VASTA Statement of Principles

The Voice And Speech Trainers Association, Inc. expects the following of its members:

1. Offer instruction, advice, and guidance based on their ongoing pursuit of the best information, thought and practices available in their respective specialization.

2. Acknowledge teachers and colleagues who have contributed to their work.

3. Present accurately the nature and duration of their training and experience.

4. Respect the right of colleagues to advocate approaches with which they may not agree and allow students freedom to choose practices which may best meet their needs.

5. Take responsibility for the emotional climate in their classrooms, fostering an atmosphere conducive to their students' optimal growth.

6. Refer a student to a specialist (physician, psychologist, speech pathologist, singing teacher, voice and/or speech teacher, body alignment expert, etc.) whenever the need arises.

7. Maintain confidentiality regarding their students, except in cases where doing so could be detrimental.

8. Give students ongoing, objective assessments, as well as informed opinions of their abilities and progress.

9. Acknowledge the primacy of the director in matters of interpretation and addressing any questions or differences with the director in private.

10. Dedicate their teaching and practice to enhancing the art of communication, nurturing individual creativity in all its differences, developing empathetic abilities as an essential component of voice teaching and going beyond facile standards of right and wrong, correct and incorrect in assessing the human voice.

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VASTAVOX

VASTAVOX is a listserv owned by Dudley Knight at UC-Irvine where members of the list can discuss, via email, concerns about Voice and Speech. This open list allows anyone to join. VASTA members are encouraged to subscribe.

How to SUBSCRIBE: Send an email message to <listserv@uci.edu> in which you will leave the "subject" field blank and write in the body of the message:

SUBSCRIBE VASTAVOX First name, Last name, as in the example: SUBSCRIBE VASTAVOX Dudley Knight. In short order you should receive a welcome message from VASTAVOX.

How to UNSUBSCRIBE: Send an email message to <listserv@uci.edu> in which you will leave the "subject" field blank and write in the body of the message: UNSUBSCRIBE VASTAVOX. You do not need to add your name to this command, as you do in the SUBSCRIBE command.

How to find out who receives VASTAVOX: Send an email message to <listserv@uci.edu> in which you will leave the "subject" field blank and write in the body of the message: RECIPIENTS VASTAVOX. You do not need to add your name to this command, as you do in the SUBSCRIBE command.

How to view the VASTAVOX Archive: The Archive is a resource added to the VASTAVOX's abilities on Aug 25, 1998. You can visit the archive by following the links on the VASTAVOX webpage, which should connect you to the Gopher site for UC-Irvine's listserv archives, where VASTAVOX "lives." You can browse through the archive, or you can do a Full-Text Search.