This week, I went to San Antonio for the Texas Bandmasters Association convention. I attended some really good sessions and took a few notes on my iPhone. Without spending a lot of time to expand on these notes right now, I thought I would post them so maybe someone else can benefit from them. After the convention, I’ll sit down later and flesh them out a bit more. Here are the notes from Days 2 and 3.

• Meet with parents prior to testing 5th graders
• Parent orientation at beginning of year 4-6 weeks into school year
• Take a class period to discuss procedures
• Teach basic reading skills and introduce counting system early (8th notes asap)
• Open cases on the

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This week, I am in San Antonio for the Texas Bandmasters Association convention. I attended some really good sessions and took a few notes on my iPhone. Without spending a lot of time to expand on these notes right now, I thought I would post them so maybe someone else can benefit from them. After the convention, I’ll sit down later and flesh them out a bit more. Here’s Day 1.

• Raise your level of absurdity. If something doesn’t sound stupid, you won’t address it.
• Come up with a warmup rotation. Same concepts per day of week. Lip flexibility, scales, tone production, articulations, intervals/listening
• Same with journals. Music appreciation, rhythmic dictation, music/rhythm copying, free writing, theory exercises
• All bad

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This is a guest post by Drew, who currently teaches 7th Grade Texas History in the San Antonio area, where he has taught since 2004.

Maybe this job doesn’t pay enough for those with heavy material needs. But, working here has helped me with the most important part of my life.

10. Family – My comfort level with my material for class has improved each and every year. I spent Friday nights, usually until the wee Saturday morning hours, setting up lesson plans for the next week. I was never able to get ahead on my work. I had two preps and no lesson plans from other teachers to guide me. By November of this school year, I had stopped bringing…

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…

For the first time since started my blog three years ago, I am going to be taking a break for at least a month. No writing, no checking stats, no emails, no nothing. In fact, I’m pulling the plug on my cable modem as soon as I finish writing this.

This is not just a blog issue, but I am going to be away from Facebook almost entirely for a month. In fact, I deleted Facebook from my phone a couple of weeks ago and noticed a substantial improvement to my productivity at work. My free time isn’t spent checking to see who else is slacking off at work, but rather in avoiding the temptation to slack myself. I’ve been…

So here’s the situation:

You’ve been teaching for quite a while. You’ve pretty much gotten a handle on classroom management, paperwork, classroom rules, and any number of the other day-to-day tasks we encounter. But how many of these teaching vices do you struggle with? I know I’m not guiltless in these areas. In fact, I’ve had run-ins with most of these. Not all of them, of course.

1. Luxuria (extravagance or lust)
   While most people think of lust in a sexual kind of way, in the original context, it essentially meant excessive love of others. Even so, some teachers take this one quite literally and end up losing their jobs over abusive relationships with their students.
2. Gula (gluttony)

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I am leaving tomorrow after school to go to the annual Texas Music Educators Association clinic/convention in San Antonio. I’m not taking my laptop with me and won’t be accessing a computer besides my iPhone, so I will be away from blogging for the rest of the week. I don’t want to spend a long time here, but I thought I would note that Thursday marks the third anniversary of So You Want To Teach?

This has been a fun project. I’ve learned a whole lot about web development, myself, teaching, and the art of blogging through the building and maintaining of this site. It has become more of a burden than I ever imagined, but I do enjoy the…

I have been getting more and more into sharing information via Twitter recently. With 1,300 RSS subscribers, and only 850 Twitter followers, I know that not all of my readers are getting all of the links that I share. I thought it might be fun to share with you some of the links that I came across last month and shared on Twitter. If you aren’t following me on Twitter yet, you should start: @sywtt

Also, if you’re on Google Wave and would like to add me, feel free! My address is soyouwanttoteach.com@googlewave.com

• 5 great resources to find out about Google Wave
• 5 Reasons Google Wave Is Not Ready
• 5 Step Change Strategy
• Five Technology Lessons Every Teacher Can

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On the day that the iPhone 3G was released, I rushed out to the local AT&T Store to pick up my very own. I was excited, so I rushed home and wrote 10 Awesome iPhone Apps (Band Director Style) and listed all of the cool things that I was going to download and use in class. Well, a year has passed and things have changed somewhat. So I thought I’d go back and look at the list. I was somewhat surprised to see how it has changed and how some of those apps never panned out to be what I thought they would be.

