The Art of Teaching Beginning Band Music Education by Joel Wagner - July 5, 2008August 4, 201625 Greg recently commented on an article my site. As I typically do, I went to look at his blog Total Music Education and see what he's all about. His blog intrigues me. I didn't have time to read through his entire site, but what I can gather is that he is a music education student in Minnesota. He's still in school but is getting an opportunity to teach a local summer band camp. With the exception of his observation of the horn section in the camp, I haven't found anything on his blog that is offensive. Haha. Nevertheless, reading some of his experiences helped remind me how differently I see teaching beginning band now than I did when I was first starting
The First Ever Music Education Blog Carnival Music Education by Joel Wagner - July 1, 2008July 1, 201012 Welcome to the very first edition of the Music Education Blog Carnival! I have sorted through the submissions, weeded through them some, and now present to you some absolutely terrific articles here! We'll start out by sorting things out a little bit. The articles came in basically three categories: Practice, Practice, and more Practice, Teaching Tips, 21st Century Music Resources, and The Life of a Music Educator. Practice, Practice, and more Practice Without a doubt, the common denominator between all musicians is the practice experience. Love it or hate it, we all must do it if we are to get better. We need to do it even if we simply want to stay where we are. The two most entertaining
The Music Education Blog Carnival Music Education by Joel Wagner - June 17, 2008July 1, 20104 On July 1st, 2008 the very first Music Education Blog Carnival was featured on So You Want To Teach? This is something that Joseph Pisano over at MusTech.Net and I had been discussing for a couple of months, and we finally got around to starting it up. What is it? Much like the Carnival of Education, the Music Education Blog Carnival features blog articles from around the blogosphere. These articles all focus on music education and topics that might remotely be interesting to music educators. What do I do? I want to encourage anyone who has an article somewhere in their blog's archives that might relate to submit it. It doesn't have to be a recent article even.
Audio: 03/28/08 Music Education by Joel Wagner - March 30, 2008July 2, 20105 I recently got a little $20 voice recorded device for my iPod because I figured it might make good quality recordings of class. I was right. Here's 25 minutes from this past Friday's woodwind class for those who want to hear what goes on in my classroom. Not sure if this will be interesting to most of you, but it's worth a shot. Let me know if these are interesting or of value to any of you. The music we worked on is Sakura by Michael Story and Voodoo Dance by Eliot del Borgo. Listen here
Top 10 Things I Learned This Year At TMEA Music Education by Joel Wagner - February 17, 2008July 2, 20101 I returned home from the Texas Music Educators Association clinic and convention this weekend. It was different TMEA experience for me than what I have been accustomed to in the past. One of the primary reasons for this was because I desperately needed the vacation more than I have in the past. If you've been following my blog, you know that the band director with whom I work had a stroke in December and has now been out for 8 weeks of classes. The workload I have is not more than I can handle at any given time, but when combined, it adds up and has been taking its toll on me. He anticipates being back before spring break. Only
Clinicians Music Education by Joel Wagner - January 31, 2008July 2, 20102 In the band world, we have a whole concept of bringing in a clinician. This is basically a chance for us to get another, more experienced teacher to come in and tell our kids all the same stuff we've been telling them in a different way. Until this morning, I hadn't realized how easily this kind of thing benefits me as a teacher and how something similar might help pretty much every teacher out there. I am fortunate in that my current situation has forced me to spend at least a couple of months by myself working with two bands and a mariachi. Our district has put in and found some money to bring in a retired band director for
100 MusEduBloggers by 2009 Music Education by Joel Wagner - January 29, 2008July 2, 20102 I have been blogging about teaching for a while. I came across a post by Joseph Pisano (the original post is here) where he is trying to get at least 100 Music Education Bloggers blogging about music education or music technology. Part of me has been wanting to jump into the MusEduBlogging world, but it wasn’t until this morning that I decided to take the plunge. I have learned a whole lot about blogging over the last year and so I hope to be able to use the knowledge I have gained to try to make this site one of the premier sites in the MusEduBlogging world. Yes, I just created that term. A Google search for both MusEduBlog returns
Rethinking The Systems Music Education by Joel Wagner - July 25, 2007July 5, 20100 I have spent much of last week and this week with one of the high school band directors thoroughly analyzing our marching fundamentals for the high school band. Though this really doesn't apply directly to what I do during the school day as a middle school band director, the process we have been through to rethink our entire marching system can be applied to a lot of things that I will do in the classroom this year. I think it can also be applied to your world as well. The Process So what exactly have we done to make these changes? Here's a basic outline. At the end, I'll show how it will apply to my routine, and see if
The Vitality of Collaboration Music Education by Joel Wagner - May 30, 2007July 5, 20100 Most of the band staff went to lunch today. We spent about an hour and a half at a pizza buffet, mostly talking and not eating pizza. Collaboration is a good thing, if done correctly. Here are some key elements that I observe when I work with colleagues: Have fun Relax Focus on positives Don't spend all the time talking about work Don't spend much time talking about negative things Do spend time discussing teaching strategies that work for you Don't take yourself too seriously Learn something from everyone you can, even if you learn what not to do Planning is good. Planning as a group is one of the most effective ways to plan. No matter how
Finishing Strong Music Education by Joel Wagner - May 28, 2007July 5, 20100 A band director I used to work with said this. The concept is that success comes from finishing something well. It's easy to start something great. Greatness comes from finishing something great. That is why greatness is so elusive. One And A Half Is Not The Same As Two I find myself saying the very thing to my students. Why? Because so many of them start notes well but give up before the end. One and a half is not the same as two. A half note does not get most of two beats, it gets two beats. Simple. But How Does This Apply To Me? Simple. Most of us teachers are at or near the end of the
8 Methods For Recruiting People Into Your Program Music Education by Joel Wagner - April 21, 2007July 5, 20100 As a band director dealing with beginning band, a substantial part of my energy each year is spent on recruiting 5th graders to be in band next year. I have generally done a pretty good job getting kids enrolled in the program, but this year I began to look at it from a marketing standpoint. The results have been incredible. We still have some more recruiting to go, but we have already increased the enrollment by about 35 from what it was at this point last year, and it looks like it may very well be more than 60 more students next year than we have this year. That's huge. We still have some marketing left to do in the