Call for Guest Bloggers General by Joel Wagner - May 31, 2010June 30, 20101 I have a few things planned for the summer, but one thing I really would like to do is feature a series of articles by first-year teachers reflecting on their first year of teaching. If you have a blog, feel free to quote liberally from your posts throughout the year. If not, that's okay! You can write one post or even a handful of them. I'd really like to be able to get these thoughts out there and share them with future first-year teachers. Maybe you've been teaching for longer. Maybe you haven't. Either way, you are also welcome to submit guest posts. Anything that might remotely relate to teachers is welcome. For ideas from previous guest bloggers, check out
The Evolution of Marching – 2005-2009 [VIDEO] Music Education by Joel Wagner - May 29, 2010June 30, 20100 As we close out the school year and begin looking toward the summer, band directors turn their minds toward marching arts. This year, I'm going through some history and exploring The Evolution of Marching via YouTube. I'm taking you along for the journey as well. Now we come to the most modern marching shows available. Props continue to be more thoroughly integrated into the show, and the color guard continues to be used to add color and visual contrast, as well as actual actors in a story. Electronics are now integrated into the DCI shows as well, and we see the drum majors of Phantom Regiment's 2008 production being used as characters throughout the entire performance. Many corps are now
The Evolution of Marching – 1999-2004 [VIDEO] Music Education by Joel Wagner - May 28, 2010June 30, 20100 As we close out the school year and begin looking toward the summer, band directors turn their minds toward marching arts. This year, I'm going through some history and exploring The Evolution of Marching via YouTube. I'm taking you along for the journey as well. As we moved into the new millennium, the color guard moved further from the hornline and drumline as far as uniforms, but began to interact much more with the individual members. Where the early 90s has included an occasional soloist interacting with the guard, now large groups of the hornline were doing full out ballet moves and poses throughout the shows. Though it had been before, the marching show is now even more dance- and
HELP!!!!! New Teacher Wants To Regain Control New Teachers by Joel Wagner - May 27, 2010June 30, 201013 Ivy writes: I am in my first year as a Special Education teacher. My class is out of control. Kids are yelling at each other. Nobody is focused on their work. I am yelling and screaming and they are talking back and yelling back at me. Everybody is trying to help me out. Some say I need to be more positive, some say I need to be stronger and more strict. I do not know what to do. As a group, they are against me. The situation is very confrontational. I can not stop them going crazy. The kids know it. They are going crazy but they do not care. Some kids even have a lot of fun of it.
The Evolution of Marching – 1994-1998 [VIDEO] Music Education by Joel Wagner - May 27, 2010June 30, 20100 As we close out the school year and begin looking toward the summer, band directors turn their minds toward marching arts. This year, I'm going through some history and exploring The Evolution of Marching via YouTube. I'm taking you along for the journey as well. As music selections moved away from the more traditional Broadway and Latin Jazz themes that had dominated the early years of drumcorps, corps began focusing more on classical-type (mostly Romantic era and early 20th century) and concert band music. This development continued through the bulk of the 1990s, with the addition of more elaborate props and other visual elements. 1994 - Blue Devils Video unavailable. In 1994, Star of Indiana left DCI and began touring
The Evolution of Marching – 1988-1993 [VIDEO] Music Education by Joel Wagner - May 26, 2010June 30, 20100 As we close out the school year and begin looking toward the summer, band directors turn their minds toward marching arts. This year, I'm going through some history and exploring The Evolution of Marching via YouTube. I'm taking you along for the journey as well. Last time we saw how the Garfield Cadets transformed the marching by speeding things up and adding pass-thrus and of course the famous "Z Pull." If 1983-1987 was about revolutionizing marching style, 1988-1993 was about bucking the traditional musical elements. One of the key innovators in this area was The Star of Indiana, who left DCI following the 1993 season. 1988 - Madison Scouts 1989 - Santa Clara Vanguard 1990 - The
The Evolution of Marching – 1983-1987 [VIDEO] Music Education by Joel Wagner - May 25, 2010June 30, 20100 As we close out the school year and begin looking toward the summer, band directors turn their minds toward marching arts. This year, I’m going through some history and exploring The Evolution of Marching via YouTube. I’m taking you along for the journey as well. So far, we've seen the first 11 years of DCI. In 1983, the Garfield Cadets began their three-year of DCI dominance with some of the most innovative marching drill ever seen. The Blue Devils won in 1986, and the Cadets were back on top in 1987. 1983 - Garfield Cadets 1984 - Garfield Cadets 1985 - Garfield Cadets 1986 - Blue Devils Embedding disabled, click here for the video. However, since every other year was dominated by the Garfield Cadets, here is
