Music Together Teacher Training Workshop to Be Held in Scarsdale This Winter
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Music Together®, the national early childhood music and movement program developed in Princeton, New Jersey, is offering a three-day Teacher Training Workshop at Over the Moon Music and More, LLC, in Scarsdale, New York, from Friday, February 6, through Sunday, February 8, 2015. The teacher training is open to anyone desiring an overview of music development, including parents, university faculty, students, and preschool directors or teachers. Workshop participants will learn Music Together's research-based approach to teaching music and movement to children ages birth through kindergarten.
Participants who successfully complete the training will be eligible to teach Music Together parent-child or preschool classes, either at an existing Music Together center or by applying for a license to open and operate a Music Together center of their own. The flexibility of challenging part-time work with young children and parents appeals to musicians, actors, dancers, parents, and educators. No formal academic degrees are required.
The workshop provides opportunities to assess children's rhythmic and tonal development, techniques for presenting musical material, and strategies for lesson planning. There will be live early childhood music demonstration classes on each day of the workshop, teaching children and their parents using the Music Together curriculum.
Since 1987, Kenneth K. Guilmartin, Founder/Director of Music Together LLC and coauthor of Music Together, has been a pioneer in teaching parents and caregivers how to nurture their children's musical growth. "The whole purpose of the Music Together program is to enable children, as well as the adults participating with them, to become more comfortable with musical expression, and to develop musically at their own pace," says Guilmartin. He adds, "Childhood music development is a natural process just like language development."
Recent research shows that children's innate ability to make music is strongly supported as children observe the adults with whom they have an emotional bond actively engaging in making music. This is possible regardless of the adult's own musical ability. Music making is fun and engaging for children, parents, and teachers--and, as a highly beneficial side effect--contributes to the development of language and other intelligences, including spatial and mathematical.
The Music Together approach to early childhood music is taught worldwide at more than fifty teacher trainings per year. (For more information, visit www.musictogether.com.) Licensed Music Together teachers currently teach children in parent-child and preschool classes in approximately 2000 communities in all 50 states and over 20 foreign countries. In addition, many teachers trained by Music Together apply the curriculum and philosophy in preschools and childcare centers.
The cost of the three-day workshop is $475. Graduate Credits, CMTE Credits, and CEUs are available for completion of the teacher training. For additional information about the workshop or to register, visit www.musictogether.com, or contact Lisa Chouteau at (800) 728-2692 x329, lchouteau@musictogether.com.
Live, Online Tutoring for Students of All Ages Available Now from Brainfuse.com
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The Scarsdale Public Library has launched a new online homework help program switching to brainfuse.com from tutor.com. The programs are almost identical and offer students of all ages live, one-to-one online help from certified tutors. Scarsdale Public Library cardholders can access the service for free from the library website, www.scarsdalelibrary.org by clicking on brainfuse.com.
Brainfuse went live on Wednesday, December 10. Tutor.com will remain on the library website until Thursday, December 18.
"This type of educational service has proved extremely popular with usage up 264 percent this fiscal year," said Elizabeth Bermel, library director. "Brainfuse.com offered us a flat annual fee, while tutor.com's fee was based on usage and with the significant increase in use the cost for tutor.com could be far greater than brainfuse.com"
Brainfuse.com has sections for students from kindergarten through college as well as an adult learning center and a career guidance center with live, one-on-one tutoring, a real-time writing center and 24/7 access to worksheets, video and tutorials on just about any subject. The hours remain the same, daily from 3 p.m. to midnight for the live online tutoring and resume writing service.
Brainfuse.com's services include:
• HelpNow, which provides a complete tutoring system consisting of tutoring, collaboration, and study tools for homework help, skills building, test preparation and writing assistance for a wide variety of subjects.
• The Adult Learning Center, which offers services similar to HelpNow and additionally offers test preparation (including GED and USCIS citizenship tests).
