Tiffany Barry

Tiffany Unarce Barry
Music Education
tiffany.barry@sjsu.edu

Tiffany Unarce Barry is a performer, educator, presenter, and published author in Northern California. A second-generation Filipino American, Tiffany has sung and played violin in ensembles all her life. She earned her BA in Vocal Performance at SJSU in 2001 and received a Single-Subject Teaching Credential in 2005. In 2008, she became Orff-certified through the San Francisco International Orff Course and in 2017, she earned her MA in Music Education at SJSU with a focus on providing more Orff Schulwerk Teacher Education to music teachers in the Bay Area. 

Tiffany taught general music and a variety of instrumental and choral ensembles for 14 years at Cambrian School District in San Jose, CA, where she was voted “Teacher of the Year '' in both 2010 and 2017 for her expertise in arts integrations, STEAM education, and Project-Based Learning. She also received CMEA Bay Section’s Outstanding Classroom/General Music Educator Award for 2017-2018. Tiffany has held board positions for Resounding Achord Productions, Northern California’s American Orff Schulwerk Association Chapter, CMEA Bay Section, and the American Orff Schulwerk Association’s Board Restructuring Ad-Hoc Committee. She is currently serving on the board of the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) Museum in Stockton, CA and is also the founder of the Larry Itliong Way Project, a community initiative with the goal of renaming a downtown San Jose street after the Filipino American labor and civil rights leader, Larry Iltiong. In 2026, this latest work was recently awarded the “Champions for Change Award” at the African American Community Service Agency’s (AACSA) Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ceremony.

Over the last ten years, Tiffany has published articles in the San José Mercury News, AOSA’s The Orff Echo & Reverberations, Buck Institute for Education’s PBL Blog, Teaching with Orff, and NAfME’s Teaching Music Magazine. In February 2021, she published her first music education resource book, Songs of the Sun: Filipino Folk Songs for the Musical Classroom. 

Tiffany has presented Orff sessions and workshops nationally and is a Basic Orff Teacher Educator for Level 1. She is a lecturer, advisor, and supervisor in Music Education at SJSU and is also lead female vocalist for the Sacramento-based dance orchestra and swing band, Symphonia Phonotone