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Mary Kaye Rabaey
(507)872-6175 ext. #1110 |
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Although a graduate of Minneota High School, all of my education field experiences took place in Minneapolis, Saint Paul and the surrounding suburbs. There is definitely something to be said about being part of a small district. At Minneota, students have the opportunity to receive a quality education AND participate in a variety of extracurriculars, thus learning valuable lifelong organizational and leadership skills.
Education:
College of Saint Catherine - BA Music/Secondary Education
Hamline University - Kodaly Certification
University of Saint Thomas - graduate courses in Kodaly, Orff and Dalcroze methodologies
Professional Affiliations:
American Choral Directors Association (ACDA)
Music Educators National Conference (MENC)
Music Teachers National Association (MTNA), professionally certified: education, organ, piano
Organization of Kodaly Educators (OAKE),
National Federation of Music Clubs (NFMC), state secretary - Minnesota chapter
National Guild of Piano Teachers (NGPT)
Why I Teach Music
1. MUSIC IS A SCIENCE. It is exact, specific and must be 100% correct - 99% is no good. It is unalterable. It demands exact acoustics.
2. MUSIC IS MATHEMATICAL. It is rhythmically based on the subdivision of time in space into fractions which must be done instantaneously and not worked out on paper.
3. MUSIC IS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE. Most of the terms are in Italian, German, or French, and the notation of notes certainly is not English, but a highly developed kind of shorthand.
4. MUSIC IS HISTORY. Music has always reflected the environment and times of its creation --- often even the country or racial feeling.
5. MUSIC IS PHYSICAL EDUCATION. It requires fantaswtic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lip, cheek and facial muscles in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragmatic --- back, stomach and chest muscles --- which must respond instantly to the sounds the ear hears and the mind interprets.
6. MUSIC IS ALL OF THESE THINGS; BUT MOST OF ALL, MUSIC IS ART. It allows a human being to take all of these dry technically boring (but fantastically difficult) techniques and use them to CREATE EMOTION!!! That is the one thing that science cannot duplicate.
THAT IS WHY I TEACH MUSIC - not because I expect you to major in music; not because I expect you to play music all of your life; not so you can relax; not so you can have fun; not so you can trot around on the football field in uniform . . . BUT so you will be human; so you will recognize beauty; so you will be sensitive; so you will be closer to an infinite beyond our world; so that you will have something to cling to; so that you will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good --- in short, more life. Of what value will it be to make a prosperous living unless you know how to live?
--- author unknown
Music transcends the classroom, the concert stage and professional recordings. It pervades life. Mankind has long used music in all sorts of ways: to celebrate, to lament, to dance, to pray, to soothe or arouse, to woo, to infuse courage and terrify the enemy, to commerorate, to unite a community. Even the most primitive societies are keenly aware of the power of music, and various myths from cultures throughout the world confer on music and musicians a lofty, even divine significance.
--- Peter Kalkavage