• JobNow, which provides fundamental career-enhancing skills for job seekers including interview coaching via live chat, resume and cover letter writing guidance from trained experts and a 24/7 career resource center to help users target jobs they are best suited for.
"Education is a core value in Scarsdale" Bermel said. "The response to an online tutoring program via the library website has been excellent and exceeded our expectations. Now, with brainfuse.com we can continue to provide an equal service at less cost.
"We can also continue having the library open virtually 24/7 for patrons when it comes to learning and assistance. This program allows all Scarsdale library holders to get the extra help they may need or guidance no matter the time of day or night."
Center for Innovation Wows Board with Design Thinking and Game Based Learning Initiatives
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What makes the Scarsdale educational experience so exceptional? There are many elements that comprise Scarsdale's success and the recent addition of the Scarsdale Center for Innovation (CFI) is an important ingredient. Within the CFI construct are incredible examples of our district's administrative leadership, passion and engagement of our teachers and collaboration among all the various parties required to make innovative changes within a public school district.
At the November 17 Board of Education work session, Lynne Shain, Assistant Superintendent for Instruction/Co-Director, The Center for Innovation and Jerry Crisci, Director of Technology/Co-Director, The Center for Innovation presented a progress report highlighting several CFI projects that have had impact in the classroom.
CFI was founded three years ago with the following mission statement:
In order to be better prepared for the future, Scarsdale graduates must:
• Think critically and creatively in order to solve complex, non-standard problems
• Understand their role in an interdependent world
• Use evolving technologies for research, communication, and innovation
The Center is focused on reimagining education for all students. It is empowered to develop, nurture, and provide feedback for innovative ideas relating to teaching and learning. The Center links educators throughout the community to develop, test and implement, and evaluate innovative ideas and methodologies in order to imagine a future that has yet to be invented. By focusing on large-scale educational change and partnering with members of our community, CFI intends to demonstrate how public education can be transformed to prepare students for the future.
CFI projects are being implemented in all grades and schools throughout Scarsdale.
One of the examples presented on Monday evening was the use of "game-based learning" at the Middle School. Research shows that play stimulates the tenacity and persistence required for effective learning. Games give players permission to take risks that would not be permitted in a traditional academic setting, and inspire students to create, share, mix, modify, curate, critique, and comment on content to which they might otherwise be indifferent. Game-based learning includes group work, interaction and a high degree of student engagement. This approach was contrasted against the idea of a teacher standing in front the classroom providing information. SMS Librarian Sharon Waskow and SMS Social Studies Teacher Meghan Troy led the members of the Board of Education through a lesson that was used in class this year. The BOE members were tasked with finding the meaning of a political cartoon from the Civil War. They were broken down into teams and given the rules of play. Individual players were given playing pieces for wagering on their ideas as well as limited veto powers in case of disagreement. Board members were fully engaged and the audience could easily picture how a group of 7th graders would be very excited to explore history in this fashion.
Christine Boyer a fifth grade teacher at Heathcote, presented another example of innovative teaching. She talked about the concept of Design Thinking (rudimentary definition: design-specific thought processes that designers apply during the process of designing) and applied it to her class rocketry module. Many parents who have had a child attend fifth grade in Scarsdale will remember the rocketry lesson and launch fondly as it is considered a highlight of the fiifth grade year. In the past, students were given very specific instructions about how to build the rocket and each student came to school with an identical rocket. Instead, Ms. Boyer provided students with design parameters so that the rockets would launch, but let the students use their creativity to make them. No two rockets were alike. Another change was that instead of just one launch where some rockets worked better than others, students had the opportunity to evaluate the results of the initial launch and make modifications for improved outcomes at a 
second launch. Finally, the students created animated books to document their processes. Ms. Boyer wrote "These books represent their learning, not only of rocketry, but of non-fiction narrative writing, the writing process, design thinking and Google presentations." Click here to see the student's books:
A third example of innovation was provided in a short video of Edgewood kindergarten school students learning about circuits with music and art. If you do not watch any other piece of the presentation, find three minutes to watch this inspiring video! Go to the Board of Education Video-on-Demand site and watch at 0:49:41 "A Short Maker Movie" at :49:41 minutes.
