Hopefully you have had a spring break sometime over the past few weeks and are now gearing up for a grand finale to another successful year of music teaching and learning!

A recent highlight for me was traveling to Anaheim, CA to participate in and speak at the 2nd ISME North American Regional Seminar and Summit (March 25-26). This event was held in conjunction with the 2010 Biennial Music Educators National Conference (MENC). Other Canadians attending included CMEA immediate Past President Mary Dinn; Ki Adams and Andrea Rose from MUN; Kathy Saul-Fowler and Mark Reid, BCMEA President and 1st Vice-President respectively; Roger Mantie, newly minted PhD from U of T and now teaching at Boston University; Jeremy Hepner, President of the Canadian Association for Jazz Education and currently working on his PhD at Teachers College Columbia University in NYC; Eila Peterson, Board Member of the Alberta Kodaly Association; Lorna Wanzel, Vice President of Canadian Federation of Music Teachers Association (CFMTA); Liz Gould from U of T; Nancy Vogan from Mount Allison University; Mary Kennedy from UVic; and Larry O’Farrell from Queen’s University and UNESCO Chair for Arts and Learning. My sincere apologies for any other Canadians missed (I know there were some Canadian grad students there but didn’t get everyone’s name!).

The event focused on exploring ways music educators in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico might collaborate on issues of common interest and concern in planning for future North American Summits. These two days were filled with some excellent presentations, productive meetings, and engaging discussions. Following each presentation, facilitators collected comments from those attending and recorded key points made during the proceedings. These data were focused on answering three key questions and will be used to plan for the future.

As CMEA President, I had the pleasure of presenting a keynote, Leadership in Canadian Music Education: Past, Present and Future, at the Friday afternoon ISME Leadership Plenary Session. I’ll share aspects of what I presented in my President’s Message in the next issue of the CME. For this session entitled Music Education as a North American Experience: Developing Communication and Collaboration, leaders from all three countries highlighted key issues in music education in respective our countries and proposed some ways we might collaborate in the future. Scott Schuler, MENC President-Elect and Luis Alfonso Estrada from Mexico were the other leaders who spoke. All in all, it was a very productive event that holds the potential to lead to some very exciting possibilities. Thanks to the excellent work done by the organizing committee (ably co-chaired by Mary Dinn and Patrick Schmidt from the Rider University in the U.S.), the Summit was very successful. Congratulations and merci beaucoup to our Mary!!

On a different note, I am pleased to announce that at our last Elected Board meeting following protocols specified in our Policy Manual the elected Board appointed Andrew Mercer to fill the vacancy on our CMEA/ACME Elected Board left by Kevin Merkley’s resignation last December. We welcome Andrew as our newest Member-at-Large. As many of you will know from Andrew’s regular music technology columns in CME, he works for the Centre for Distance Learning and Innovations teaching music online to students throughout Newfoundland and Labrador. We were extremely fortunate to find someone of Andrew’s expertise to fill the rather large shoes left by Kevin!

The next meeting of the Full Board (i.e. Elected Board plus provincial and music industry reps) will take place on May 2 at 9 pm NL time. If you have any issues you wish the Board to address please contact one of the Board members or your provincial MEA President (see cmea.ca for contact information).

Take care out there everyone!

Sincerely,

Ed Wasiak, D.M.A