Karen Koch

February 2
10 a.m. — Noon
Lacefield

Unlock Music History in a Super-Lesson

Karen Koch 

Karen Koch holds a bachelor of arts degree from Knox College in modern languages, with a strong emphasis in applied piano and accompanying. She completed a master of arts degree in piano performance and pedagogy at Webster University with Dr. Daniel Schene. She is an NCTM through Music Teachers National Association, and has always been an active learner, contributor and officer in MTNA in Illinois and Missouri, and most recently immediate past president of PTRT from 2019-21 and current vice president of Programs. In addition to private teaching for more than 40 years, she has taught Montessori preschool music and elementary public school music and served as adjunct faculty at Greenville College, Southwestern Illinois College, Kaskaskia Community College, and McKendree University.

Karen’s special interest has always been in pedagogy and learning theory, and based on her thesis topic at Webster University, she created My Own Music History, a comprehensive, hands-on curriculum to provide accessible foundational knowledge of music history for her students. In 1991, she organized a cooperative organization, Music Educators’ Marketplace, for which she traveled nationally to conferences to demonstrate and sell not only her materials but also carefully curated teaching aids created by more than 45 teachers from the United States and Canada. In 2016, she merged the Music Educators’ Marketplace with Michelle Sisler’s Keys to Imagination (Keystoimagination.com) and still serves in an active consulting role with the program.

In 1919 she and her husband, Edward, moved to Kirkwood from Illinois to be near a daughter’s family. Edward, a loyal supporter of her musical activities, unexpectedly died in November 2020 following complications from a fall. They have a son and two daughters as well as four grandchildren in St. Louis and California.