CONCEPT-BASED ARTS CURRICULUM DESIGN

Nyssa Brown

Nyssa Brown is an international consultant specializing in professional and curriculum development for music educators. With strength and experience working with Backwards Design and the National Core Arts Standards (where she served as a writer), Nyssa inspires educators to connect best practices in music education to current practices in the broader field of education. This approach integrates music, as a subject area, and music educators into the broader educational community of the school, strengthening the learning for all involved.

Most recently, Nyssa served as an elementary music teacher at the American School of the Hague in the Netherlands, where she was also Performing Arts Coordinator and Elementary Team Leader. She draws on her K-9 vocal/choral music teaching experience in the US and abroad while presenting at local, regional, national, and international conferences on topics that include global music, 21st Century Skills in the music classroom, technology integration, curriculum/assessment writing and professional learning.

Nyssa served as a Grade 3-5 sub-committee member during the recent development of the National Core Arts Standard. Nyssa served as Music Education Coordinator for Minnesota’s Perpich Center for Arts Education and coached teachers in over 100 school districts across the state of Minnesota. She was one of ten finalists for 2004 Minnesota Teacher of the Year and received a prestigious Milken Educator Award in 2004 from the Milken Family Foundation. Passionate about teaching in a global context, Nyssa taught at the American Embassy School in New Delhi, India and in both Namibia and South Africa, through a fellowship offered by the Eastman School of Music’s Umculo: The Kimberley Project.

Nyssa is a faculty member of the Kodály Levels Training Courses at Indiana University and the University of St. Thomas. She also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of St. Thomas and Augsburg College. Nyssa studied in Hungary at the Kodály Institute’s summer seminar in 2002. She released her first CD in October, 2000, “Packwood or Paradise” and is currently recording a CD of lullabies. Nyssa graduated from the Hartt School of Music and Hartford College for Women in 1998 with a Bachelor of Music in Education and a Bachelor of Arts in Women’s Studies. She completed her Master of Arts in Music Education at the University of St. Thomas, 2008. She earned her Mastery Certificate in Kodály studies from Kodály Brigham Young University in 2001, and she completed Levels 1 and 2 of Orff training at University of St. Thomas.