The 2005 TI:ME Teacher of the Year is Amy Burns. She is a graduate of Ithaca College and completed her master’s work at Central Connecticut State University in 2005. Her teaching career has been in New Jersey and at the Far Hills Country Day School since 1997. She teaches general music to Pre-Kindergarten to Grade Five. She is the founder and director of the school orchestra, the FHCDS Philharmonic and the Far Hills Conservatory, where she supervises private lessons. In addition to being certified Level 1 & 2 by TI:ME she is also recognized with an Orff-Schulwerk Level 1.

A frequent contributor to “The TI:MEs”, the newsletter of the Technology Institute for Music Educators, Amy has been active in the SummerTI:ME classroom working with TI:ME classes at Temple University. She has presented at the NJAIS, MENC, PMEA, NJMEA, TMEA and MMEA Conferences. Recently she authored an article for Music Education Technology (MET) magazine and contributed her thoughts to the IMHO section of ti-me.org. Her most distinguishing and outstanding feature is how she creatively weaves everything together into the instruction of students in the classroom. She learns from her own curiosity and experimentation to improve on the successes. She received the highly competitive Faculty Technology Award in recognition of her leadership, creative application and classroom integration of technology. The school’s computer experts and beginners alike seek her technical prowess and enthusiastic support. Each day more than 100 students between the ages of three and nine learn to sing, read music and play. Using technology or traditional instruments, she makes a difference in the school’s musical environment. A team player, she is working every day to improve music education for her students and encouraging and mentoring her colleagues. Amy Burns is a champion for Music Technology, a dedicated music educator and the 2005 TI:ME Teacher of the Year. An update to her biography is available as a PDF file here.

A Note from Amy Burns on how the TI:ME Teacher of the Year 2005 has enhanced her professional life:

I am thankful to the Technology Institute of Music Educators (TI:ME) for honoring me with the 2005 Teacher of the Year Award. This award has opened doors for me that I would have never thought possible when I graduated from Ithaca College in 1995. I have thoroughly enjoyed authoring articles, lesson plans, and presenting at various state and national conferences. One of the best experiences I had this year was meeting many other music teachers who are interested, and at the same time a little fearful, of implementing technology into their music classrooms. It was wonderful to see those teachers become aware of just how easy it is to enhance their music lessons with technology. The fact that more of these music teachers are attending TI:ME conferences, reading TI:ME articles, or just visiting TI:ME’s website, signifies that technology will be a constant tool in the music classroom. I am thrilled that TI:ME has given me the opportunity to contribute to this and assist music teachers with that ever-so-cautious leap into the world of music technology. I am excited to see what this future holds for my own elementary students at Far Hills Country Day School and what it holds for TI:ME.

Photos of Amy Burns receiving the Teacher of the Year award from TI:ME Executive Director, John Dunphy