Sing, say, dance, and play! I’m music teacher Mary Kathryn Burbank. This is my twenty-fourth year teaching, my third at Jackson, and my thirteenth in South Carolina. Prior to coming here, I lived and taught for many years in West Virginia and South Texas. I recently renewed my National Board Certification and was honored as Richland School District Two’s 2018-19 Honor Roll Teacher of the Year. As a result of my passion for learning and teaching multicultural music, I co-authored an article entitled “Teacher Research: Tales from the Field,” that was centered around my folksong collection project and published in the Mountain Lake Reader and the Journal of Music Teacher Education. I am gearing up to manage Jackson’s “Distinguished Arts Programs” grant, awarded annually by the South Carolina Department of Education, in an effort to enhance and/or create art, music, dance, and theatre programs at our school.

My teaching philosophy is that all humans should learn and be able to do three things: (1) be tuneful singers, (2) move comfortably and freely to the steady beat, and (3) express sensitivity when responding to music. The Orff-Schulwerk approach I use aligns with that belief; musical concepts are introduced through activities at which children naturally excel, such as singing, chanting rhymes, playing instruments, dramatizing stories, and moving creatively. The active, exploratory “play” eventually emerges into improvisation, reading notation, and composition.

Teaching children music is a very fun and rewarding profession. However, when I am not teaching, I enjoy photography, writing, cooking, traveling, and adventuring with my percussion director husband, fifteen- and thirteen-year-old sons, and two rescue dogs.