“I’m so shocked.” My previous principal spoke that phrase nearly 20 times when I told him I was leaving the school and the profession. I couldn’t help but wonder, “How can he be shocked?” None of my coworkers were. Though many expressed authentic gratefulness for my time and [...]
Sarah at the ISME conference in Glasgow You've been teaching and researching and doing all of the things (all of them). You decide to take the plunge and submit an application for a conference. Your abstract is complete, you've edited your work, and you click submit. [...]
Dr. Martina Vasil is the Assistant Professor of Music Education at The University of Kentucky. In this post, she shares lessons learned from a research project she completed during her doctoral studies. During that study, she observed children at play to learn more about their musical interactions [...]
To kick off our new series, "Music Beyond the Classroom," we caught up with the band, TeamMate, currently based in Los Angeles. TeamMate is a pop rock duo comprised of Scott Simons and Dani Buncher. Scott serves as keyboardist and Dani plays the drums. Both of them sing. [...]
This year I stepped out of my comfort zone. I started an Instagram account dedicated to teaching middle school music (@musicalmiddles). Admittedly, I considered deleting it almost every day for the first week. I had seen countless teacher Instagram accounts, many with tons of followers [...]
The other day, I was talking to my students about creativity. I find it interesting that many of them think that musical creativity is synonymous with the ability to play an instrument. "No!" I said. "If you asked me to create on the trumpet, I might struggle because [...]
The idea of flipping the classroom for me came out of necessity. For the past 14 years I had been teaching beginning band. And, every year I would search for the “best” way to teach it. As we know, all music programs are not created equal, and [...]
It is I, David AllenPhoto by Johan Famel If you've been following F-flat Books on social media, I have no doubt you know my sister, Sarah. You may have noted her oft added title "Co-Founder of F-flat Books." And, those of you who are of a [...]
Creating music is one of the four artistic processes that guide the national core standards for music education, yet many teachers report they spend very little time teaching improvisation and composition in their classes and rehearsals. Most of the best-selling band methods emphasize notation and theory over [...]
"I'm on sabbatical." I said these words over and over again this past year, explaining to folks why I was suddenly home with my kids and not in the classroom. Since graduating from college in 2007, I have spent every year teaching. Teaching, conducting, writing, studying, planning. [...]