Books for the Elementary Music Classroom with Theresa Cocci - Ep76

Artwork for podcast The Happy Music Teacher

Episode 76 • 11th September 2024 • The Happy Music Teacher • Jeanette Shorey

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the happy music teacher! Elementary

music teacher who's frustrated and overwhelmed. I'm Jeanette Shorey, a happy music teacher who loves teaching every day. But it wasn't long ago I was in your shoes. Join me Wednesdays to help you find happy in your music classroom. I am so happy to have Teresa Kochi here with me and I'm so excited to talk to her.

She is a fellow storybook lover and also the author of some children's books. So let me just tell you a little bit about Teresa. She is an author, educator, and instructor. Her passion for storytelling and music led her to create children's picture books that inspire a love for literacy. With over 30 years of experience, she's worked as a classroom teacher, music education specialist, and piano instructor.

She currently enjoys author visits and writing for several websites, which include Teaching with ORF and Music Constructed. Teresa writes lessons that foster literacy growth. Using music as a powerful tool. Her first book, Henry, the hungry hound relives the mischievous antics of her beloved dog, Henry, and a clever plan to curb his unruly behavior.

Her recently released book, Harry's horrible hair is a mom's choice gold award winning book. It's about a downhearted little dog. Who's afraid that others will only see his horrible hair. And explores themes of self acceptance and inner work. Her book debuted on Storytime with Fergie and Friends and was read by the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson.

Teresa has earned a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education from Kutztown University. And Orff Schulwerk Music Certification from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA. She is a member of SCBWI for Writers, attends workshops regularly, and continues to explore and research the music and literature connection.

She resides in Reading, Pennsylvania with her family and lovable pup, Molly. For more information, you can visit her website, www. teresakachi. org. So Teresa, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you on to talk about your books and all the things.

Thank you so much for having me. It's just such a pleasure to be on.

I listen to your podcast all the time and enjoy. Yeah, I really enjoy them.

Yay. Well, I'm glad to hear that. Um, so you and I have been connected for probably a number of years at this point. And I think we both have that mutual love of literacy and the love of the connection. Between music and literacy, and I think that was one of the things that sort of brought us together at first.

Yes.

I think so. Yeah, I just, I really enjoy just using children's books in the classroom. And then when I connected with you, I saw that you had that same love as well. And I just think it's so, it's just, the kids just gravitate towards it whenever I present, you know, a book in the classroom. And that's what led me to create my own books too.

Which is amazing. I, I'm a little jealous because I have some books in my thinking cap. I've, I've got notes and all that, but I haven't ever done anything with them. Someday that is going to be a goal for me.

It's funny because one of the reasons I, I started writing, um, I had always wanted to be a writer.

You know, I read lots of picture books. I used a lot of picture books in my classroom. But I would make up stories too when I was an elementary classroom teacher. I would start with a story and then the kids started asking me to introduce a concept like in math or whatever, and the kids would ask me, Is that real?

Is that story real? So I thought, I'm just gonna start writing these stories down a little bit and that's, that's where I got the ideas of writing and I started studying writing, you know, several, you know, it's been a while and started taking courses and started, you know, with the Highlights Foundation and SCBWI offers a lot of uh, Raiders workshops and Highlights is in my, I shouldn't say in my backyard, but they're in the, where I'm in Pennsylvania, so they're in the Poconos.

area. So it's retreats for writers, which is very nice. Um, I actually got a scholarship to write, um, with them. And that's, that's one of the first encounters that I had with violates, which was really nice. And they had a mentor. And I, I, you know, presented my ideas and several other authors, we worked with Sudipta Bhardakwalam is her name and she is a children's picture book writer and she would meet with us and say, Okay, give me your ideas.

I'm smooth this out. This doesn't work, you know that type of thing. So it's it's a lot of work I have to say being a children's book, I, you know, you hear a lot of people say oh write a book in a day. Right. No, no, it took me two years it did take me two years it I, you know, I had to get used to the guidelines.

You know, things have changed over the years from your older picture books to newer picture books, you know, 500 words limit is what they're looking for, um, that type of thing. Also, uh, you have to keep mindful of a parents usually reading or a grandparent or a relative of some sort is, is reading the book to them.