Even so, I am thrilled at the purchase of my iPhone and continue to find it…

I don’t use a whole lot of social media outlets, but I know a lot of my readers do. Over the last few months, I have added a few things to make sharing SYWTT articles easier. I’ve also added some rating type things where you can tell me how bad (or good) an article is. I find that Facebook and Twitter are by far the websites I spend most of my time on when I’m online. In fact, I mostly use Facebook at home and Twitter on my iPhone while I’m out.

Up to this point, I have used them mostly for personal things. I have also noticed, however, that my use of Google Reader and other RSS type things…

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I gotta come clean. I’ve texted while driving. Quite a bit. I saw this video this morning thanks to DetentionSlip.org.

I’ve Facebooked while driving. I’ve looked up maps while driving. I’ve Twittered while driving. I’ve just flat out used my iPhone for almost everything it can possibly do while driving.

I don’t think I’m gonna do that any more.

Next time I do, I’ll watch this video and remind myself of how dumb of an idea it is.

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…

Think back 5 years. March 2004. It feels like an eternity ago! For me, that was when I really hit the wall. That was when my head director told me that my contract would not be renewed. I resigned in lieu of nonrenewal. I spent the remainder of the semester learning like crazy. In fact, that is the experience that eventually formed the inspiration to begin this blog (read more here). But that’s really not the point of this email, the thought just struck me and I realized how quickly time passes and how much I’ve grown since then.

5 years ago, there was no MySpace (until August 2003), no Twitter, no Facebook. Nada. Blogs were beginning to take off…

1. Salvation by grace alone, through faith (Ephesians 2:8)
2. Heaven
3. Opportunities to preach
4. Playing music
5. Writing music
6. Creating music
7. My pastor
8. My church
9. Having the best job in the world
10. My students
11. My students’ parents
12. My hearing
13. My intellect
14. Air conditioning
15. Heaters
16. Running water
17. Health
18. Health insurance
19. Life insurance
20. Paychecks
21. Freedom from discrimination
22. Freedom from starvation
23. Freedom from religious persecution
24. Freedom from torture
25. The Declaration of Independence
26. The Constitution
27. The United States of America
28. Gospel For Asia
29. Waking up this morning
30. Stars
31. Mountains
32. Flowers
33. Sunlight
34. Moonlight
35. Birds singing
36. Silence
37. Tacos tapatios
38. Making salsa
39. Breakfast tacos
40. Oatmeal raisin cookies
41. Pineapple empanadas
42. Singing at the top of my lungs when nobody is looking or listening
43. Google Calendar
44. Google Reader
45. My readers
46. Comments

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For an updated list of iPhone apps I actually use in band class after over  year of use, check out 20 Ways I Really Use My iPhone To Teach Band Class

I haven’t gotten a new cell phone in the last two years, so I am excited about this opportunity to upgrade. My decision to buy an iPhone was anything but spur-of-the-moment. In fact, I have been planning on getting one for just about 5 months. I was going to get it shortly after my band earned Sweepstakes at the UIL Concert & Sight Reading contest back in April. But I heard rumors of a new version of iPhone coming out then, so I waited.

I have been eagerly…

1. Freedom from oppression
2. Doing what I love and making money for it
3. Freedom of faith
4. The Bible
5. Hymns
6. My family
7. My friends
8. My dogs
9. My home
10. My blog
11. Clarinet
12. Learning
13. The opportunity to learn
14. Dave Ramsey
15. My iPod
16. My laptop
17. Summer “break”
18. Spring break
19. Christmas break
20. Trumpet
21. My students
22. Making music
23. Mariachi
24. Text messages
25. My iPhone 3G that I’ll be rewarding myself with next week
26. WordPress
27. The color blue
28. Enchiladas
29. Cheesecake
30. Texas
31. Drum & Bugle Corps
32. Preaching
33. Teaching
34. Accomplishing things
35. Creating things
36. The feeling of being organized
37. Water
38. Horn
39. Making progress
40. Learning to play golf
41. IHOP
42. Winter
43. Rain
44. Clouds
45. Happy memories
46. Abstract Art
47. Shostakovich
48. The look on someone’s face when they are learning something
49. The look on someone’s face

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