Excellent advice! I just accepted a position to teach Elementary Music in Shanghai, China. I can’t afford to attend a local Orff Workshop before I go but I will definitely heed your advice. I used Orfff many years ago when I taught Elementary Public School music. I am visiting a retired Orff teacher near me in Oklahoma next week. I’m so excited to learn from her “notebook” of ideas! Keep paying it backward. You are appreciated.

Our local Orff Chapter (WMOC) has offered a free workshop to anyone who has not attended one before. We also have a chapter share that is free and open to anyone. All music teachers in our district are urged to go to at least one workshop a year. It’s hard for those with young children to attend them all, so we set the goal at one. Usually teachers will be so excited, they come to another one.
Our district also has monthly department meetings. If your district does something like this, bring someone in to do a workshop instead of a normal meeting. It can be someone from your local Orff chapter and doesn’t have to be an expensive clinician.

Another option–If you are an AOSA member, go through the video archives and find a workshop that is appealing to you. Invite your peers to come to a pizza dinner and share the video. You can pause the video and discuss along the way as well as try things out for yourselves.

You can start even smaller. Present a book to your peers, using simple melodies, rhythmic ostinati, movement. Make it something they can use right away in their classroom. Or take one of the lessons by Roger Sams from Purposeful Pathways that he has shared on this site. A lot of music educators have heard about Orff, but don’t really know that it is a process, not a curriculum. If they get exposed and try it in their classrooms–if their students get exposed and have fun with it, they’ll be hooked.

Everyone has AT LEAST 2 bass XP’s, 3 alto XP’s, 3 soprano XP’s, 1 each bass, alto and soprano metalo[hone, 3 soprano and 3 alto glocks. For untuned percussion, 4 tubanos, and a wide variety of untuned percussion, including 15 frame drums. Most schools have more than this list.