So, Do you want to make it really long if it's a bedtime story? Not necessarily. That's what some of the mentors have said, you know, in different workshops and writing courses that I've taken. So that's been quite interesting, you know, because some of my son's best love books were pretty long, right? Right.

33 now. And, you know, some of them were like, mom, can you read this? I'd be like, Oh, okay. How about if we just read half tonight?

Yeah,

yeah,

it's because you're reading to get your Children calm down as the parent and the last thing you want is, oh my gosh, this book is like an hour long. So,

and it's, it's been a really good learning experience.

And as a teacher, I wanted to learn, I, I wanted to see how I could. You know, influence children. And a lot of the books, the books, manuscripts I have, I have a five out right now that I'm waiting, you know, on, but, um, you know, you have to go through the query process. So you have to, uh, you know, wait a long time and sometimes you get a good response.

Sometimes, you know, you get rejections, like we're not interested in that right now. Right. But it's, it's fun to learn the process. I feel as a teacher, it's just fun to learn the process of how to write a children's book and what is on the market. And that's one of the things that I do on a regular basis.

I read a lot of children's books. I go to the library. I, you know, I, I go online and look at the read alouds. Um, during covid a lot of librarians were permitted to do read alouds on, um, right, on their websites. And that was really nice. So you, if you're, you know, we, and the other thing is too, I belong to critique groups, which I really enjoy.

Um, one is. It's a rhyming critique, yeah, critique group. And the other one is, they're, they're, and they're just picture books. And the other one is from, uh, picture books all the way to young adult, uh, chapter books. So very cool. The smattering of all those. Yeah. So that's neat. It's been, it's been a real learning experience and then I got into, uh, working with, uh, the teachers teaching with worth and also music constructive, which, uh, I wanted to make that known today that.

Teachers, if they're looking for some, you know, like the lessons, I know you do the lessons as well, but they have, uh, you know, that set up if you're looking for a particular thing. And it's nice. It, I just thought, uh, I would try to take those lessons and for teachers, you know, like you do, it's easy for them to put it into their curriculum.

Right. Right. And you don't have to work, you know, the lesson plan, like you said, but Cuts down on their lesson planning time. And, uh, and then also I think music instructor does offer professional development, things like that for teachers too during the year and teaching with work does too. They offer different works like kind of like, yeah,

yeah.

Yeah. They, they offer a lot. Cause I get their emails. So tell me a little bit, tell my listeners a little bit about your background. I know we read through your bio. And I know that you were a classroom teacher for a while and then you became a music teacher. So how did that process happen?

So what happened was I You know, got out of school, got out of college.

I wanted to get a job right away, and I had an elementary ed, um, degree with a music minor, actually, a background. I've taught, I've studied piano privately for years, and, uh, when I took the music minor, that's actually where I went. That's all they offered at the time. And I, you know, I liked working in the classroom.

I got my first job. I worked at a variety of grade levels, sixth grade, third grade. Then I started going back to school for music with the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. And that was really nice. I met a lot of music teachers and I knew my love for music was, I just knew I had a love for music. I wanted to continue.

Uh, teaching music, even if I could only get an element, you know, not only, but if I worked in the elementary classroom, I wanted to integrate music into the classroom. I wanted to find a way. I started studying, uh, the Urschel work and I loved it before that. I didn't put that in my Bible before that I studied with John Feyerabend.

And he's a childhood music educator. And again, I was fortunate enough to have him come into the West Chester University area. He was at West Chester University for two summers. And he had two courses that he was offering. And it really opened my eyes about how to, uh, use early childhood music for the little, little guys for the preschool.

Well, then my love of music, like I said, I just started. Finding different preschools that said, can you come in and teach music for us? I left my elementary job and I started going traveling into, at one time I was doing like three different preschools during the week. Ah, okay. Yeah. One was, one was at Albright Learning Center.

They had a, uh, right on their campus there, right down the street, they had a learning center. And they were great. And I worked there for, for quite a while. And then there was an Institute of the Arts in our, in our area too. And there's, they said, can you come in and teach music? And I did. And that was great because we had a dance teacher there.

We had a theater arts teacher. It was, it was wonderful. And then I also worked at a community use, uh, use. It was called Community Church, UCC. And they were wonderful. They had, they had a huge attendance of preschoolers. They had over almost 200 preschoolers. Wow. That's a lot here. And I would teach. And then like my love for teaching music started to shift to the preschool because they, I found that the language that, you know, they were learning it, the literacy and the music just fit in so well there.

