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: teacher planning
Summer Break Plans for Teachers
I’m officially on summer break and I’ll be honest, I am relieved. As a music teacher, I have concerts to plan and parents to contact about ensembles and all the other end of the year craziness that is part of teaching to begin with. I am also a crazy person and like to have big… Continue reading Summer Break Plans for Teachers
How to Generate Hype for your Program During Recruitment Season
'Tis the season! Between spring concerts, adjudicated performances, graduation concerts and everything else, you may have forgotten about recruitment. Or maybe you haven't forgotten about recruitment, but this is one of your first recruitment events that you've put on and you're stressed out. I've got you! This is only my 2nd rodeo, but I learned a lot from my first.
How to Drill Fingerings in Beginning Band
Teaching our beginners new notes is so important, but also so challenging. If they're brand new then they might still be learning to read a fingering chart and maybe they're still learning which colored in circles mean which finger get pressed down. It's hard. So keep reading and I'm going to tell you my no frills tips for making sure students know their notes and fingerings.
How to Make your Music Field Trip Easier
Field trips can be stressful. You have to coordinate budgets, calendars, and all the people so that the day goes well. As the lead adult in the room you also have to select and coordinate all the other adults helping you chaperone your groups. You know you need to give your chaperons certain things so that the day runs smooth and you want prepared chaperones that your students enjoy, so what do you do?
Displays you Need in Your Music Classroom
I have three weeks until I go back to school for inservice and four weeks until I see students again (yikes!). So I’m starting to think about my own classroom setup and what I need to put up on the walls. If you are a new teacher and don’t know what you need then I recommend that you keep reading to gather some ideas.Â
Canva in the Music Classroom
There are so may ways that Canva can be used by music teachers, or teachers in general. These are just a few of my favorite ways to use Canva in my job and I'm sure that you or I will find even more ways too!
How I’m Getting Band Kids to Practice Scales
Every year you tell your students how important scales are and every year they still don't practice them. In my experience students don't practice their scales until its time for an important audition and then they cram their scales and the audition music in and learn them all in a panic. Once the students get up to high school it becomes obvious that they're on B-Flat Default mode because they always play the notes of the B-Flat concert scale (even in G Major, yikes!)
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 