announcements

Check here for the latest announcements and news.

Congratulations to all of the participants who completed Orff Levels I and III this summer!  We are very grateful to our clinicians -- Beth Ann Hepburn, Michelle Fella Przybylowski, and Paul Hallsted for sharing their love of Orff with us.  This is the first group of Certified Level III's from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa!  Our new Orff Level III's are

Katherine Alarcio, Janice Boychuck, Luella Daugherty, Lauren Fagaragan, Cathlyn Momohara-Ho, Daniel Ho, Minhee Kim, and Melissa Ryan.

The HOSA board and members would like to express appreciation to Dr. Loong for writing and applying for a state foundation grant that paid for various HOSA workshops this year and allowed us to take Orff Levels at no cost.  This took a tremendous amount of time and effort, in addition to the organization and planning to host the instructors in Hawaii.

Without her dedication and commitment, it would make it much more difficult to become a certified teacher  since many of us do not have the resources to attend levels on the mainland.  Even covering the regular cost of tuition was huge since many of us are either students or young teachers starting families.

Thank you Dr. Loong!

On behalf of the HOSA board, we would like to extend a big congratulations to Dr. Loong for being selected as a featured presenter at this year's AOSA conference.  Dr. Loong will be the first person from Malaysia (and Hawaii) chosen for this special honor.  Though Dr. Loon is a well-respected presenter on her own merits, her selection shows AOSA's ongoing commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and access.  We appreciate Dr. Loong for giving the Malaysian community and the state of Hawaii visibility at this year's national conference.

If you are interested in attending the conference, registration opened a few days ago.  A few of us will be going to support Dr. Loong and to take advantage of this wonderful professional development opportunity.  For those of you who attended Orff Levels this summer, Paul Hallsted is one of the local conference chairs as the conference is in his home state of New Mexico (Albuquerque).  This is a great chance to meet up with old and new Orff friends.

We hope you consider attending, and once again, we would like to extend a warm mahalo to Dr. Loong for all of her hard work and dedication to furthering the progress of music education in Hawaii.