Ann C. Kay co-founded and is the education coordinator for the Minnesota nonprofit Rock ‘n’ Read Project (RnR), dedicated to helping families, educators, and organizations use singing and basic music skills to develop young brains for reading. She provides professional development for early childhood educators in how to develop children's auditory processing, auditory memory, phonological awareness, and beat synchronization. Ann recently created a PreK/K curriculum, A Song A Day: Brain Prep for Pre-Readers (published by Ventris Learning). Prior to focusing on early childhood, RnR received $600,000 from the MN Legislature to conduct a five-year state project that helped 2500 elementary students make phenomenal gains in reading by using a singing-based software (1 year, avg., after 14 hours of usage). Ann is a former elementary music teacher, choir director, instructor of music teachers and classroom teachers, associate director of graduate music education, and Kodály music certification program director. She is a past president of the Organization of American Kodály Educators, and co-authored a chapter “Assessment in the Kodály Classroom” in the Oxford Handbook of Assessment Policy and Practice in Music Education.
