Karen Petty has been teaching Elementary Music and Movement for 35+ years. She currently teaches General Music Kindergarten - 5th grade plus Chorus and Recorder Consort at Gold Rush Elementary School in Parker, Colorado. In addition, she teaches adults in various summer Orff Teacher Training programs. Education: BME University of Northern Colorado 1981; Orff Certification 1989 UNC; Masters in Education, Curriculum & Instruction – Creative Arts in Learning Lesley College 1996. Karen is currently serving as Recording Secretary of the American Orff-Schulwerk Association; formerly she served as a Region 1 Representative. She is the past president of both the Rocky Mountain and the New York City chapters of AOSA and has presented at 7 AOSA national conferences and for many schools and Orff chapters.
Leslie Timmons is Director of Orff-Schulwerk Music and Movement Teacher Education Certification Courses in the Caine College of the Arts, Utah State University. She is Professor Emerita from the Music Department where she taught the flute studio and music education. She is Orff specialist with the Cache Children's Choir. After completing degrees in Music Education and Flute Performance, she received a Fulbright grant to do post-graduate work at the Orff Institute Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. As a founding member of Logan Canyon Winds, USU's faculty woodwind quintet, she has helped commission new works that are designed to involve children in live performance. Performing with ~AirFare~ , a duo with clarinetist Nicholas Morrison, has taken them to Haiti, Guatemala, Netherlands, and the Navajo Nation in southeastern Utah. She is an Artist-in-Residence for Utah Arts Council and has served on the national boards of the American Recorder Society and the American Orff-Schulwerk Association. She was local chair for the AOSA professional conference in Salt Lake City, November 2019. Leslie has been honored with Utah Music Educators Association's "Utah Outstanding Music Educator” and “Elementary Educator of the Year” and was inducted into the UMEA Hall of Fame in 2022.
Ben Torres teaches K–5 general music at Woodlawn Elementary in the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System, where he was named teacher of the year for the 2020-2021 school year. Prior to this, he taught K–6 general music at Brentfield Elementary in Dallas, TX where he was chosen as teacher of the year and where both his choral and Orff ensembles were selected to perform at Texas MEA conventions and the national AOSA Professional Development Conferences. Ben received his bachelor’s degree in music education from West Texas A&M University in Canyon, TX and his Orff training and master’s degree from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He is a certified AOSA-approved teacher educator in movement and recorder and teaches all three levels of movement in the Orff Schulwerk teacher education courses at Trinity University in San Antonio and VanderCook College of Music in Chicago. Ben presents workshops for Orff chapters and school districts across the country.