Honors Student Kayla Scimeca Completes Level I Orff Schulwerk Certification
By Melanie Kershaw
Honors College student Kayla Scimeca, a music major with a concentration in K-12 instrumental music education, recently completed the Level I Orff Schulwerk certification with the Hayes School of Music. Based upon the ideas and teachings of Carl Orff, the course provides a means of discovering and experiencing this contemporary approach to teaching music.
Scimeca, who entered the Honors College in Fall 2023 and plans to graduate Spring 2027, participated in the two-week program in June 2026 including more than 60 contact hours of instruction in a child-centered approach to music education.
For Scimeca, the certification provided an opportunity to explore music education as an interdisciplinary practice rooted in creativity, collaboration, and active learning. This experience reflects the Honors College’s mission of holistic development, academic excellence, and engagement across disciplinary boundaries. She explained,
I think that gets to the core of what Orff stands for: experiencing art and play, and getting kids excited to be creative.
The program is led by an instructional team with expertise in music education, movement, and arts integration. Erin Ellington, a lecturer of music education and program organizer, helped facilitate Scimeca’s entry into the program. Maribeth Yoder-White, an adjunct professor of music education, leads instruction in pedagogy. Jennifer K. Prestridge, a specialist in arts integration and movement techniques, teaches recorder and movement.
Scimeca completed the certification alongside a tight-knit cohort of 13 educators from different school systems and professional backgrounds. This allowed her to build on her foundation in Honors College education, which seeks to empower students to collaborate across differences and build a community where everyone feels supported. Scimeca shared,
It was actually so freeing and so beautiful to do this with a small group of people because we’re all playing and we’re all dancing and singing together and nobody’s judging each other.
Rather than focusing on standardized testing, Orff Schulwerk encourages students to experience the joy of learning in a risk-free environment. It centers on “elemental music,” or music in its purest and most natural forms, such as clapping and speech. Students explore complex musical concepts through singing, moving, playing instruments, listening, and speaking. Through imitation and exploration, students gradually move toward improvisation and music literacy. Scimeca added,
Music is such a powerful tool for learning because it is such an innate human thing that we want to do.
A key part of the program is the Orff instrumentarium, a collection of pitched and unpitched instruments that can include xylophones, metallophones, drums and chimes. Some of the instruments draw inspiration from Balinese gamelan traditions, including metallic barred instruments, while others are connected to African gourd-based xylophones with wooden bars. These instruments allow students to participate in music-making while learning to appreciate different cultures, another key tenet of Honors College education.
The program also introduced Scimeca to enactive learning, a process that helps students understand abstract musical concepts through the body before moving to visual symbols and Western notation. She said,
We have to ground these really abstract audible hearing concepts in the body first.
In practice, that can mean using movement to understand rhythm, space and sound. Scimeca and her cohort explored concepts such as negative space by creating physical shapes with their bodies that complemented one another.
Recorder instruction is another major component of the Level I certification. Learning the recorder requires students to work through challenges over time, making it a tool for both musical and personal development. Scimeca spoke on the benefits of learning recorder, explaining the lessons it can teach young students.
Here’s how you deal with overcoming a challenge. Here’s how you work on something for a long period of time. Here’s how you don’t give up and here’s how you try something new.
The Orff Schulwerk principles can apply beyond the music classroom. The same practices that help children explore music can also help adults think creatively and work together more effectively in a variety of professional settings.
Scimeca plans to pursue Level II certification next summer, continuing her professional development after her Spring 2027 graduation.
The Hayes School of Music will offer Level I and Level II certification programs for students and professionals in Summer 2027. Contact Erin Ellington for scholarship opportunities and any questions.