Welcome to the FAME events page!
View a full calendar view of our upcoming teacher certification course classes and workshops below.
Unlock the magic of early childhood music with the First Steps in Music curriculum! Join this 24-hour teacher certification professional development course to learn how to create engaging, tuneful, and artful experiences for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. Learn interactive techniques, understand the research supporting the curriculum, and have an opportunity to ask questions and deepen your understanding. Perfect for educators looking to enrich their music classes with proven strategies and timeless songs! Learn more and Register Here
Fall 2024
Tuesdays, 6:30-7:30 pm Eastern (New York)
Dates: October 8, 15, 22, 29; November 12, 19
Credits: 1.5 Grad Cred or PD Cert. Hours
Prerequisites: FSM and/or CS Levels 1&2 required
FAME is excited to invite you to the CT-ACDA Fall Conference on Saturday, October 19!
Lillie Feierabend will present Sing in Parts: Pedagogy Ideas for Beginning Sight Singing — a session packed with practical ideas for your choral teaching.
To celebrate, CT-ACDA offers a special $10 off coupon when you register! Just use code FAME at checkout. ACDA members can register for $100, and non-members for $140.
See you there! 
Lillie Feierabend
Transform your elementary students into confident choral singers with “Next Steps to Singing in Harmony.” This course offers practical strategies to seamlessly transition your students from early elementary Tuneful activities to upper elementary choral excellence. Learn how to repurpose familiar First Steps in Music and Conversational Solfege repertoire to build harmony skills, improve tone quality, and foster musical independence. This course is perfect for educators looking to maximize limited singing time and create a strong foundation for their choirs.
Learn More and Register now!
Conversational Solfege Upper Levels Overview Mini-course – “An Ear-First Approach to Harmony and Improvisation for Middle and High School Performing Ensembles”
Unlock your ensemble’s improvisation potential with the “Conversational Solfege Upper Levels Overview Mini-Course.” In this dynamic 3-hour session, you’ll explore John Feierabend’s Ear-First Approach to teaching harmony and improvisation to middle and high school ensembles. Learn how to guide students in tonal analysis, melody creation, and jazz-style improvisation, starting from the basics of “Discovering the Bass Line.”
This workshop is perfect for upper elementary, Middle, and high school ensemble teachers who have completed Conversational Solfege Levels 1-2 and aim to expand their curriculum and deepen their older students’ understanding of harmony and improvisation in an interactive “ear-first” way.
Learn more and Register Here
Unlock the power of music literacy for your students with Conversational Solfege! This transformative course, designed by Dr. John Feierabend, equips educators with research-based methods to teach rhythm, melody, and improvisation across all levels—from elementary classrooms to collegiate ensembles. Dive into a literature-driven curriculum that makes reading music notation as natural as speaking.
This course is ideal for educators who want to adopt a proven, research-based method for music reading that enhances listening, responding, and improvisation skills. Get ready to feel inspired and motivated to elevate your teaching and your students’ musical thinking!
Learn more and register for the course
Registration opens Oct. 1, 2024
This course is perfect for upper elementary general music, as well as middle school and high school choral and instrumental teachers. The Upper Levels curriculum builds on foundational musical thinking skills learned in Conversational Solfege Levels 1&2 and continues guiding students to think, read, and then write music in multiple keys and meters, all with the same ear-first approach. Upper Levels also includes a curriculum to teach musicians a Conversational knowledge of major and minor diatonic harmony and its application to teaching improvisation and composition in performing ensemble classrooms. Building on the conversational skill of “discovering the baseline” to create a harmony, introduced in Level 2, this curriculum leads students to use a bass line to inform tonal analysis to reveal the corresponding diatonic chord tones, and the many melodic counter-puntal possibilities that weave harmony together. Come prepared to sing. Don’t miss this opportunity to transform your teaching—register today and take your ensemble to the next level of musical thinking!
This course will provide participants with insights and practical knowledge to implement developmentally appropriate musical activities for children under three years old. Folk songs, rhymes, and Classical music are highlighted as primary source materials. Research findings and pedagogical techniques will be discussed, giving participants a solid foundation to support very young children to become Tuneful, Beatful and Artful.