Other schools districts in the U.S. and abroad are using Scarsdale as a model for creating their own Centers for Innovation. Shain and Crisci stated that they are inundated with tour requests from other schools.
The Board of Education members and audience were impressed by the passion and creativity on display. It was evident that CTI sets Scarsdale apart as a leader in educational innovation.
Spadaro Brings Italian Home Cooking to Central Avenue
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Diners who patronize Spadaro in New Rochelle will be pleased to learn they have opened a new restaurant right here in Scarsdale. The Spadaro's know how to cook – and in New Rochelle everyone was treated like family. There were no menus and the meal was served family style. Plates and plates of delicious food emerged from the kitchen- all good – but in quantities that were difficult to manage.
The new Spadaro Ristorante has opened at 753 Central Park Avenue in the space formerly occupied by Za Za. The décor has been stripped down – leaving the bar and a large pizza oven. There's plenty of room for small and large tables and the atmosphere is lively but not too loud.
We visited on the weekend before Thanksgiving and the place was hopping. When I learned they had only 
been open for a few weeks I feared service would be slow or haphazard – but our waitress was on her toes and ready to help.
We started with wine – the restaurant offers the usual by the glass as well as special selections by the bottle. On the blackboard that night were Amarone, Brunello, Chianti, Montelpuciano and more. While we considered the extensive menu and the specials we munched on toasted tranches of Italian bread doused in olive oil with garlic. Yum.
The menu includes a tempting array of appetizers, pizzas and calzone– made in the brick oven, ten pasta choices, salads, soups and meat, fish and chicken entrees. How to choose? We shared a mozzarella caprese - with a hearty portion of fresh cheese and delectable cherry tomatoes. We also ordered the zucchini in carrozza – a special that night. It was irresistible.
For dinner I had a hearty-sized plate of Rigatoni "Norcina" with sausage and more cherry tomatoes. The sauce was delicious and at $15.95 it was enough for the four of us. For his entrée, my husband chose an item from the menu – Maree Monti, which is papperdelle with shrimp, asparagus, parmesan and smoked mozzarella – another good option. There's plenty for those who don't eat meat including Pasta Alla Nino, Bucatini (hollow spaghetti) 
with mozzarella, eggplant, capers, black olives and red peppers. Pictured here it was flavorful and abundant. One of us ate more sensibly and chose the grilled Branzino which was grilled whole and deboned.
The meal was satisfying and reasonable priced – and there were many more dishes I would have liked to try. As we were taking our last few bites a charming magician appeared at our table. David Ferst or Magic Dave as he is called, was clever and amusing, peppering his banter with references to the 60's about Soupy Sales, S&S Green Stamps and 45 records. With amazing dexterity he stumped us with his card tricks and used his skills as a mentalist to correctly guess many personal facts about the people in our party.
Between the drinks the food and the magic it was a successful night at a reasonable price. Try Spadaro in 
Scarsdale before you can't get in.
Spadaro Ristorante
753 Central Park Avenue
Scarsdale, NY 1058
(914) 723-0100
Maroon and White Celebrates Fall Athletes
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Maroon and White broke with tradition and hosted their fall dinner for hundreds of student athletes, coaches, parents and guests at the Crown Plaza in White Plains this year, rather than at Lake Isle in New Rochelle which is being remodeled. Commenting on the evening, Maroon and White President Kathy Coleman said, "We had 754 attendees at the new venue and the event went off without a hitch. We were in seven rooms as opposed to three which allowed the coaches to speak in further detail about each player. Many of the team coaches and parents have commented that they enjoyed having a room dedicated to just that sport."
Senior athletes from each of the fall teams gathered for photos –here are Scarsdale's young stars:
