Gunild Keetman: The Woman Behind the Schulwerk

Gunild Keetman was a German music educator who worked with Carl Orff. The Orff-Schulwerk (Orff's School) was a music school for young children. She was born in 1904 and died in 1990. In addition to teaching children at the Schulwerk, she taught various lessons on radio and television broadcasts. She was a student of Carl Orff and Dorothee Gunther, and taught at Gunther's school until it was bombed. Then she went on to her more well-known work at Orff's school.

Keetman's parents were a major influence on her love of music and education. She was expected to get a university education, and her parents fostered her interest in music. While working with Gunther, she learned modern dance and used it as a form of protest. She and other teachers from Gunther's school were left with nearly nothing after the school was destroyed in a bombing. The very ideas she had explored at a high level in Gunther's school were those that she took with her into her work with younger children at the Orff-Schulwerk.

Keetman's largest contribution to music education for children is the Music For Children volumes that she co-authored with Orff. These books, known as the "volumes" in Orff circles, have been adapted and translated into many different languages and contexts. Keetman was a strong advocate for playful learning, and she felt children learn music by playing rather than through formal pencil-paper study. This is important because music traditionally uses many theoretical, abstract concepts and can be difficult to learn, but Keetman transformed learning music into literally child's play. The whole premise of Orff teaching is teaching children to sing, say dance, and play, something that is valuable many years after Keetman begam doing it.

In addition to the volumes, Keetman wrote many other children's musical compositions for voices and instruments along with several books. While Orff is the better known name from the Orff Schulwerk, Keetman was the teacher and driving force behind many of the innovative initiatives that still inform music educators decades after they were started.

I incorporate many of Keetman's ideas into my teaching, especially the use of play in music class to facilitate student creativity. Additionally, I often have my students play repertoire that she wrote, as many of the pieces are still relevant and meaningful to students. The music she wrote is designed to have all students experience success, something that is extremely important in today's educational landscape. While I do not consider myself a strictly Orff (or Keetman) teacher, I do use many ideas from this philosophy in my teaching practice.

ClassTag Stories: Sharing Beyond Classroom Walls

I use ClassTag to manage parent communication with my before and after school ensemble families. One of the big benefits of ClassTag is that parents can get alerts via text, email, and/or in-app notification according to their preferences. In addition to announcements, ClassTag allows teachers to share Stories, a social-media-like feature where families can see what is going on in the classroom. 

My students have a concert coming up, and I decided I'd try to come up with some new ways of promoting the concert to encourage families and teachers to attend. We made a promotional video for each ensemble, and I shared it out to the staff at my school via email. Since my students' families are already using ClassTag, I sent the video out to families by creating a story and attaching the video. It was great for families to see an "inside look" at what we're doing in class, and I hope to use this feature more frequently going forward. I love the look of the stories, they are aesthetically pleasing without taking much time for me to put together. I also love that I can share out strictly to approved parents, rather than somewhere public. I am much more comfortable sharing in-process work or other details in a closed environment like ClassTag than on the open internet.

Creating Stories is a great way to communicate and connect with families! If you're already a ClassTag user, I'd encourage you to share a ClassTag story in the next few weeks. If you haven't signed up for ClassTag yet, what are you waiting for?! Sign up here for the best family communication platform there is!