It does. It really does. You know, it really did. And, and just taking what John Feyerabend had taught us and using those skills through finger plays, through, you know, all types of, all types of pieces of music that he had taught us. Folk music seemed to be dominant, too, with the, the preschoolers. They loved the folk songs.

Mm hmm. Into the classroom and Some of the places I would only go in once a week. Some I was only, you know, fortunate enough to go in once every two weeks because with their budget or whatever. And they would remember. They said, we could do that song again. The one about the, you know, the turkey. And I was floored how they remembered it.

So I, you know, I knew something was sticking. And I, I knew that, you know, That was really helpful. And the teachers even said to me, these, my, my children are out in the recess grounds singing these folk songs. Love it while they're playing. So that's what just drew me in. And I, you know, ever since then, I thought, wow, I can use my books.

I, you know, I can use not just my books, but I can use other books. I can go into the classrooms. You know, present and and just have the children just be experienced to a whole myriad of different ways to learn. And was kind of my objective. And yeah, so that's how that's how it evolved. And right now I'm, I'm working a lot on author visits.

Okay, going to the schools and. I, I, uh, I would present like for however long they need me. I, at one school, I was an artist in residence for two weeks. I went in two weeks and we did a lot of extension activities with the books. So, uh, you know, I used my Henry the Hungry Hound and we worked on rhythm chants.

We worked on Developing, um, just developing concepts of kindness, using the SEL emotions, cooperation with that type of thing. And, and then at the end, we, we just developed a song and was based on kindness and helping others. And the, uh, we recorded it and the teachers, I, I sent it out to all the teachers and they loved it.

And then they said, you just hit it on the head. They said, yeah, they were laughing. They said, yeah. Did you see our big posters outside about kindness? That's all we're trying to get across to these kids. So I thought that was so funny when she said that. Yeah, that's, that's so

cool. So you do author visits and when you do the author visit, do you go in and you said you spend two weeks.

So are you working with, um, the classroom teachers on one grade level? Are you working with like the whole school? How does that work?

Well, the one school that I went in for two weeks, um, I actually worked with music teacher. So during their music, it was really fun during their music period. That's when they would come in and we would just work on whatever project we were working on at the time.

So I didn't get to see them every day. Well, I shouldn't say that I would go in and, you know, according to his I think we were like going to maybe three or four day rotation. And then, uh, you know, I would come in the following week and we kind of, uh, finished up what we were working on. So that's how I do it, but normally I go in just for one visit.

Uh, I like, I like to go into the classrooms personally. I like to visit them and just, I feel like a smaller number works better. I can really get to, you know, hear what the kids have to say, their questions. For example, um, like on, um, the book Harry's Horrible Hair, we, uh, made up, we made up, I made up a little song that kind of goes over what happened in the story, but the kids helped me with it.

And it, we retell the story through song. Nice. And it's fun because we'll do something like how can we help Harry who's feeling so sad? Just a little quick phrase and then I'll say, okay Do you remember what we did or do you remember what what they did in the story? And they'll say oh, yeah, she made him a sweater.

We'll knit them a sweater and then I Extend it a little bit after we get our concepts down We'll extend it and I'll say, can we put a little body percussion to that? Or can we put a little bit of action to that? So again, I'm trying to focus on as an elementary teacher Can we do uh, you know as we're as we're working on something can we get each?

You know memorizing What would you call that? Memorizing, uh, pieces of or segments and retelling the story that way, you know, visually, you know, visually, they can see it, they can do potty percussion. And, you know, sometimes they use prompts of the picture from the book. And then we, what we did was we extended it and I'll say, okay, can you think of ways that we could help others?

Like, can we change the song? How can we help others who are feeling so sad? And there always, you know, came up with great ideas. Oh, I'm going to help somebody on the recess. How could we put that to a chant? You know, helping some, you know, they'll, they'll say something helping them up. You know, write them a card, send them a card, and it kept evolving.

And so they were learning, you know, as part of the SEL Emotions, they were learning to cooperate with each other. They're learning how important it is to be with others and to care about others. They learned about a little bit about self awareness, you know, how they are aware of what's happening to them, how they're feeling, and how they can project that to others too.

