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 Brene Brown and the term "pandemic flux syndrome." As an educator, everything [...]
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 my life journey. It helps me pause and process my actions and [...]
Today’s Topic: Culturally responsive teaching with exit tickets (fostering joy) Today’s Tip: Utilize daily exit tickets for qualitative data that informs your practice. Exit tickets work! Since the pandemic started, I have been using exit tickets to gauge student engagement and understanding. It started as a [...]
I am passionate about music education, specifically Popular Music Education, Creativity, and Informal Learning. So passionate, in fact, that I have written two books under my own publishing company, Steve's Music Room Publishing, and have been commissioned for a third through the Oxford University Press--yes, that Oxford University [...]
I started a new job this fall at Boston University and I love it. I am an Assistant Professor of Music (Music Education). My job is mostly to work with graduate students on interesting, challenging topics and publish research in my area of expertise. Basically, my dream job [...]
Like most, if not all, music institutions around the world, the lockdown resulting from COVID-19 necessitated a swift move of all of our teaching to online, and a consequent steep learning curve especially for instrumental and ensemble teachers who had never had to operate in that kind of [...]
I am often called “just the music teacher.” And I may or may not also be tired of non-teachers looking at me and asking, “Soooo, how are you actually working during COVID?” I will never forget it. One co-worker even asked me, “So Darlene, what do you do [...]
I hadn’t seen my students since March 10th. I hadn’t heard them sing together or in public since we closed down back in March. In fact, I was at an American Choral Directors Association Southern Conference went everything went left. I didn’t even get to tell them goodbye. [...]
This post is a response to the post "The Essential Work of the Arts". Taking Action If you can agree that arts, in general, are important, then we can move to action items: what do we do as teachers of the arts? How do we harness our anger [...]
As a young educator, I was always tasked with the question: why does music matter? It was something asked incessantly. There were textbook answers that got me through job interviews, but the one person I never really convinced was myself. I knew why I was a teacher- I’ve [...]