Welcome to our Music Ed Community!

Greetings, Music Educators!

On behalf of our writers and the entire Heritage Music Press team, we are so excited to welcome you to our new digital home! We’ve been so looking forward to inviting you for a visit over the past couple of months, and now the long-awaited moment to offer you our hospitality is finally here. So, just like any good housewarming party, we encourage you to make yourself at home while we give you a tour of all that our blog has to offer.

Our wonderful contributors are planning to cover a wide range of topics from programming concerts, encouraging creativity in song writing, resource reviews to music education advocacy, tips and trick for the classroom, and much more! We’re collecting articles, videos, sample pages, and recordings from writers, composers, and fellow educators who are experts in their fields!

As editors, we’re looking forward to sharing our thoughts with you—from both the teaching and publishing perspectives. Footnotes from Mary Lynn will be a regular column with quick choral tidbits that you can take back to your choir room. In a similar vein, Jeanette’s Sol, Mi, La, and Ti-Ti Ta will incorporate classroom experiences and new music education ideas from her vantage point as an editor and substitute teacher. And ours aren’t the only familiar faces you’ll see. Mari Schay, Ruth Elaine Schram, and many other writers that you already know and love have planned spectacular articles that will offer plenty of food for thought. Combined with a few newcomers who you’ll want to get to know immediately, their contributions will make you want to visit us again and again.

And most of all, we hope that you will become a part of our community. Come on in and grab a cup of coffee (or tea if you prefer), relax, and talk shop with your fellow teachers and choir directors. Read ideas from your colleagues, try some of their methods in your classroom or choir room, and come back to tell us what you think. Comment on the things that you love, suggest alternatives, and be a part of the conversation.

We look forward to getting to know you and learning from each other’s experiences!

Mary Lynn Lightfoot and Jeanette Morgan

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Mary Lynn Lightfoot is the Choral Editor for Heritage Music Press, the educational music division of The Lorenz Corporation in Dayton, Ohio.

In addition to her editorial responsibilities, Mary Lynn has effectively established herself with an active composing career and currently has over 230 published choral compositions, arrangements, and musicals. She has received several awards for her compositions and for conducting.

Mary Lynn received her BME degree from Truman State University (formerly Northeast Missouri State University), Kirksville, where she graduated magna cum laude and was the recipient of the Sigma Alpha Iota Scholarship Award. She taught for a total of eight years in both public and private schools in Missouri and Iowa; has served in varying capacities for both a retail music dealer and a music publisher; served for two years as an Assistant Director for the Mid-America Youth Chorale's Concert Tour of Europe; and for six years served as the Director of Youth Choirs and Assistant Chancel Choir Director at Blue Ridge Presbyterian Church, Raytown, Missouri.

Jeanette attended Ithaca College, majoring in Music Education with voice as her primary instrument. While at Ithaca, she performed with the Women's Chorale under the direction of Janet Galván and was a founding member of the college's first women's a cappella group. She completed her Master of Education degree from Wayne State University while teaching elementary music in L'Anse Creuse Public Schools. 

In her more than eight years of teaching elementary music education, Jeanette was the writer and recipient of several educational grants, director of after school music clubs, and one of the directors in a district-wide choir. She has also taught Elementary Music Education: Methods and Assessments as an adjunct professor at Rochester Community College in Rochester Hills, Michigan. In 2008, Jeanette became editor of Activate!, a magazine for music educators, and in 2009, she accepted the position of Classroom Resources Editor for Heritage Music Press.