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Well, I’m sitting here in a motel room in San Antonio. I am trading some of my time with a band director friend. I came here to teach trumpet and horn sectionals yesterday since I’m on spring break this week and he had it last week. In turn, he’s going to come in next week and clinic my band. Basically what that means is that he’s going to rehearse them for two hours and tell them stuff they can do to make it better.
It also gives me a chance to step back and listen more closely. When I’m conducting and everything, I hear things, but not everything. This is why I record my band regularly. As an aside, if you have an iPhone, I have found that iTalk Recorder works great for my purposes. Plus it’s free. For that matter, you could use it to record voice memos, song ideas, speeches, etc. For free, it’s hard to beat.
I’ve written about clinics before, but I’m wondering what other educators do that is similar. Is it something that is isolated to the music business? Bringing someone in from a different school to teach your group? Do coaches bring in other coaches to work with teams? Do English teachers bring in other English teachers to teach a specific story or something? Maybe the closest correlation would be with taking field trips? Like a science class will go to a museum or observatory or something. I don’t know. Interesting.
So what are you doing over spring break this year?
Oh yeah, you have got to check out the Carnival of Education today. As soon as I get settled at my parents house this evening (after some disc golf with friends and church), I will be sure to dig in to it a bit more.
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I’ve spent my spring break trying to load a video produced by my students into my classroom website. I’ve yet to figure out how to do it. Youtube and other video servers can not be seen at school. Every time I load it to teachertube it seems to big. Any suggestions for websites/video players I could do at school?
I’ve invited guest speakers into the classroom and usually they reinforce what I’ve already taught the children. . . they offer first hand accounts for the lecture or lesson. Another thing I’ve is co-teach a class, it definitely offers students different perspectives. . .
I like the idea of recording my lesson’s i might do this one day to test myself and see what I can to improve. Thanks for the suggestion.
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Hey, just a reminder that today is the last day to get in on March Mathness! Fill out a bracket at http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/group?groupID=7805&entryID=105947 for the chance to win bragging rights AND a nice 14 disc DVD set from The History Channel!!
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I love the idea of using your Spring Break to do something like that. I would love to say that I could do something as hands on, but I will at least be doing something education related. I’ll be working on the website for my new education publishing company and writing my first teaching book. I wish I were doing it in San Antonio though. :)
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Hey it’s good you were here today and not last week during my spring break when it rained alllllllll week! Hope you are enjoying our fine city this week!
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Miss Teacha: I recorded myself during my first two years some and it was harsh when I went back and listened. I would recommend doing that from time to time. I’ve recorded myself a few times this year (usually I just record the band), and it is sobering as well. But it’s good.
As far as cooperative teaching, I do that regularly in the band program I’m in. We have two directors at my school and I will warm his band up from time to time, or take sections out, or whatever. When we’re working on sight reading, I will do the sight reading and he listens and watches around the room and offers suggestions to the students afterwards.
Now the next question, is anyone brave enough to record themselves teaching and put it on their blog? Eek…
Mister T: I’ve already signed up. Looks like we have 20 in the competition. Look out!
Tina: I love San Antonio. I went to Chuy’s on 281 with a friend Tuesday night. Nothing like good ol’ Tex-Mex.
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