Felicity O'Halloran (Australia) My Musical Futures Story

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Felicity teaches at Hamlyn Heights PS, Geelong, Victoria, Australia.

Musical Futures Australia runs a comprehensive schedule of teacher professional development workshops across the country. 

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My Musical Futures story began in 2015 as part of the Victorian Education Departments, Music in Schools Initiative. The day I began the Just Play program in my classroom a Year 5 boy called Jarrod, who suffered from serious anxiety and who hadn’t been at school for weeks, just happened to be present. I handed Jarrod and everyone else a guitar and showed him, along with the rest of the class, how play easy C and easy G.  After some time of allowing my students to have a go, we set personal goals for the remainder of the session by either playing one chord or both and completed the activity by performing with the “I’ve Gotta Feeling” play-a-long.

It was a bit of an extraordinary moment; every single kid including Jarrod was completely engaged and focused on what they were doing. Everyone was able to feel successful and achieve their goal and every week there after Jarrod came to school on the day we had music. This response alone was enough for me to completely embed and immerse Musical Future into our music program and we have never looked back.

More recently I found myself included in a group music educators lucky enough to be invited to be part of a Musical Futures Teacher Tour to the USA.  I found myself amongst a dedicated group of talented and passionate music teachers from around Australia, all accomplished musicians in their own right who clearly love what they do. Their energy was fantastic and infectious; they flew the Aussie flag for all of us with such certainty that the Americans we met along the way, well anyone actually, couldn’t help but be caught up in the excitement and want to come along for the ride.  

As a flautist who dabbles in a few different instruments or at the very least will give anything a go, I felt slightly fraudulent for being there. Regardless it was a great time, I met some really wonderful people, experienced some fantastic things, learnt a lot and it was a privilege to be part of it.

​I am very grateful to the Musical Futures International team Ken Owen, Ian Harvey and Anna Gower for providing me with the opportunity and I can’t thank them enough.