One of the greatest parts of being a band director is that what I do really matters. Beyond the students acquiring a skill of playing an instrument or working together as a team, there is this aesthetic element of education in the arts that is just absent in most every other line of education.

I’m not discounting the importance of grammar or math or science or social studies or athletics or technology education or whatever else might be offered. Were it not for those, I wouldn’t have the amazing opportunities that I have. Plus, Texas law says that students have to pass all of their classes in a grading period before they are even allowed to participate in extracurricular activities….

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…

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…

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…

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 –…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

Are you at the bottom of a pit? Maybe you’re in a place you never thought you would be. Or you never thought you’d be there again. I can’t count the number of times I’ve fallen into a bad habit in teaching. I allow myself to get bogged down with paperwork instead of taking care of it right away. Students ask me questions at the beginning of class and I forget the six magic words that liberate me: “I’m not answering questions right now.”

Oh, you’ve done it too…

Positive changes come and go like the wind most of the time. How do we stick it out and truly persevere? If you know the answer to this question, write a…

This is a video of Dave Ramsey presenting his 7 Baby Steps. Following the summary video are 10 more videos with more specific details. If you haven’t heard Dave Ramsey before, you need to subscribe to his podcast. Now.

The Baby Steps Intro

Budgeting

Baby Steps

Debt Snowball

The Emergency Fund

Retirement Investment

College Savings

Pay Off Mortgage

Be A Giver

Build Wealth

Live Like No One Else

A couple of years ago, I saw a few videos on YouTube of Taylor Mali reciting some of his poetry. I reposted one of them last night, and thought I would dig around and see if I could find some more. Here’s what I came up with.

The Impotence of Proofreading

On Girls Lending Pens

Reading Allowed

I Could Be A Poet

Speak With Conviction

Miracle Workers

Tony Steinberg: Brave Seventh-Grade Viking Warrior

By Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com

He says the problem with teachers is, “What’s a kid going to learn
from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?”
He reminds the other dinner guests that it’s true what they say about
teachers:
Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.

I decide to bite my tongue instead of his
and resist the temptation to remind the other dinner guests
that it’s also true what they say about lawyers.

Because we’re eating, after all, and this is polite company.

“I mean, you¹re a teacher, Taylor,” he says.
“Be honest. What do you make?”

And I wish he hadn’t done that
(asked me to be honest)
because, you see, I…

I recently came across a video on TwiTip about Monica Rankin, a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, who was using Twitter in one of her classes this semester. The video is below.

I emailed Dr. Rankin to see if I could get some thoughts on the experiment following the completion of the semester. She told me that she is in the middle of several research projects presently, but she did send me to a page on her website that summarizes the experiment. The site also includes some other links of interest at the bottom. If you’re interested in learning more, check out Some general comments on the “Twitter Experiment.”

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.

I recently was reminded of some videos I’ve seen before, but that was over a year and a half ago. These numbers are awe-inspiring. It is also humbling to realize how fast things are progressing in the world. It’s amazing to realize that the world I knew when I was growing up in the 90s is so amazingly different from the world we know now!

If nothing else, this is a thought-provoking video. Perhaps a bit off-topic, in fact, I’m not even posting this to raise a political conversation. However, I would be interested in hearing from some of the social studies teachers out there. What kinds of things have you done to help your students overcome the ignorance of facts that these twelve interviewees demonstrate?

UPDATE 11-30-08 Great comments so far. As I said, this was not presented as a political commentary, but rather a springboard for discussion on teaching critical-thinking and research skills in a social studies context. I want to be fair and provide this link to Flunking the Electoral College for further look (and perhaps a bit less biased study).

I like my principal. In fact, I like every principal I have worked with and for. I read a news article today that concerns me and makes me glad that I have had great administrators to work for thus far in my career.

Then I got home and looked for a few more. Here’s what I came up with.

• Teachers say principal threatened to kill them if TAKS test scores didn’t improve
• Private school director’s explicit poems draw fire
• Principal on leave after kids eat on floor

I also found this video. Crazy stuff.

Just in time for March Madness

Watch this video

What did you just learn?
How can you relate it to classroom management? Deep, man. Deep.

In case you haven’t already seen it, this post of teacher misbehavior caught on cell phones from Dangerously Irrelevant has been making the rounds. I saw it on Seth Godin’s blog, of all places.

Seth’s assessment is that the teachers have a marketing problem. Cam Beck thinks the problem is deeper than simply marketing. He says that the public schools have a product problem. I think we may be getting at the core of the issue with that. It’s uncomfortable to address, but somehow it needs to be addressed.

Personally, I see it as a combination of the two. Many public schools have a definite product problem. Many teachers have a marketing problem. My assertion is that this has been…