So that's kind of where we're going, you know. That's super cool because,

you know, you, you've got the musical element, but you've also got, they're, they're summarizing the story, they're working on their sorting skills, you know, they're all, all of the, all of the literacy connections that go along with the book, but in a musical way.

So I always like to think of it like, You're, you're sort of getting beyond that roadblock of they're, they're writing a song basically, but you're working together and they're having fun with it. And there's the whole musical element. So those students who are struggling readers are working on music skills, excuse me, working on reading skills, on literacy skills in such a different way.

And you can connect with them in ways that the classroom teacher can't because as soon as the classroom teacher says, okay, boys and girls, we're going into reading, they get this roadblock, you know, and those kids that are there. struggling readers that they don't want to do it because they're so, you know, tied up in, I'm bad at reading.

And so, you know, that's one of the really cool things to me about adding literacy into the music classroom. And it sounds like What you're doing is so seamless. You know, you're teaching music skills. Like I teach music skills in my classroom, but you're also teaching those literacy skills in a seamless way.

And it doesn't really invade the curriculum, which is one of the things I love about, because, you know, music and reading are so intrinsically connected, the, the words that we use and the concepts that we work on. And, you know, everything is so connected.

Yeah, and it was funny with like John fire up and I'll never forget.

He said, you know, uh, families used to live together, you know, extended families would live together as far as the grandparents, you know, would live with them. And, you know, It was, it wasn't very typical for a grandparent to grab a little one, bounce him on his knee and say a little finger play, you know.

Right. Two little blackbirds sitting on a hill, one named Jephthah and one named Jephthah. He said, you know, that type of thing is, as, as, That was his goal. His goal was to take these stories, the folk stories, these finger plays that so many years ago parents and grandparents had done with their children and relive them and just bring them back again and get them, get them incorporated into the, into the classroom curriculum.

That was one. And then the other thing, my, the other influence with the work, They, I love the old or show work because and the word I think I was looking for was sequencing, you know, when, as an elementary teacher went like what you said when I had my reading groups, and my kids would be there would always be a reluctant reader or someone that was very shy to read.

You know, how did I go about just trying to bring that shot or get that shyness out of the, you know, way. Just bring them out of their shell a little bit. Sometimes we had, you know, somebody read with them, you know, that type of thing. We had two readers read at once. Uh, sometimes I did. I sang a little bit.

I'll see. Can you sing a little bit, and that was one of the things I learned to with the early childhood, using that imaginary microphone and doing a little bit and that that was Lynn Kleiner to Lynn Kleiner was, yes, yeah, she amazing. You know, both John and Lynn Kleiner said, if you put a microphone in front of a child and look at them, they're going to freeze.

And I took that away from when you put, like you said, it's your turn to read, they would freeze, you know, but if you made it very, uh, just maybe a little song there before we read or got them, you know, another, a buddy to read with them, something that That they would enjoy doing and it would just lessen their fear a little bit.

I was always mindful that too, you know, myself, uh, being a piano teacher, I've had kids over the years. I, you know, I've taught for, you know, as long as I was teaching elementary ed and preschool, you know, I was teaching piano and I've had students say to me. I am not going to perform, but again, whenever I did a duet with them, I said, I bet if you do a duet with me.

Then the fear kind of got subsided a little bit, right? You know, they were so fearful of that.

So, I mean, you know, it's one of those things, everyone is afraid to be bad at things, you know, it doesn't matter how you, how old you are, you're always afraid to be bad at things. And I think as a younger person, especially a little person.

It's so much more, uh, you're, you're in so much more fear when you're doing that. So would you tell my listeners what, like, if they wanted to just do some beginning, teaching using storybooks, what would your suggestion be? Because I feel like a lot of times people really want to use more picture books in their classroom, but sometimes it's hard to figure out what to do.

So, and I, and I talk about it all the time, but sometimes it's nice to get other people's

ideas as well. I know, I did enjoy your spring, I just listened not too to the spring books that you had. And I do that quite a bit. I try to listen and, you know, to learn myself. And one of the things that I found using or show work to going back to our short, we, we had to train in that as far as finding a book using, how would you use it in the classroom?

