Hello, my name is Betsy Mast and I am a certified prek-12 music teacher. I am also a certified elementary teacher for grades 1-8 and I have taught kindergarten, fourth, fifth, seventh, and eighth grades in a general classroom.  I currently teach preschool through eighth grade general music in Ohio. I believe that teaching is my vocation and I am passionate about guiding students to discover new things about themselves and their world.
   My teaching philosophy is based off of a quote from Benjamin Franklin, " Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, Involve me and I learn."  I develop lessons using a combination of Orff and Kodaly pedagogies that involve students in creating, reading, and writing music. 
   The mind develops musical literacy in the same way it develops literacy in a mother tongue or second language.  By listening, speaking and singing, we develop an aural vocabulary of sounds that we can combine to create melodies and harmonies. This is the same process as a child learning to speak.  Once one is familiar with the sounds, we can add reading and writing notation that represents those sounds. Overall the combination of my training as an elementary teacher, which required me to teach reading and writing, and my music training, make it easier for me to involve students in music making using correlations to skills they are already familiar with in their education.