You are a musician, you play an instrument and-or you already have some musical training and an interest in pedagogy: you can consider taking the course leading to the Pedagogical Diploma in Willems^® Music Education

This course takes place over 3 years, each year comprising:

• seven weekends;
• an intensive course;
• individual mentoring as neede

Admission requirements:

These courses are accessible with entrance examination.
Tests and advisement take place at the end of the first year.

Musical and pedagogical content of the two training-courses open to all

Musicality

• participation in all aspects of music (immersion, improvisation, memory) involving the body, the voice, and sensitivity toward;
• thorough auditory development (attributes of sound, directionality, intervals, 3- and 4 note chords, clusters, and intratonal space);
• rhythmic and metric sense (all symmetrical and asymmetrical meters), polyrhythm and polymeter, physical movement and rhythmic improvisation, and harmonic rhythm;
• vocal development; singing, acquisition of a song repertoire; melodic sense ready for modality, free modal and tonal improvisation, ornamentation, absolute hearing in the 24 keys, transposition, chromaticism and modulation, written melodic invention, choral conducting;
• practical vocal and instrumental harmony (piano or guitar) in 2-, 3- or 4 voices, harmonization within a given scale, songs and melodies, harmonic cadences, harmonic improvisation and written inventions;
• solfège and progessive rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic dictation;
• musical listening and reading orchestral scores according to the evolution of musical language.

General and musical pedagogy

Developmental psychology, various twentieth-century teaching methods, Willems practice teaching (in person and on video), introduction to music pedagogical sequence (three levels)up to living solfège and beginning instrumental study, mastery—whether practical or basic—of the 14 pedagogical themes in correlation with this material.

Mentoring, tests, examinations . . . ?

This is and will always be a delicate question. How reasonable is it to mentor, to verify, to test adult participants who have willingly and for often very diverse reasons come searching for an opportunity, an enriching experience . . . and not an ordeal to endure(!)

Such training cannot be scholarly. The degree of assimilation must be in proportion to each one’s motivation, receptivity, and willingness.

Therefore, different kinds of examinations (oral or written, collective or individual, written work done at home . . .) are assigned as options during the educational process.

The culminating certificate and diploma are optional.