Emily Hatch

Emily Hatch believes that music is an instrument to educate students’ hearts and minds to engage an interconnected world. Emily’s elementary school students create, perform, and respond to music while they develop 21st century skills of communication, collaboration, and critical thinking.

Currently in her 11th year of teaching, Emily Hatch teaches preschool-5th grade music at Daegu Elementary School, a Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) school in South Korea. Emily is a teacher leader at the school, serving for the past three years as the Continuous School Improvement (CSI) Chair and Grade Level Chair for the specialist department. As the CSI chair, Emily successfully led the school through two accreditation cycles and was pivotal in developing and facilitating a clear purpose statement and reading goal for the school.

Emily is also a leader in the music field and an early adopter of the National Core Arts Standards (NCAS) which were released in 2014, serving on a national team of teachers who piloted Model Cornerstone Assessments for grades 2 and 5 over a period of two school years. She was also a member of the FEA/DoDEA Fine Arts Cohort, planning and facilitating professional development on the new standards for all DoDEA Fine Arts teachers. Emily reimagined her music curriculum to teach global education through the NCAS.

Emily Hatch is a lifelong learner and is a 2018 NEA Global Learning Fellow, studying global education with a cohort of teachers from across America.