“QuaverMusic helps me in so many ways.”
By Kristin Clark Taylor
Rebecca DeBrier has a way about her.
Her personality is so sunny and bright it could light up the sky on a rainy day.
But if you really want to hear the sun rise and shine in her voice, ask her to talk about QuaverMusic.
DeBrier, a music teacher at Pine Forest Elementary in Vidor, Texas, says she’s been using QuaverMusic in her classroom for several years now, and nothing – absolutely nothing! – is going to change that.
There’s a reason for her adamance – several reasons, actually.
She starts by reflecting on those early days, when Quaver was still new to her. Even then, at the very outset, DeBrier says she felt the positive impact.
She noticed very quickly that the lessons were easy to access and simple to navigate, which gave her a greater measure of control and flexibility.
In a very real way, she’d been given a gift of sorts:
The gift of time.
“Quaver gave me a way to organize my lessons and put everything in one place,” she says. “This gave me more time with my students.”
DeBrier also loves the adaptability of the curriculum.
“It’s amazing to me that after all these years, I’m still finding new ways to use Quaver!”
She offers up an example.
When a network outage at her school prevented her students from using their iPads for a short period of time, the resourceful DeBrier jumped into action.
“My kids love Quaver’s draw screens,” she says, “so when the system went down, I just scanned the image we were working on, printed it out as a Google doc, then passed it out on paper to each student.”
A happy outcome resulted.
“That temporary break from our iPads inspired me to do more hands-on work with them!” she says.
DeBrier believes that technology plays an important role in music education, but she believes it’s equally important to teach the “old-school, hands-on” fundamentals of music.
In her classroom, DeBrier works hard to establish a more comfortable balance between the two, and says that QuaverMusic helps maintain this balance.
“Kids learn music by handling the instruments, and by feeling the notes and the sounds they make,” she says.
DeBrier describes what music sounds like, looks like, and feels like inside her classroom.
“We have all kinds of instruments, and we use them all,” she says with pride. “Boom-whackers, bells, xylophones, all forms of percussion.”
Students today, she says, “are inundated with technology from sun-up to sun-down, so the occasional break from the computer screen is a good thing,” she says.
She appreciates the fact that even though Quaver is a fully digital, online platform, the curriculum itself places heavy emphasis on the fundamentals of music education.
“My kids are very comfortable with technology, but I also make it a point to put instruments in their hands,” she says.”Quaver encourages both.”
Clearly, she is passionate about teaching and grateful to have a resource like QuaverMusic to help her meet — and exceed — her goals.
DeBrier makes it her business to ensure that her students experience the miracle of music in different ways, whether it’s singing a song in their loudest voices (“Paw-Paw Patch” is a favorite!), navigating a lesson on their iPads, or playing bells and boom-whackers with their own little hands.
This is teaching at its best.
And QuaverMusic brings the balance.
For more information about how to get Quaver in your classroom, visit QuaverEd.com/Music to start your journey.
Kristin Clark Taylor is an author and an editor.
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