooms, try things with their kids, and bring real questions to the next session. Those questions tend to shape a lot of what we cover the second and third time.

We come to your school, so your staff stay in a space they know. Michael leads our PD sessions. You can read more about how it's set up on our professional development page.

Time for the teachers, too

Teachers spend all day looking after other people. We build in time for their own wellbeing during the workshop. That might be a few minutes of humming together, a song that's just for the adults, or a quiet stretch with some music playing.

Teachers get nourished too. It's hard to bring calm into a classroom if you haven't had any yourself.

What your staff leave with

By the end, teachers have things they can use the next day:

• A handful of songs they feel comfortable leading
• Rhythm games that work with a full room of kids
• Humming and calming tools for rest time, transitions, and hard moments
• More confidence using music, even if they don't think of themselves as singers

There's good support for this kind of work. NAEYC has a piece on how integrating music, drama, and dance helps children in early childhood classrooms. Our workshops are meant to make that doable for the teachers you already have.

Some schools pair PD with ongoing music for the kids. If that's of interest, take a look at our enrichment classes for preschoolers or our preschool shows and assemblies.

If you'd like to talk through what a workshop could look like for your staff, we're happy to hear about your rooms and your schedule and suggest a plan.

👉 Get in touch to set up a teacher workshop at your school.

Thanks for reading,
The Rockness Crew
Rockness Music