Getting your first teaching job is so exciting! If you’re anything like me you had 1,001 thoughts running in your head about all the things you needed and you didn’t know where to start. Pause, take a breath and breathe deeply. If you’ve finished a degree program then there really isn’t a whole lot that… Continue reading What I Wish I Had as a First Year Teacher
Category: long term planning
The Ultimate Recruitment and Retention Formula for Your Music Program
Every year it almost feels like a rat race to get a new wave of students interested in joining band, choir, or orchestra. It feels like all the stress is on impressing the young elementary students on your recruitment concert tour. Or maybe you’re a high school director and you’re stressed about making the pep music and the concert band music sound good to get those middle schoolers to become freshmen in your program.Â
Advice for Beginning Ensemble Directors
There's so much that you need to know as a beginning ensemble director and if you're a brand new teacher it can also seem very overwhelming. I'm going to give you three tips that I wish I had learned faster as a new teacher and that have honestly helped me stay sane. These three tips… Continue reading Advice for Beginning Ensemble Directors
How I Organize My Teaching Materials
If you're like me and teach all the things then you definitely have a lot of "inventory" in your classroom. It's taken me well into my third year to figure out how to organize all of my stuff so that I have a more functional classroom, so today I am sharing how I organize all the things so that you hopefully don't take as long as I did to get organized.
Long Term Planning for Performing Ensembles
If you’re reading this then I bet that you’ve heard of long term planning and want to know more. That was me a few months ago and I came to the conclusion that no matter what I needed a long term plan for each of my classes for the next school year. I teach middle school band, choir, and music history at my school. I knew my first year of teaching performing ensembles at this school that my students would have a very minimal, if any knowledge of music.
Displaced Pedagogy 