Workshops for Teachers & Caregivers

Bonnie has taught music in early childhood education and teacher credential programs at San Francisco State University, Mission College in Santa Clara, and California State University, East Bay.

In addition to college courses, Bonnie offers workshops for conferences, retreats, and in-service trainings. Below you’ll find some descriptions of teacher workshops she has presented at conferences of The Children’s Music Network, Northern California Kindergarten Association, California Association for the Education of Young Children, Teaching 4 Social Justice, and at Stanford’s Bing Nursery School, California School of the Arts, First 5 San Francisco, and at the Mills College Women’s Leadership Forum.

A Workshop for Pre-school and Kindergarten Teachers and Caregivers

Songs & Music Games from Around the World

Learn active songs, quiet songs, finger plays, lullabies and singing ring games from many cultures. These are age appropriate, kid-tested materials that promote self expression, belonging, self esteem and FUN.

Ideas about the benefits of music in the child’s overall development, and the benefits that both providers and children enjoy in a music-rich program will be integrated into the presentation. Tips on maximizing children’s involvement and overcoming teachers’ blocks to singing will be included.

The format of this workshop is entirely hands-feet-and voices-on. Activities are accessible to folks with no special musical training. There will be some simple chants you can use on Monday morning. Handout of words and music will be provided for all participants.

Biases of all kinds prevent our children from developing their full potential. Music—with its amazing power to stir souls, move bodies, and stimulate intellects—offers us support, inspiration and information as we learn to recognize personal and institutional biases and work to overcome them. Come sing-along, clap-along and move-along with songs—old and new—that help young people (and us) deal with issues of fairness and equality. Some simple chants you can use on Monday morning.

A Workshop for K-3 Teachers

Singing in the anti-bias classroom

A Workshop for K-3 Teachers

Martin Luther King & the Singing Civil Rights Movement

Share songs that Martin Luther King and multitudes sang in the struggle for racial justice. Accessible to young children, civil rights songs are primary sources that open young minds to an essential movement in American history.

Leading children in singing This Little Light of Mine, If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus, We Shall Overcome, and the rich repertoire of songs from sit-ins, freedom rides, and bus boycotts, teachers help children gain an understanding of what King’s life was about, of how millions of people participated in the movement, and how ordinary people continue the to work for justice.

This workshop is an opportunity to sing these powerful songs together, to place them in their historical context, and to consider how to present them, and the stories they tell, to young children. Song sheets will be provided.