Kaylee Hofman
Music Specialist
Kaylee Hofman has always been an avid singer, dancer, and educator. She graduated from Columbia College Chicago with her BA in Music (focusing on Vocal Performance, with a minor in Early Childhood Development) and continued her education at Bowling Green State University, earning her MA in Music Education. She has been teaching since high school: starting with pre-K movement classes, then kindergarten dance classes, and finally working with children of all ages to develop their intellectual potential through the use of music.
Kaylee has spent the past 8 years working in the early childhood field and developing lesson plans and music-based activities that cater to individual students and help children create a patient and understanding environment for each other. She teaches private lessons for voice, ukulele, and piano. She loves using music and movement as a means for group engagement, and supports students’ individuality with work on being confident, kind to others, and mood regulation.
Her foundation in education was based on the Reggio Emilia approach, which she still follows today. This approach states that it is “student-centered and constructivist self-guided curriculum that uses self-directed, experiential learning in relationship-driven environments.” Basically, she believes that creating activities centered around a child’s curiosity of the world will help them reach their full intellectual, social, behavioral, and physical potential. For her graduate level capstone project, she created a short music program that centered on strengthening executive functioning skills through the use of music, which inspires the current foundation of her music classes. This is her fourth year as the music teacher at JCYS Lutz, and is now going on her second school year as the music specialist for all JCYS schools.