The Evolution of Marching – 1977-1982 [VIDEO] Music Education by Joel Wagner - May 24, 2010June 30, 20100 As we close out the school year and begin looking toward the summer, band directors turn their minds toward marching arts. This year, I’m going through some history and exploring The Evolution of Marching via YouTube. I’m taking you along for the journey as well. Yesterday, we saw some classic footage from the first five years of DCI. Today, we'll look at the next six years. 1977 - Blue Devils I can't find a video! I did find one of the Kilties from 1977 (11th Place) though. 1978 - Santa Clara Vanguard Embedding disabled. Click here to watch the excerpt. Here's the 1978 Phantom Regiment (2nd place) finale. 1979 - Blue Devils Video unavailable. Here is the 1979 Guardsmen (7th Place). Notice by this point the "pit" section has
The Evolution of Marching – 1972-1976 [VIDEO] Music Education by Joel Wagner - May 23, 2010June 30, 20100 As we close out the school year and begin looking toward the summer, band directors turn their minds toward marching arts. This year, I'm going through some history and exploring The Evolution of Marching via YouTube. I'm taking you along for the journey as well. Today, we'll look at the first five DCI finals. Since video footage is rare from these days, I am really surprised to be able to find recordings from each of these years. 1972 - Anaheim Kingsmen YouTube Embedding disabled, watch the excerpt here 1973 - Santa Clara Vanguard 1974 - Santa Clara Vanguard 1975 - Madison Scouts Another video is available here but the embedding is disabled. I link to this one because the first is a standstill performance, and this one
The Evolution of Marching – 38 Years of DCI World Champions [VIDEO] Music Education by Joel Wagner - May 22, 2010June 30, 20100 As the school year winds down, band directors invariably begin turning their minds towards the upcoming marching season. This year, I have a 7th grade percussionist who knows a ton of trivia about Drum Corps International. His father used to march and has taught across the country, so he comes to middle school with a much better background of the history of drumming than most students. Over the last few weeks, I've been having some conversations with him and I began to realize that he doesn't know a lot about the old history of marching, and I don't know a lot about recent marching history. So I thought I'd go look through the YouTube archives and watch parts of as
137 Tech Resources For Teachers and Students General by Joel Wagner - May 21, 2010June 30, 20100 Back in March of 2009, I received my first guest post submission from Karen Schweitzer entitled 50 Online Reference Sites for Teachers. At the time, she was barely building her online portfolio by sending out guest posts to edublog across the web. As best as I can tell, So You Want To Teach? was one of the first blogs she submitted articles for. As soon as the article went live, it quickly became one of the most popular pages on the entire blog. In fact, that article alone received some 275 views the first three weeks it was up. At the time, that was huge. For comparison, 14 months later, I posted a guest article 8 Teachers Who Changed History
I Did It! I Completed C25K Personal by Joel Wagner - May 20, 2010June 30, 20100 For the third time this week, I ran 30 minutes nonstop this evening. I walked in a 5K a couple of weeks ago. I am learning a whole lot about myself through the process of running. I will continue posting more updates over at Can Wii Do It? over the next few weeks, if you're interested. To read my latest post, go read Joel: I did it.
8 Teachers Who Changed History General by Melissa Tamura - May 11, 2010August 5, 20161 Throughout history, teachers were making discoveries, taking actions, or participating in events that forever changed the world. Today we'll look briefly at 8 teachers who changed history. Pythagoras was a mathematician, philosopher, and teacher who’s theories are still taught in schools. He’s best known for the Pythagorean Theorem that relates to right triangles, however, he also determined the relationship of math to music and the movement of stars and planets. Later in his life, Pythagoras was a teacher in India and founded a Croatian institute where he taught philosophy. He also founded the Pythagorean Brotherhood, a secret society devoted to the study of mathematics. Known as the person who established the theory of gravity, Sir Isaac Newton was also a
Do What You Can General by Joel Wagner - April 15, 2010June 30, 20103 This year has been one of learning for me. Physical activity has been a struggle for me for years, and so in January when I decided I would set out to run a 5K this spring, it was a shock to pretty much everyone who knows me. The thing that has most intrigued me has been how much I have learned about life just from this one decision. I intend to spend the summer writing about these topics quite a bit. I also plan to dig into some of the other series that I began on the blog and for whatever reason never completed. Needless to say, I have a good bit of reading and writing that I will be
The Art of Slow Slow Slow Running Inspiration by Joel Wagner - April 13, 2010June 30, 20103 I ran 1 mile last night and it took me 18:45. I saw a post on the Couch To 5K's Facebook profile the other day that questioned whether someone made a typo when they said they ran a mile in 33 minutes. They couldn't imagine someone only running one mile in 33 minutes. My contribution to that discussion was pretty good, so I posted it on the Can Wii Do It? blog this evening. Enjoy The Art of Slow Slow Slow Running...