The clinicians will guide attendees through a blueprint for setting up beginning string students for success using text, photograph, and musical examples from the GIA publication, "Habits of a Successful Young String Musician."
Sarah Ball
- Biographical Information
Sarah Ball has been teaching orchestra for twenty seven years. The NGMS orchestra program has 575 students enrolled in grades 6-8. The 8th grade orchestra was selected to perform at GMEA in January (2012 and 2024). In December 2013, the NGMS Honor Orchestra was one of three middle school orchestras selected internationally to perform in Chicago, Illinois at the Midwest International Band and Orchestra Clinic.
Mrs. Ball was named the NGMS Teacher of the Year for 2011-12 and subsequently middle school Teacher of the Year for Gwinnett County. In 2018, Mrs. Ball was chosen as the GA ASTA String Educator of the year and was awarded with the Elizabeth A. H. Green award by the American String Teacher’s Association in March of 2023. She has served as state treasurer and president for GA-ASTA, has served on the national board as member at large, and is currently the K-12 orchestra curriculum committee chair. Mrs. Ball was the GMEA Orchestra Division Chair, and has also served as Vice President for All-State events. She has held school leadership roles as curriculum and department chair at both Lanier MS and NGMS. Mrs. Ball has presented professional development sessions at the school, county, state and national level including the national ASTA conference and The Ohio State University String Teacher’s Workshop. She co-authored a chapter in “Rehearsing the School Orchestra” and Volume 4 of Teaching Music Through Performance in Orchestra. She is active as a clinician, adjudicator, and conductor throughout the country.
Margaret Selby is the orchestra director and 2020-21 Teacher of the Year at Laing Middle School in Charleston, SC where she grew the program from 42 to over 200 students in five years.
Mrs. Selby was the 2022 Featured Clinician for the Orchestra Division of the Texas Music Educators Association (TMEA), is a coauthor of the Habits of a Successful Young String Musician, a beginner method book (GIA), and is a contributing author of Rehearsing the Middle School Orchestra, published by Meredith Music and distributed by GIA.
She has been a guest conductor for the Interlochen Arts Camp, All-State Orchestras in Florida and West Virginia, and multiple regional orchestras in Texas and across the Southeast. Ms. Selby has presented sessions for the 2022 Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic, multiple national ASTA conferences, the Texas Orchestra Directors Association, and state music educator conferences in Ohio, New Mexico, Georgia, and South Carolina. She has adjudicated orchestras in Las Vegas and South Carolina, and will be a clinician at the 2024 Ohio State String Teacher Workshop. She served as the President for the SCMEA Orchestra Division and is currently the SCMEA Orchestra Division Region 4 Representative. Mrs. Selby is the 2017-18 String Educator of the Year awarded by Southern String Supply.
Mrs. Selby earned degrees in Music Education and Cello Performance from the University of South Carolina, studying under Dr. Robert Jesselson, and has performed with the South Carolina Philharmonic, the Charleston Symphony, and regularly as a freelance cellist.