Hi Friend,

I spent the past week in Cardiff at the ESTA International Conference as a presenter and attendee and had a whale of a time!

This week, I'm emailing you with some of my personal highlights:

Nicole Melrose @StringRise on trauma informed work...

Nicole used her own experiences to help educate us, for instance, just how powerful it is to have a teacher believe in you unwaveringly! All children deserve this, yet so often, due to displaying strong negative behaviours (often due to trauma), teachers may feel like giving up on them.

Nicole said that ALL children deserve to be believed in, just as she was when she was younger.

Nicole needed an aid to be working one on one with her during her primary school years as her behaviour was hard to manage in class (due to her trauma). Having the music teacher inform her that she was not to choose flute, but to choose violin as she looked like a violin player, put her on a transformational path to freedom!

40 minutes was simply not enough for this workshop... It was fascinating and inspiring.

I'll be in touch soon with some more conference glimpses soon... Next up, a peek into Crystal Boyak's presentation on multicultural music for the young (pre-twinkle) violinist...

Warmest regards,

Laura xx