I’m sure you all know it, you all hated it and many of you even lied over it…..the dreaded PRACTICE RECORD.  You likely heard your music teachers try to explain its purpose, telling you that practice makes perfect, but actually perhaps those music teachers were the ones that were not completely being honest the importance of [...]

Please accept my apologies – this post is a little jumpy…BUT…let me start with classroom management.  I feel fortunate to report that after teaching for almost 20 years – my worst classroom management experience remains very clear, not a lot of events but that one something that continues to shape and haunt me as a teacher.  [...]

Social media and the internet have provided people with greater abilities to connect.  As pointed out in Eli Pariser’s , Beware Online “Filter Bubbles” Ted Talks some of the topics of these connections may be quite trivial, but as proven in the recent uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa,  some of the topics of these connections [...]

Although I have found innumerable posts on flipped classrooms in almost every other imaginable subject area, I have yet to find a single one on flipping a band class.   I was very excited to find Clintondale High School , an entirely flipped highschool in Michigan and thought for sure this would present me with my flipped band model, [...]

  “10,000 hours to master anything” – that’s according to Malcolm Gladwell anyway!  While many have plenty to say about the exact number of hours it takes to master something, the 10,000 hour rule does make me think about the number of hours I have spent practicing -  practicing music, scuba diving, and even technology.  You see when I [...]

  Although my colleague Chris Fox may have positive thoughts and sounds of swishes when he thinks of nets, for me, my first thought of nets, are of the destruction that many nets have caused our world oceans.  For me I think of the number of nets I have seen while diving, the nets that suffocate the coral [...]

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.  ~Victor Hugo

Musicians take pride in the fact that music expresses far more than what words could ever do.  So what happens when you try to teach music and you need to put into words all the affects and meanings that [...]

Sadly most of us will likely never be ever to own an island, but thanks to a great free, no sign-up required website, Isle of Tune anyone who can’t afford to buy their own island will now at least be able to build one.  At first glance one might presume Isle of Tune to be yet another gaming site, [...]

As a music teacher I am always concerned about listening.   Especially for musicians, listening to sound is very different than hearing sound.   Listening involves thinking, processing, evaluating, understanding and engaging with the music that is being played.   But in the world we live today, do students really engage in the music they hear?  …[Read more]

I’ve always enjoyed taking advantage of the sensible opportunities to integrate music with other disciplines.  Having studied mathematics in university I was especially excited to celebrate Pi Day with some of my music students this year.  We had been working on an extensive composition project involving twelve tone music and thanks to the…[Read more]

Tis’ the season for thinking about cool techie gifts and gadgets and upon watching the cool new video North Point’s iBand , I have even greater visions of iPads and iPhones prancing through my head. Amazing…how could anyone not want an iPad or iPhone after watching North Point Community Church’s performance.  When I showed the video to [...]

The sharing culture that motivates Creative Commons is one that I find easy to jump on board with.  I love the fact that our world is changing and becoming a more collaborative, creative, expressive free place and believe that this movement will help positively change our society and the world that we live in.   Having said so [...]

Well the performances are done, the students did the work and I have to admit I’m rather proud of the results.    Here are  a couple of the final products, hopefully for your listening pleasure. Flute Quartet Mixed Quartet The project took a little bit of time to set up but it was well worth the effort.  There were lots [...]

A colleague and I often joke that we live on Sesame Street .  In my job as a music teacher, I am on the stage frequently and seen by a lot of our community.  They know me, but I don’t always know them and often they are “the people that you meet when you’re walking down the street, [...]