Andrew D’Antonio is the founder & director of the Adaptive Music Partnership, a community outreach program in Springfield, Massachusetts that provides music classes to over 600 students with special needs and offers workshops to music teachers on techniques for teaching students with diverse needs. He was on the piano faculty at Smith College and Bay Path University and has been teaching private piano lessons for over ten years. Prior to working full-time in music, he was a special education preschool teacher in New York City.
Andrew has a bachelors of music in piano performance from Pacific Lutheran University, a masters of science in teaching in early childhood special education from Fordham University, and a masters of music in collaborative piano and music history from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He regularly performs as a soloist and chamber musician. A native of the Pacific Northwest, Andrew returned from the East Coast in 2019 and currently lives and teaches in Portland, Oregon.

with some estimates showing that as many as 13% of all U.S. students currently have a diagnosis. In response to this trend, society and public education have become more proactive about including these students in a broad range of activities that were formerly only available to their peers without diagnoses. As a result, private music teachers are receiving more requests to teach students with special needs and include them in their group classes, recitals, and other studio activities. Unfortunately, many private music teachers have received little or no training in working with special needs, and they often feel ill-equipped and/or unsupported in teaching these students.
This workshop is intended as an introduction to special education techniques that can be applied in small group and one-on-one settings. Participants will gain a foundational understanding of the most common (and most commonly misunderstood) disabilities that can be disruptive in a traditional private lesson setting: autism, dyslexia, and ADHD. Participants will have a chance to discuss and problem-solve scenarios specific to their own studios, and they will leave with a range of resources that will help support them in the future.