And one of the things they really gravitated towards was finding a phrase in a book. I like to write in rhyme. Um, I feel my, my kids, when I would write in rhyme, I would leave the last word off, and they, I would say to them, you know, I would read, for example, if I'm reading a little bit from Henry the Hungry Hound, I'd say, um, again, after baking, she took a small rest in her old rocking chair that she liked the most.

And the kids would say, best. Best. Right. The kids, and it got them involved. So that's one thing I'm trying to find. I, I like rhyming books, but I, I, I'm not saying I would only read rhyming books. I do read other books, but look for that phrase. Is there a way I can incorporate that phrase in the classroom?

If we're working on, for example, something with math, how could that book work with a math concept? For example, again, with Henry the Hungry Ham, how many different pies did he like? Then we would make up a little chant. Strawberry, blue, give me some ideas, strawberry, blueberry. So again, I would just try to find a phrase, a little concept that they could use in the classroom.

And it could be with any subject, with math, with science. Um, you know, getting into the concept of, you know, how do you make a pie? What are the, what are the ingredients that you need in a pie? What, what did the old woman do with the leftover dough? You know, that type of thing. So all that. So, but that's really with, or shell work.

I have to say that because I've, the other thing I've done is I've in Pennsylvania, there's called a Pequaz. You can be, I was a Pequaz instructor for a while. That's changed a little bit. They're doing more online, but I usually actually go into the, They would rent a college, uh, it's called Pennsylvania Quality Assurance System, and it was workshops for teachers, and they would rent a college for the weekend, and they would have workshops from, I think it was mostly on Saturdays.

They did have some things on the following day as a follow up, but you would go in as a, you had to get certified, which I did, And you would present, and one of my, uh, topics was, uh, children's literature and emotions that fit, or sounds that fit, you know, things, emotions that fit, sounds that fit. And the teachers, I have to tell you, a lot of teachers when they heard me say, I'm a music teacher.

They're like, Huh, I can't sing.

I'm done. They immediately shut off. They're like, Nope, I'm out.

And I, so I introduced them to, you know, you don't have to sing. You, you can do a chant. You can do a play, you, you, things like that. And they'd be, Oh, you know, I said, And I would get, I'm a big one with puppets, you know, I got my puppets out and I would say, hey, all you have to do is say, you know, use that puppet to get the interest of the child.

If it's a book about a dog, get your dog puppet and say, Okay. Do you remember what he said? You can do comprehension that way. And that type of thing. So there was, you know, that was, that was really fun. I did that for several years. And like I said, then, then it kind of changed. They still have it, but they're doing more online, but it was fun actually going in to meet with the teachers and then hearing their, I love, I love to hear their feedback.

And a lot of the times it was, well, you know, I have an enrolling class. How am I going to use that book in the classroom? They're just gonna be all over the place. And I said, well, you can set it up with, and I think you've done this too, right? You know, you can set it up with a little circle. get the kids to body percussion, a little tapping, gets the calm and this and the kids, you know, just do some do some little different things.

You know, your kids, I'm not going to tell you what to do. You know, your kids. Yeah, so many times. Right in the middle of a lesson, I had a fire drill. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, oh man, right when you're, you know, a lot of times a principal would give you a head up, heads up and say, In about 15 minutes, the fire trail is going to go.

But the kids are still bonkers, you know. Right. Where you had interruptions, you know, like different people knocking at your door and things. And, you know, you have to always rein the kids back in. Right. That was the other thing I tried to do. Right. That's this. Taking a book is very calming if you let it be calming in your classroom.

Yes. You know, you can create, and I know your course, Chaos to Calm, you can create it. You can create a calm using a book. Um, you, you can take a phrase from the book. You can have the kids repeat it after you because it, again, you want them to be interactive with you and a book is a really good tool to get them to be interactive with you.

Yes.

It's such a great way to like introduce something or take a deeper dive into something. And, you know, it, it's so great for teaching instrument skills and long and short and, and dynamics. And I mean, you know, the list goes on and on.

And I, you know, how many times I've done, you know, Uh, a book and I'll say in this part, I'm going to do my whisper voice.

And then one part in my, the one part it goes crash, boom, when the pie's fall on the ground and the kids enjoy that. Be like, that's your part, you know, crash, boom. Can you do it in a different voice? Can you do it in a loud voice? But it's just, like you said, it's interactive. It gets the kids involved and then you don't.

