9th Annual Teach M.E. Conference

Deborah Confredo (formerly Sheldon) is the President of the National Association for Music Education and Professor Music Education and Director of Graduate Programs for Music Education at the Boyer College of Music and Dance. Confredo’s specialties include instrumental rehearsal techniques and teaching methods, assessment, research, music psychology, cognitive-behavioral techniques, conducting, wind band literature, and systematic observation. Confredo has taught elementary and secondary instrumental music in Pennsylvania and New York. Her numerous articles in music education, pedagogy, and research are published in journals such as the Journal for Research in Music Education, Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education (CRME), Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, Journal for Music Teacher Education, Journal of Music Therapy, Music Educators Journal, Journal of Band Research, The Instrumentalist, and Contributions to Music Education, as well as in several state music education journals. A past editor of the Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, Confredo has also served multiple terms as an editorial board member for that journal as well as the Journal of Research in Music Education, as is currently an editorial board member for Education.

She has co-authored the texts The Complete Woodwind Instructor: A Guidebook for the Music Educatorand Lessons in Performance (FJH), and is editor of Superior Bands in Sixteen Weeks, and Chorales and Rhythmic Etudes for Superior Bands. She is an instrumental editor, arranger, author, and consultant for the FJH Music Company and lead author for the FJH publication Measures of Success, a band method for beginning and intermediate instrumentalists. She is founder of the Temple Night Owls Campus/Community Band. Confredo is in demand as clinician, adjudicator, guest conductor, and lecturer. Tau Beta Sigma and the Illinois Music Educators Association have honored her for her distinguished service to music and music education. Mansfield University has recognized her as a distinguished alumnus. At home in the Philadelphia/South Jersey area, Confredo plays saxophones and keyboards in the four-member jazz fusion band, West River Drive.

Dr. Scott Burstein is the Director of Expansion & Advocacy for the non-profit Music Will.  He previously taught 12 years of public high school in Los Angeles, with subjects ranging from Marching Band to AP Music Theory.  Scott studied music at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the Eastman School of Music, and received his DMA in Music Education at the University of Southern California.  While primarily a guitarist, he has performed on a variety of instruments in the fields of classical music and jazz.

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Grammy Award nominated music educator, Dr. Alice Hammel, was the 2023 National Association for Music Education (NAfME) Lowell Mason Fellow, Virginia Music Educator Association Outstanding Educator (2018), and is the current President of the Virginia Music Educators Association. She is a widely known music educator, author, and clinician whose experience in music is extraordinarily diverse. She is a member of the faculty of James Madison University, and has many years of experience teaching instrumental and choral music in public and private schools. Dr. Hammel has put these varied experiences to great use while compiling a large body of scholarly work. She is a co-author for four texts: Teaching Music to Students with Differences and Disabilities: A Label-free Approach, Teaching Music to Students with Autism, Winding It Back: Teaching to Individual Differences in Music Classroom and Ensemble Settings, and Teaching Music to Students with Differences and Disabilities: A Practical Resource. Dr. Hammel is Past-President of the Council for Exceptional Children – Division for Visual and Performing Arts Education and was recently awarded their Past President Award for Excellence. She is a proponent of Music Will and the Modern Band movement.