GOLDA PENSOL BAKER School News and Music Instruction

Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 09: BIOGRAPHY – Staff
GOLDA PENSOL BAKER
Music Teacher
Pine Mountain School News
Music Instruction

GOLDA PENSOL Correspondence and Instruction

01 Golda Pensol on MUSIC APPRECIATION. [pensol_golda_music_ed_001]

GOLDA PENSOL BAKER School News and Music Instruction

TAGS: Golda Pensol, Golda Pensol Baker, Pine Mountain School News, music instruction, PMSS community school staff, Lynch Band, music appreciation, operettas, puppet shows, Young People’s Record Club, ballad singing, LP record collection at PMSS, integrating music with other school subjects, guest performances

CONTENTS: GOLDA PENSOL BAKER School News and Notes

Pensol_golda_sch_news_001
October 10. Fire Prevention Assembly for students. Description of the students’ fire drill.
October 6. Lynch Band performed at PMSS. “Grades four and five of Pine Mountain have been studying Music Appreciation….”
October 11. Pensol’s pupils presented the operetta Hansel and Gretel. The next musical program will be a puppet show featuring Peter and the Wolf.

pensol_golda_sch_news 002

Grades 4 and 5 are showing some real progress with their unit on Music Appreciation. Kit Rogers, who belongs to the Young People’s Record Club, brought most of his collection to our Music Room for the class to use.

The children’s opera, Hansel and Gretel, was postponed.
September 27-28. Teachers attended the Youth Guidance Institute at Hall High School.
September 30. Pupils were bused in to attend the Pine Mountain Community Fair. Several grades sang and dramatized ballads. “This same group made puppets and put on a Puppet show in connection with their Health Unit.”

pensol_golda__000
Handwritten note:

For further information on Miss Golda Pensol, see the file “Publicity Letters & Brochures, 1949-“ and the reprint of the 1950 article, “Pine Mountain Settlement School: A Study in Mountain Progress,” by Adele Brandeis.

pensol_golda_music_misc _001
N.D. Musical notations and a line drawing of a grand piano.

GALLERY

: Golda Pensol. School News. [pensol_golda_sch_news_001]

: Golda Pensol. School News. [pensol_golda_sch_news_002]

: Golda Pensol .Correspondence. [pensol_golda__000]

: Golda Pensol. Music notes. [pensol_golda_music_misc_001]

CONTENTS: GOLDA PENSOL BAKER Instructing Music Classes

01 Title page: “Music Appreciation by grades 4-5b. Golda D. Pensol, Teacher.”

02 “Practices that provide for creativeness and appreciation.” Pensol describes her responses to the students’ questions about music and the students’ reactions to various musical works. She relates taking her pupils to Harlan to the Cumberland Valley Music Store to see a display of instruments; inviting the Lynch Band to give a concert; putting up a huge chart of instruments….

03 …to refer to as records were played. The students acted and sang in the opera, Hansel and Gretel. “This was our first venture into musical dramatics and it was a wonderful success.” Next, the students gave a Peter and the Wolf puppet show at the School’s Christmas party. She describes how she incorporated music in teaching math, history, and geography, writing, painting. “Today we added fifteen new LP’s to our rapidly growing collection of records.” As the students listened to music as they worked, it soothed some, it gave renewed energy to others; some sang and other created their own songs…”but all of us united in one grand project which promotes an air of creativeness and appreciation for one of the great arts.”

04-05

The class went on hikes and listened for music in nature as the gurgle of a brook, the wind in the trees, a frog in the marshes, and a bird just outside the window. They saw rhythm and harmony in their environment as they went down to the creek and painted to the tune of nature’s symphony.

In an outline titled “Integrated,” Pensol lists the ways in which music can be integrated with other subjects under the headings for Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Language and Spelling, Geography, History, Art, [05] Safety, Physical Education, Dramatics; Under the heading for “Records,” she lists the long-playing records on hand. Under “Guest Assistants,” she lists guest performers, such as a singer from India, players of recorders, the Lynch Band concert, and Richard Chase, “who played the record, a Swiss music box and taught singing games.”