I find, you know, working with all different ages, I find I don't have as much missed. I don't, I have a better management of the class. I'm very soft spoken. I'm not a yeller, right? The teachers would say to me, well, I never hear you yell. And I said, no, I know because I'm just, I'm not, I'm soft spoken, but I would use tricks.

You know, to get the kids involved and a lot of times it would be books, I would use I'm pull a book off the shelf and it would be, that would be our way to calm down and to eventually get the kids back on track if something would happen, that had a. a bad morning to start off with. Um, things like that.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that to me is one of the, in my course that you mentioned there's, I call it practicing classroom unmanagement and part of my classroom management Is the structure of the day. And one of the things that I do is like you said, if I've done a movement activity and the kids are a little bonkers, then the next activity is going to be, okay, we're going to sit down.

We're going to read our storybook. We're going to be focused and listening and they've gotten their sillies out. And then they're kind of ready to listen and focus, but also it's very calming to them. So I think that. You, you don't have to yell, you don't have to be so, you know, in their faces, if you design your day in exactly the right way.

So, yeah,

I agree with that 100%, you know, even even teaching piano when I'm teaching piano I've had some learners, you know that. I have to find a roundabout way to learn. So again, I will incorporate a story in my piano. I'll incorporate a story right away, before we turn the lesson. And then, you know, I had a dad say to me the one time, he said, you're pretty tricky, aren't you?

He said, you knew, you knew he had a bad day, my son had a bad day, but you found a way to bring that out, you know, that The music out of him a little bit and I said, I was in the other room listening to you and I thought that was such a nice compliment. That's a very nice compliment. That was so nice. And you know, one of the things I find that's different from having my own classroom and going into.

Uh, you know, a situation like for a day with other students, that's really, that can be really challenging. Some, some teachers have said to me, I can't believe you came in, you know, cold like you're doing and you have 50, like 50 some students, you know, in front of you. Like I went into one school and she said, can we put all the first grades together?

So that was 200 students. Yeah. And I thought, Okay, here we go. But they were great. You know, they I, but again, like I love the, when you said about the scheduling, I have, you know, taking a book I will do, uh, you know, as, as using my classroom techniques, I will take, I will introduce myself, but I will get the kids almost involved right away.

Yep. We'll be through, uh, something like, Hey, put your hands on your head, you know, or put your hands on your lap, you know, just a little chant to get them going. And then, or, uh, you know, we had, I had one teacher, our movement teacher in work, she'd be like on the drum all the time, you know, and, and she would get us going like, cause we're, how many unruly teachers coming back from lunch and she, you know, and she would straight away, she wouldn't talk, she would just get on the drum.

And that's kind of what I do too. Just I, I introduced myself a little bit and then I get right into it and the, and that really works. So it's like a little bit of structure. Then we get into the story. The kids are interactive with me in the story. We do a movement activity with the story. Um, and then we do at the end, you know, we'll, we'll do a little bit of question and answer.

And then the kids will, you know, they'll, they'll be done, but, uh, it, it works out really great. And that's. Like for a 45 minute period, you know, and, and, you know, I'm talking, I'm usually going into K one, two

for that,

right. I'll go into third grade occasionally, and I've gone into older, but right now, my two, the books that I have out now are kind of geared for K through two.

Right. Yeah. You know, I, like I said, I've worked with all ages, but yeah. So like you said, structure, that's the key structure,

structure. And like you said, you have to be able to read the room. You have to know, okay. If these kids have come in and they're you can tell right away if they're off, you know, and you're like, okay, what I had planned is not going to work.

Let's try something else, you know, and I think good teachers. And maybe not even good teachers experienced teachers who have been successful in the classroom can read the room like lickety split. And they, you know, you, you know what you have to do to kind of rein them in and get them doing what you want to do.

So I wanted to ask if you would just give people an overview of um, Your resources as far as what you have on what website Teresa does have a featured lesson plan on my website as well. So tell us a little bit about the resources and and where they can find you. I know we talked to in the beginning during your bio about where they could find you, but like, what are the resources available?

So they know where to go.

Yeah, so my website, it's just my name www. teresakachi. org that has, you know, the books on there. It also has resources that are linked with it. I'd like to offer, you know, I don't, if we can send some, you know, offer the teachers some free activity sheets. I have a I have a sheet that is like, how can we help others?

