ABOUT KAJA WEEKS

 

Kaja Weeks, B.A., is a classically trained singer and music educator with professional training in infant/child development.  She is certified as a DIR-based Music Educator and Floortime Practitioner (an approach founded by Stanley I Greenspan, MD and Serena Wieder, Phd) through ICDL (Interdisciplinary Council for Learning and Developmental Disorders) as well as through Profectum Academy.  In addition, her comprehensive continuing education through the Profectum Academy, at which she tutored and co-taught classes for clinicians globally in the DIR approach conferred a Trainer's certification in 2015.  She worked in private practice since 2002 at ITS:DTS, an integrated clinic in Kensington, MD, serving children with special needs through an innovative trans-disciplinary, developmentally-based music program and continues currently within Communication Corner (practice of Anne Reynolds, Speech-Language Pathologist.)  

 

As former Associate Chair of the Early Childhood Music Department at Levine School of Music, Washington, DC, and Co-Chair of its Professional Studies Department she helped to oversee a program for several hundred young children.  Kaja also served as a Parent Educator & Coach for a Therapeutic (DIR-based) Interaction Group of children ages 3-6 at TLC (Treatment & Learning Centers) in Rockville, MD.  She is past President of ECMMA’s (Early Childhood Music & Movement Association’s) Greater Washington, DC Chapter.  Her research and scholarly writing interests are in music and child development, particularly how music impacts preverbal children, both typically-developing and children with special needs.  Kaja Weeks’ scholarly ideas have been represented in numerous journal articles, lectures, and training in the United States and Canada.  In addition, her creative writing includes poems, essays, and other creative non-fiction.

She is a graduate of the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis’ 3-year post-graduate program, “New Directions: Critical Thinking and Writing”  and has completed the Center’s Scholars Program.  She has had academic training in infant and early childhood development, including from the University of Maryland and The Washington School of Psychiatry.  Kaja frequently collaborates professionally with Dorothy Denton, a Board-certified Music Therapist; She had been a private student of Jessica Phillips-Silver, PhD, who is a researcher and educator in auditory development and music perception and an Adjunct Professor of Music, Georgetown University.