Article from the Ozaukee Press
The power of music
Today's Date: October 22, 2007
When music taught her “nonverbal”
son to speak, Trish Zamora became
an advocate for music immersion
in Australia. Now she’s back in her
native Ozaukee County, still
passionate about music for children.
By CAROL POMEDAY
Ozaukee Press staff
Posted 10-17-07
Singing to a baby is almost as important as reading to an infant to
help the child develop language skills, according
to music teacher Trish Zamora.
Zamora, the daughter of Bud and
Bernie Miser of Port Washington and a Port Washington High School
graduate,
spent the past 30 years in Brisbane, Australia, where
early childhood education includes music immersion from birth. Photo by Sam Arent
She moved to
Mequon three years ago to be closer to her family and
teaches music and piano lessons at her home and Little
Friends Day Care
Center in Grafton.
Zamora has a degree in instrumental music
education from the University of Wisconsin in Madison and taught ... instrumental music in Australia.
It wasn’t until her son
Cory, who has Down syndrome and is visually impaired, was born, that
she discovered the impact music has on language.
When Cory was
2-1/2, a speech therapist told Zamora her son, who could only say
“dada,” would be nonverbal. The boy knew 150 signs,
but because of his
limited vision, he was frustrated, his mother said.
“He could
say dada and knew who dada was and I thought, ‘I’m not buying this,’”
Zamora said. “I changed speech therapists
and put him on a nutrition
program, which he is still on.”
She also decided to explore the
Kodaly music method for Cory. Zamora didn’t know much about the method
then, but she had found
that middle school band students who were
exposed to it learned to play instruments easier and seemed to enjoy
music more.
She contacted a teacher with the Kodaly Music Education
Institute in Brisbane.
“I told her, ‘I have a 2-1/2-year-old
special-needs child who needs to come to you for lessons,’” Zamora
said. “She said, ‘I normally don’t start until 3,
but bring him over so
I can see what I need to do for him.’ She never asked what his needs
were. I took him to classes for two years.”
Cory experimented
with rhythm and other instruments, was exposed to a variety of music
and soon was making sounds. Within six months,
he started to talk.
Zamora said the new speech therapist and nutrition program helped, but
she believes music was the catalyst.
“The voice is the first
instrument,” she said. “Singing more than any other activity uses both
hemispheres of the brain, which control language and music.
I believe
the music helped Cory gain his language and all the other social skills
converged.”
Cory, now 15, loves music and plays the drums and
guitar at neighborhood functions. He is an outgoing, friendly, happy
young man,
which Zamora does not believe he would be without language.
She
was so impressed with how music helped her son that, at the urging of
his teacher, she was trained in the Kodaly method and began teaching 12
years ago.
The Kodaly method is used in all Brisbane schools and
early-childhood education programs, Zamora said.
“I’m as
passionate as, even more passionate than I was with conducting, and I
love conducting,” she said. “I’ve taught a lot of kids
who were
differently abled (she doesn’t use the word disabled) — Down syndrome
and the autistic spectrum. It (music) seems to calm them so they can
learn.
It seems to really help children who are sensitive to touch and
taste.”
The early-childhood program, which is called Do-Re-Mi,
follows the principle of one minute of focused activity for every year
of age,
which means students and teachers move rapidly from one
activity to another exploring rhythm, song and dance.
In the
nursery program, infants often sleep through the lessons, but parents,
including expectant parents, and caregivers are trained to be babies’
first music teachers
by singing in tune, doing finger plays, moving
with the beat while holding the child, playing echo rhythm games,
listening to music and learning basic music skills.
“I can’t
tell you the number of moms who say they can’t sing,” Zamora said. “The
quality of the voice is a gift, but anyone can learn to sing in tune
unless there is a physiological reason, like my son who’s never going
to sing in tune, although he’s found his music voice with country
music.”
Young children experiment with instruments and rhythms and learn to actively listen.
“Learning
to listen is a lost art,” Zamora said. “I may ask, ‘How many times to
you hear the cuckoo bird?’ or ‘When do you hear the flute?’
I had a
mother ask, ‘What can you teach a 2-year-old?’ They’re little sponges.
“We
master a skill before we put a name on it. We do different meters by
swaying, then marching. By age 3, we’ll take rhythm patterns they know
and put words to them. Then, we improvise with high and low notes. By
age 4, they’re reading notes. The teacher’s voice is the best
instrument
as it is easier to copy the pitch of a voice than a
conventional instrument.”
Children learn to read and write music
in the Do-Re-Mi program, but do not learn to play instruments. “By the
time they’re ready to learn an instrument,
they know how to read music
and all they have to worry about are where their fingers are on the
instrument. I found (in Australia) students
who went through the system
were less frustrated and there were fewer drop-outs,” Zamora said.
“The
program is designed to create a complete musician rather than simply a
technician. We’re training musicians and we’re training future
audiences.
We know adults who had a good experience with music in
childhood will go to concerts.”
The social aspect, Zamora said, may be most important for many children.
“We
feel every child has a right to a music education,” she said. “Someone
with a gift will always find a way because it’s a passion.”
Zamora’s daughter Bethany, now 13, sat in a pram during her brother’s lessons and no doubt benefited, her mother said.
Bethany
is a gifted musician...(who sings in the Milwaukee Children's Choir and
plays violin.) She would have found her music even
without lessons
because she would not have been happy without it, Zamora said.
Zamora does not teach her children, but she encourages them and they play music together.
Zamora went to Australia, which was seeking teachers, after graduating from UW in 1975.
When
she arrived in Brisbane, she learned the school she was assigned had
just started an instrumental program, but she would be teaching music
classes.
She developed the instrumental program and formed bands.
“It was an exciting time. The program grew and I grew,” she said.
Zamora
taught for several years in public and private schools, then became the
instrumental music education coordinator for
the Queensland Department
of Education. She also sang with the Brisbane Chorale.
She met her husband Chuck, who is from the West Coast, the first day she arrived in Brisbane.
“He had been there a year, went home for Christmas and came back,” Zamora said.
They were married in Port Washington in 1976, then returned to Australia. They moved to Ozaukee County to be near her family.