We had an absolutely incredible week at our 2025 Summer Conference in Lansing!  Thanks to everyone that was able to attend!!!! And thank you to everyone involved with the planning and set up! It takes a village...and a village we have!

We started the week with our Board of Directors Retreat - and then added in all the District Managers - and then all the Supervisors and Coordinators! Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson attended and spoke to us, from her heart, about arts advocacy and her vision for the arts community in our state. We are all so very grateful for her insight and support; it is just so amazing to have so many people involved in supporting our organization! The positivity and collaboration is truly electrifying!

We had so many MSVMA members offer sessions covering vocal pedagogy, creativity, best practices for the classroom, and so much more! We held our annual Honors Choir Reading Sessions and Specialized Choral Hour Reading Session. We even had a TTB reading session (but only the "fun" ones). Several members of our Board of Directors and DM team offered another "MSVMA 101" session focusing on The Festival Experience.

We heard from our MSVMA Music Education Scholarship recipient, Ava Davidson, and heard about her exciting plans for her future!

Our conference headliner, Dr. Emily Williams Burch, led us through several sessions with infectious energy and gave us all a true sense of connectedness and support. She was absolutely dynamic and gave us all some great insight into so many important aspects of what we do: breaking it down from process to product, communicating value, and tossing in creativity. Benefits, methods, challenges, strategies, and impact were all explored; we're all, now, masters at the "lead, demo, apply" method.

How do we communicate the value of what we do as vocal music educators with our students, with their parents, with the community? What is the value of advocacy and what are some tools we can use?

We were all reminded, in a very real way, of our mission:

EDUCATE. EMPOWER. EXPERIENCE. THE ART OF VOCAL MUSIC.

Thank you thank you thank you, Dr. Burch!

And, of course, a real highlight of our summer conference every year is to hear from our Teacher of the Year.  Julia Holt, thank you for inspiring us ALL to be the best teachers we can be! Yes, we hold ourselves and our students to a high standard, but it's equally important to make sure that they know they are LOVED. "We have such a special opportunity to help kids recognize concepts, feelings, and world views outside their own experiences." Thank you, Julia, for staying on this path and inspiring everyone you meet.

WHAT A WEEK. So so so so excited for the future of MSVMA!