And it's a picture of Harry and his sweater has all the different ways we can help. I have it, that, and I have a chart for kids to fill in. Um, like each day they do something to help someone else. And at the end, it says you deserve a little reward. So I've done that and I can send that to you if you'd like.

That would be awesome. Absolutely. That type of thing. And then, like I said, I have the, I have written. For both books I've written for teaching with work and I, uh, for music constructed and teachers just have to go on there and look up, they can put my name in and they can just find the resources right there under my name.

And they can they can download them and use them in the classroom. So there's several so I'd be willing to I want to, I want to make sure that I send you some of those activity sheets that I just made up some of them I because there's some of the ones I do send to the teachers when I go in for author visits.

Awesome. Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure my listeners will be very excited about that. Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you really would like to share?

Um, the only thing I would, well, I know with teachers, uh, you know, especially music teachers, I, I'm, I found a really good book called The Music and Literacy Connection.

And I found it several years ago. Dee Hanson is her name and Elaine Bernstof and Gail Stuber. It's, it's an excellent book. Um, it just shows, I wanted to end one of the things that I never try to give up on a student. I never tried to say, That student teacher said, Oh, she can't sing or, you know, I've had teachers say that to me.

Oh, she's not going to participate. And it happened to me in preschool the one time and I felt so bad and she was writing up a report. And she, when she was observing me as I came in to teach music. And she said, I'm just going to put her down that she didn't, she didn't participate. I said, please don't. No, she, she didn't talk.

She would not, she was not, she was nonverbal. She did every activity with us. So, but, and I felt so bad because some of the kids sitting beside her. would say, Oh, just skip over her because she's not going to say it anyway. Oh my gosh. You know, I, I, I said, you show me what your actions, you know, and she would show me a different, she wouldn't say what it was, but she would show me.

So I, I always feel like I, I love teaching, and I always have, and it makes me so sentimental to say that I just like working with children. I, I really do. I, I never want to give up on a child, and I never want to say they can't learn. Even like with piano too, I've had adults say to me, I'm tone deaf. I can't play the piano.

I said, yes, you can. Yes, you can. Everybody can learn. It might take a different way for you to learn, but you can learn. So I, I just thought that was so, um, I thought that was so rewarding, you know, just to, as a teacher, that's my reward that I feel like I'm in it. I'm in there, you know, and no matter how old I get, I just want to keep working with the kids and, and just see what I can do, see how I can make them learn in their own way, you know, and.

And help, I should say make, but help them learn in their own way. That's my goal. I love it.

That's, that's amazing. And, and so heartbreaking that that one little person was, was, Oh, we'll just skip over her. Oh, I'll do

it.

All right. I

mean, really? I felt like, you know, that teacher was. conveying to the other students in the class, Oh, she's nonverbal.

She's not going to learn. And it wasn't, it wasn't that at

all. Yeah. We've got, um, one of my schools has, I think there are four nonverbal little ones and all of them participate in their own way. And, you know, I think that is what you have to know is that just because a child can't, Or or won't or whatever the reasoning is can't speak won't speak just because they're maybe maybe they have a physical challenge, whatever.

That doesn't mean that they can't still be a part of what you're doing and and how heartbreaking for that, that little one and and to say it in front of her like that. Heartbreaking.

I know, but when I, when I heard her say that I just, my heart sang. I said, no, .

No, no. So one last thing, I want to make sure that people know how to spell your name, because I know I'll put it in the show notes, but your last name is definitely spelled differently than it sounds.

So if you would just. Spell your Teresa and Kachi for, for the listeners.

Um, it's the last name is spelled

C O C C I. Great. And your first name has an H in it. So spell that as well.

It says T H E R E S A and it's C O C C I. Perfect. Perfect.

Thank you so much. This has been just a lovely conversation and I know my listeners are going to get so much out of it.

I really appreciate

you coming. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's been so much fun. Good. You're welcome. I'm a big fan.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm a big fan of yours. If you got some great tips and tidbits that are going to help you become a happy music teacher, I would be so thankful if you'd leave me a review.

Thanks so much for your time. Well, that's all I have for you today. But before I go, let me remind you. Keep learning, keep growing, and keep being fabulous you.

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