Mrs. Denny has studied music since age 7, taking voice and piano lessons as a child. She also plays the guitar. She studied voice at Boston Conservatory for two years, then studied music composition at Berklee college of Music in Boston, receiving her B.A. degree in Composition. She taught privately in Boston until marrying and moving to North Carolina, where she worked in Music Retail, and worked in professional theater in the area for several years before taking a job in the Wake County Public Schools as a teacher assistant.
She completed coursework at UNC-Chapel Hill for teacher certification, and was hired to teach middle school chorus in Durham. She then realized she wanted to teach Elementary students, so she came back to Wake County as a music teacher. She spent several years working at multiple schools, based at Cary Elementary, until she came to Lacy in 1998.
In 2001 she received her Level I Orff certification at Campbell University, and has taught several music workshops to Wake County teachers. She is also interested in technology and has presented several workshops on website construction, and using music technology to teach composition in the classroom.
Mrs. Denny is involved with many other activities. She and her husband wrote original children's musicals and performed all around the Triangle area for more than 20,000 children as Koala Kompany. She has been a music minister at her church, and for 14 years also directed The Encore Singers of Cary, a show choir that performs at various locations in the Triangle area.
She has an unusual hobby- she is an amateur paleontologist. She spends many weekends volunteering at two Museums, the NC Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, and the NC Museum of Life and Science in Durham,where she works on fossil collections, and talks to museum visitors. She also goes on digs to find fossils for her own collection, as well as for the museums.
She has found many exciting specimens of shells, plants, 6-1/2" sharks teeth, whale bones, and even a few dinosaur bones and teeth! She loves to share this interest with her students along with her love of music!
Her husband, Victor, is also a music teacher at Middle Creek Elementary School.
Mission For The Class In our music classes at Lacy Elementary:
Students will explore music through listening and performing. Through movement, playing of instruments, and singing,classes will experience music from many cultures, styles, and time periods. Each child will have the opportunity to participate in parent performances to share some of the concepts learned in class, and will be prepared to be a participant in future musical endeavors as well as an educated audience member.