There's been alot of discussion on the Band Directors Group about transitions. I think this point in the year (late fall) is especially stressful for teachers in a new position. Why do I say this? Because it's a tough time in the year for any teacher, so it can only be...
Yesterday our district had its annual classical festival for band, orchestra and choir. The guest conductor for orchestra was Don Schleicher from the University of Illinois, and I took the opportunity to spend several hours watching him rehearse. What really made an...
You don't. If students are not engaged, stop teaching. Wait for them to engage. But if I'm always stopping and waiting, how will we get anything done? Do you really think you are getting anything done by teaching while students are ignoring you? Actually you are...
The Band Directors Group on Facebook has been a great way to "crowd-source" solutions to many challenges. Due to the fact that we all understand how conflict can wear us down, our members are quick to offer up ideas that bring relief to the immediate problem. In...
Steve Jobs enabled us to interact with our world in ways that are at once both powerful and elegant. If you use Apple products, you know this. But even if you don't use Apple products Steve made your stuff better too. He raised the bar for all companies...
photo credit Let me just say it: I think that competitive marching band can be a very beneficial activity for students. Many of our students are not in a sport, and marching band can be a great way (sometimes their only opportunity) to experience competition prior to...
photo credit Today I was talking with a student about a piece that she is working on in a colleague's class. It's a killer...fast, technical, and really exciting for both the performer and the listener. You could tell that she really wants to get it right, and she was...
Once upon a time there were a few ways you could improve your teaching in a meaningful way: Go to graduate school Attend a convention Read an article or book Within the last year, a fourth option came into being: Engage in meaningful dialogue with the entire profession...
The Grass Is Greener: Learning from Other Countries 18 September 2011 24 No Comment (A version of this post is published in Teachers College Record under Handan Xuebu: What We Can and Should Learn from Other Countries) In Paris they just simply...
We should not be pursuing standardization since we have a century of evidence that it doesn’t work—and logic shows that standard doesn’t match our ideals as a free people—but we should be pursuing challenging opportunities for every child, which in no way stops us from...
"My teaching is perfectly designed for the learning results I'm currently getting." Sort of makes you think about what needs to happen if you want to increase student learning, doesn't it? Oftentimes we don't think *we* need to change anything about our teaching...
This is a very intersting summary from: Committee on the Foundations of Assessment, James W. Pellegrino, Naomi Chudowsky, and Robert Glaser, editors, Board on Testing and Assessment, Center for Education, National Research Council (2001) A few very interesting excerpts...
