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 … Read more
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 … Read more
My life has changed quite a bit since December 1st. Today, I want to look back on some of the things that have happened in the life of this blog, as well as some things that have happened in the life of Joel. Blogging changes The number of readers continues to climb (164 as of … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
I will begin setting up and writing in a Music Education blog soon. The idea was to include Music Education content on this blog, but I think that might alienate a handful of the readers and that is the last thing I want to do. So when it gets up and running, I will link … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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. … Read more