Date: Saturday, September 16, 2023 Time: 9am-1pm
Old Dominion University- Diehn School of Music
Every learner has creative potential. Through singing, saying, moving, playing, and creating, participants will experience ways of tapping into the creative potential of learners in the urban classroom to provide meaningful musical experiences that are multicultural, arts integrated and address varied learning modalities.
Clinician Bio: 
Thomas Pierre is a National Board-Certified Music Teacher, certified Orff educator, and an approved Movement Teacher Educator for the American Orff Schulwerk Association (AOSA). Mr. Pierre is also a 2020 CMA National Music Teachers of Excellence National Award recipient and Maryland Music Educators Outstanding Music Teacher. He has earned the Certificate of Study from the Changing Education Through the Arts program, Kennedy Center. A native of the Bronx, New York, he attended the famous Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and the Performing Arts (the school featured in the motion picture “FAME”). Mr. Pierre often reflects on how he sat in his classroom, a bewildered, uninterested, misdirected 12-year-old from the housing projects, when a remarkable teacher formally introduced him to music. Since that time, Mr. Pierre has been committed to the study of music and introducing young people to all genres of music. Mr. Pierre has furthered his study in music and movement at the International Music Village in Finland (2023) and Estonia (2019), Summer Dance Institute for Teachers at the Creative Dance Center in Seattle, Washington, International Summer Course at the Orff Institute in Salzburg, Austria, and the Music, Dance and Orff Schulwerk International Master Class in Ghana, West Africa (2018 & 2016). Mr. Pierre has also taught in the Orff España Summer Course in Madrid, Spain. He has taught vocal, general, and choral music at all grade levels. Mr. Pierre is the president of the Middle Atlantic Chapter of the American Orff Schulwerk Association (AOSA) and served on the Diversity and Inclusion Subcommittee and Restructuring Ad Hoc Committee of AOSA. Mr. Pierre teaches in Prince George’s County, MD, and throughout the years has led workshops around the US and internationally providing support to children and adults that aid in closing the achievement gap in urban education through arts education and arts integration.