Video transcript
National Music Teacher Mentoring Program – Gorokan Public School

Jason Clenton

Music's a really important part of our students' learning because we all experience music, and especially children. So when kids come to school, it's a perfect opportunity for us to use music to engage them, to motivate them, and ultimately we can even use it to extend them in their learning here at school.

Karen Morrow

I'm Karen Morrow. I'm working at Gorokan Public School, amazing school up on the Central Coast in New South Wales, and I am currently the RFF music teacher. The program is important because it shares Richard Gill's philosophy that all children should have access to musical programs, and for me, music sets kids up for success for learning across the other KLAs. I really want classroom teachers to understand that they need no background experience in music. There are so many rich resources given through the National Music Teachers Mentoring Program and with a willingness to learn and a little bit of direction, you'll be surprised how much satisfaction it gives you in passing on a skill.

Michelle Everson

My name's Michelle Everson. I work at Gorokan Public School and I'm teaching a beautiful 1/2 composite class this year. So I think there's probably a lot of teachers out there like myself that don't have confidence with teaching music because we often think of it as a specialist subject, and you certainly need to have some specialist knowledge to teach music. I was very lucky to have Karen as my mentor. She's so enthusiastic and Karen never made me feel that I wasn't up to scratch, that I didn't know what I was doing. And even when she would jump in to help me out, that's what it felt like. It felt like I was being helped and supported. She's just been a wonderful person to work with.

Karen

Look, I love working with other teachers. It's about passing the baton on, and I feel very strongly about empowering young teachers. When it comes to music, I have more of a passion for that even because I really want as many kids in New South Wales to be able to access the basic concepts of music and to be able to explore that and to be able to grow through that.

Michelle

I just think it's so important for our students, that perhaps it's something they might not have an opportunity to do outside of school. It's fun for them, really fun for them, and I think it's quite supportive of literacy and mathematics development when you're talking about rhythm and beat and timing and so forth. So I just think it's a wonderful program and I think that anyone who has the opportunity to do it should jump right in and have a go.

Jason

I'd most definitely recommend the program to other principals. If you want to create opportunities to touch, you know, a number of classrooms and maximum number of students, it's a great way to do it through the mentoring program. And not only that, do you get to tap into that, but when the mentor leaves, you get to keep that knowledge and skills and practice within your school. So it's a golden opportunity.