Lutheran Institute for Music Education (LIME)

  Getting to Know You - Kate Tiefel Welcome to the LIME blog! I’m Kate Tiefel and I serve as Director of Music at Emanuel Lutheran Church in New London, WI. I have the joy of teaching PK-8 general music and serving as Worship Coordinator for our congregation. Since graduating from Michigan State University with my undergraduate degree in Music Education, I’ve taught kids of all ages, from early childhood through collegiate, in urban, suburban, and rural settings…in three different states! These diverse teaching experiences have ignited my passion for music pedagogy and curriculum design. I love connecting teachers with the quality methods and materials they need to teach music with passion and excellence. I hold my Master’s degree in Choral Conducting from Michigan State University. Through the years, I have enjoyed serving as a guest conductor at several WELS National Worship Conferences and Choralfests, but my real passion is growing young musicians! I have directed middle school...

To all those who attended the June 19, 2022 " New Paradigms for the LES/Church Musicians " pre conference event of the WELS National Education Conference–THANK YOU!  We so appreciate getting your feedback and hearing from you what Music Education help you need in your schools! Here is the list of topics that was generated by the attendees.  Feel free to comment on this list, or use the "Contact Us" form on the LIME website to let us know how we can help you and your school improve the Music education that you and your faculty are providing for all of your students. Sharing a Music specialist between schools like a grade school band program's lesson teacher currently does. Help schools expand their existing music curriculum with "out of the box" thinking.  Many times when schools say they are getting a new music curriculum, they don't go through a curriculum study because Music curricula (like Kodaly) becomes a "build your own" curriculum ...

UPDATE 6/27/22 2:12 - We're still waiting for Feedio to authorize our account.  All this means is that our blog posts aren't being blasted to your email inbox yet. Thank you for being patient with us! Meanwhile, feel free to peruse our blog articles or website. ORIGINAL POST 6/22/22 5:50 pm We here at LIME are testing an email subscription service called Feedio that should push email notifications when we publish blog articles. Before we post our latest articles, we wanted to make sure that the push notifications are working.  That's the purpose of this test article—to see if an email is generated for all our recent subscribers.  Please let us know if you got an email from us so we know that the push notifications are working.  Thanks!

Currently, I’m not an elementary school teacher, but I think about our WELS LES teachers a lot, especially since the endemic began. I wonder how they are coping and I wonder how the lives of the young students have been affected. I also wonder what changes have been made to Music Education as a result of this challenging time. Without going into full music-advocacy mode I like to state the obvious: music heals . Opera star Renee Fleming speaks frequently on the idea of making music therapy part of United States health care initiatives . Classroom music teachers have the unique opportunity to extend this therapy to their students frequently throughout the school week.  Adding more music to the school day and throughout the week sounds challenging, but it could be easier than you think. The first necessary component for the teacher is a good attitude. You might think it would be the teacher’s personal music skills, but it is not. Teachers who have limited musical ability but the rig...

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Hi! My name is Dale Witte. Many people know me throughout the WELS as a choir director and composer of psalms, hymns, liturgical songs, school theme songs, hymn-based piano music, and WELS Worship Conference symphonic concertatos  (you can read more in my CV ).  I've taught in two places in my ministry: St. Paul Lutheran School, Tomah, WI from Jan 1990-May 1993 (6th grade, 5th-8th grade music, Jr. Choir, Sr. Choir, head organist) and at Winnebago Lutheran Academy, Fond du Lac, WI from 1993-present (Choir, Music Theory, Music Technology, Beginner Guitar, World History and Sophomore Religion). I have been blessed to take my WLA Traveling Choir to New York City on numerous occasions to sing at Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center , but for me, these performances are not as important having my choir lead Sunday worship in the association churches that support WLA.  I have been trained as a church musician, both at Dr. Martin Luther College, New Ulm, MN (now Martin Lu...