Susan Seale – Piano

Susan grew up in a musical family, sitting at the piano as an infant and starting lessons soon after. In her teens, she played saxophone with the school band and studied piano and voice at the Victoria Conservatory of Music.

Susan has decades of specialized pedagogical training to work with children including a Bachelor of Education degree, Master of Orff-Schulwerk and is recognized as a Canadian Orff Specialist with certifications in Developmental Movement Therapy, Creative Dance, Kids Yoga, Kindermusik, Dalcroze and Kodaly. She was a speaker at the National Arts in Education Symposium in Ottawa and has been seconded twice to the Ministry of Education to work on Fine Arts documents.

Susan studied at the University Mozarteum (Salzburg, Austria), University of Memphis (Tennessee), Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), San Francisco School, University of Alberta, University of Calgary, University of British Columbia, University of Victoria.

As a passionate advocate for music education Susan has been sharing her knowledge as a speaker and consultant, facilitating at conferences, creating teacher training programs for private and public schools, writing books and writing research articles for professional teaching journals.

She is the author of Musicalia for Teachers (a year-long resource program for teachers who don't know how to teach music to children) and Growing Grounded: Movement and Songs to Organize the Brain.

After working in the public school system as a classroom teacher for over a decade, Susan left to open her own school and dedicate her focus to working in the arts. She founded Musicalia, which for 20 years was open as a private music and movement school for babies, children and teachers.

Susan has worked with every age group from infants, toddlers and preschoolers to school age children, teens and adults as well as teachers of those age groups.

Over her lifetime, she has taught piano, music theory, recorder, sax, clarinet, guitar, ukulele, choir, voice and violin/fiddle and because of her training in learning assistance, music therapy and movement therapy, she has worked as part of therapeutic teams supporting children with special needs.

Susan is stepping into her 50th year as a piano teacher.