Gabe Romero
Gabe Romero is a senior music education major at Temple University. Born and raised on Long Island, music has been his #1 passion since taking up the piano and the cello as a child. He decided to make that passion his career after his positive musical experiences in high school, which included performing as a soloist with his school orchestra at Carnegie Hall and participating in multiple choirs, jazz bands and church music groups. While studying at Temple, he has gotten many opportunities to hone his teaching skills, serving as an intern with Philadelphia String Project and Philly POPS, as well as teaching cello privately and working as a 1:1 aide for students with special needs during the summers.
Gabe is excited to be working with Fflat Books this semester via Music Service Learning, an internship allowing college students to explore music education experiences beyond their coursework and help schools and organizations in need. In particular, Gabe has used the internship as an opportunity to explore the incorporation of popular music and student-centered creativity into all levels of music education. During his time with MSL, he has helped design integrated-arts curricula for Columbia Public Schools and a virtual songwriting/production unit for Interboro High School’s choirs. In addition to his blogs, he is also helping to create educational supplements to the fantastic Switched on Pop podcast!
When not working, you might find Gabe hiking his favorite park trails, searching for more vinyls to add to his collection, or cooking anything involving pasta!
eBooks by Gabe Romero
Posts by Gabe Romero
Sigur Ros, Burnout, & the Joys of Making a Good Playlist
I have roughly 200 playlists in my Apple Music library. Not the algorithmic ones that our benevolent tech overlords provide for us - my very own creations. 200 of them. Perhaps that’s more than any [...]
Research to Practice: Understanding and Moving Through Burnout
It seems like information about teacher burnout is everywhere right now. I’m not sure if it is because we’re still facing COVID-19-related difficulties in the classroom or if we’re just less afraid to talk about the less glorious side of teaching. [...]
My Instruction Philosophy
My focus is not to train students to just reproduce prepared material. I want students to understand what they play, not just play it. When instructing beginners or introducing a new subject — dumb it [...]
Research to Practice: Embracing Differences
It is through treating our students as individuals that they can learn to meaningfully connect to music. That means that we, as teachers, should seek to make music classes not just about our own musical interests, but about the musical interests of our students too. [...]
“Pandemic Flux Syndrome” and Teaching: Why it feels so hard
I read an article by social psychologist Amy Cuddy and JillElyn Riley titled, "Why this stage of the pandemic makes us so anxious." I also heard Amy Cuddy talk about this article in an interview with [...]
The Gut Level Music Teacher Reflection
The Gut Level Teacher Reflection At the end of the 2021 year, a social worker in my district passed along this article about the Gut Level Teacher Reflection. Reflection has always been a part of [...]