Re-Igniting the Spark Take a moment to think back to your undergraduate college experience. (Perhaps that was only a few months ago, or perhaps you have to reach back a bit more to access this season.) Either way, I would venture to assume that for many of us, [...]
F-flat’s Guide to Summer Professional Development Get ready, friends! In this post, we’ll share our recommendations for summer professional development that is relevant, meaningful, and fun! We are so lucky to have such a strong community of educators and authors, and many of them are busy sharing their [...]
A Music Teacher’s Guide to Soundtrap Like all good broke college students, I have a very old laptop - almost 7 years old in fact. It’s very possible that my MacBook Pro has been running on the same software update for as long as I’ve been able [...]
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 down, leave stuff out. Make it easy as possible. Once the student [...]
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 [...]
Welcome to The Asterisk*, a new regular column where we’ll chat about diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in music education. The function of an asterisk is to quickly give readers a baseline of knowledge so the reader can dive into content. This column aims to introduce or refresh [...]
I am Donna Rhodenizer. I am a composer. It took me a long time to grow into the label and embrace it as part of my musical skills. When I was a young music student, I wrote little “ditties” that I would play on the piano. In high [...]
Since our schools closed their doors almost five weeks ago, I have been flooded with so many emotions. For a while, I could not really determine what these emotions were. I just knew each day felt different. After reflecting, I began to realize that what I was feeling [...]
On Friday, March 13th I spent my last day in public spaces. It’s funny to look back. I knew that there would be a couple of weeks in isolation, and I even looked forward to the change of pace! However, I never imagined that we would be facing [...]