Chelcey Daniels started piano lessons when she was 5 years old.
As she grew older, the list of instruments she played grew longer: bass guitar, guitar, ukulele.
Daniels’ natural musical talent and her experiences at U-M helped her discover her dream career of teaching music to children. She is set to graduate this spring with a Bachelor of Arts degree in elementary education with an endorsement in integrated science.
Daniels, who is from Southfield, Michigan, entered the university knowing she wanted to become a teacher. Over the next four years, she juggled a rigorous course load, a student teaching placement at an Ann Arbor middle school and volunteer work.
About a year ago, one of Daniels’ field instructors in the School of Education, lecturer Rachel Rennie Klingelhofer, learned about her music background and suggested she teach piano lessons at the Dearborn School of Music. Klingelhofer works for the music school, and her children attend classes there.
Daniels decided to give it a whirl.
“I definitely was surprised by how much I liked it. I hadn’t thought about doing piano instruction before,” she said.
Today, Daniels is a popular instructor with about 30 young music students. She is known for injecting innovation and fun into her lessons.
For instance, she devised a unique hopscotch game to help students grasp the concept of quarter and eighth notes. Using chalk, she draws horizontal lines on the ground that end up being the borders between the rows of hopscotch boxes. Those lines represent the beat.
She and her student will then walk, hop or skip on the beat a few times before they add the hopscotch boxes. The single boxes become quarter notes, and the double boxes become pairs of eighth notes.
“It’s a way of making it more physical and easier to visualize and experience,” Daniels said.
In addition, she painted interactive murals in two practice rooms at the Dearborn School of Music that support student learning of music theory and notation.
Daniels said she loves working with children because they think in such creative and imaginative ways. She plans to continue teaching at the music school after graduation and may even open her own independent school one day.
“Having a degree in education makes me a much better music instructor because I have a background in music, but now I also know how to teach,” she said.
Daniels’ other interests include singing and drawing. She has illustrated a children’s book for one of her friends and said she would enjoy doing more of that work in the future.
Her most immediate goal? Learn how to play the violin.
