My IMEA Presentation Slide Show

I want people to have access to my presentation. I'm putting a link to it in my handout, but I thought it might be nice to have it here.

Plus, I get to test out an embedded slideshow! All through the magic of Google. They should cut me a check for how much I promote them.

I'm Getting Through to Them

Maybe not all of them or even most of them. However, it's enough at this point to make me pretty happy. I know I posted about how don't like when teachers get excited about the good stuff and try to discredit the bad, but here's some good as I sit here after school in an empty band room with a stack of solo/ensemble music on my desk.

Today a 7th grade flutist was outside my office. The girl next to hear said, "practice makes perfect". She responded, "No it doesn't, practice makes permanent." I leaned out and asked her where she heard that and just smiled and said, "You."

On Facebook a former student wrote on my wall about her semester abroad so far. She's been in Spain for two days now. She wrote, "Last night when walking around Madrid, there were a lot of musicians out - a small harp thing, a violin, a flute, and a saxophone in different places. That's my favorite thing about music.. it's found around the world and understood by all languages. :)" Now that I'll use next time a kid asks me why the put forte instead of "loud". I didn't have a huge impact on her musically, but I'm glad she thought enough of me to let me know that music is still in her life.

I spend a lot of time talking about drum corps. I should've marched, I really regret not doing it. My constant references to it has caused a former horn player to try out for the Glassmen. She messaged me to get some advice on slurring since that's what the told her to work on for camp. She's hoping for one of the 7 open spots and I really hope she get one. I'll be glad to cheer on the Glassman as well as the Colts this Summer.

We are working heavily on tuning in MS Band. I know they're starting to get it, but I hope I'm not creating snobs(some of the kids who can really hear the waves make some terribly scrunched faces when other don't fix it). Each day we select a random section to check on how well they have tuned through the process. They are starting to talk about their "intonation" what a great word for some middle schoolers.

Well I must get back to work. Solo and Ensemble music will not pick itself now will it?

School Resumes

Well we are back in session. I wish the new quarter would've started yesterday, but it's not for another week. Even though the kids are recharged(and kind of crazy) and the teachers rested(and slightly lethargic) we're in the last two weeks of a grading period. Odd.

On a personal note I had a great break. I don't think I said this before, but I got engaged just a few days before my last post. This means some of break was used on beginning to plan a wedding that is over a year away. I had no idea there was so much to do. We looked at venues, spent lots of time talking, got information from her parents(no word on mine yet), and had an engagement party.

The party was great we met a little Irish pub in normal with about 40 friends, mostly theater people I've met as a music director while my fiancee has been on stage. I even got to see some of my former students. It's weird to think that by the time I'm married all of my first high school band will have graduated high school. They're off doing all kinds of things and it was the highlight of my night to hear about it. One just left for Spain to study a semester abroad before coming home to be a nurse. Many of them have continued playing two as music majors, one as a minor, many in their unversity marching bands, and one is almost member of the Glassmen(good luck Kory). It just makes me so happy that they're keeping music in their lives on that level.

I did a lot of article reading over break. Your basic stuff I guess how to be a better director and more importantly how to be an educator. What can I teach my students about music through music while performing music? That's from one of my books, "Teaching Music Through Performance" and it's really great to work on that. I'm trying to get my students into reflecting on their performances, we wrote short essays after watching a tape of our concert and I'm thinking about doing that once a month with great ensembles playing the literature we're playing. I'd like to do a listening journal next year...if anyone has thoughts on that it'd be great.

I read about different methods of score study because I'm trying to find something that really works for me. I'm almost through my first score using a method I'm developing and I think it's helping me to understand the pieces with more depth. I'll outline my plan sometime on here incase it maybe benifical to someone. I wish I would've done this two years ago...but we have to keep improving or we die. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

How can I  become a better music educator, pursue my dreams of higher education, and not drive my fiancee crazy in 2010? Stay tuned.

A SIP Day Question

Today we had a half day with students and then meetings all afternoon. I pose a simple question...

Why is it that when students write us a note or say something nice we feel like we matter, but when a student is hurtful we're not supposed to let it bother us because it's "meaningless"?

Just a thought as I watched the video clip that our principal showed us today during our meeting to help to inspire good teaching.