Summer is a great time to contemplate ideas or strategies you may wish to implement next year. In this context, I’d encourage everyone to consider how they develop student leadership in their programs.
My guest this week is student leadership guru Duane Huff. While Duane’s focus is high school marching band, his insight on student leadership can benefit any band, orchestra, or choir program.
While we all know we should devote some of our precious rehearsal time to sight singing, many of us (especially us instrumental teachers) don’t do it. If you feel like you already don’t have enough time to do everything you want to accomplish in class, perhaps you’re hesitant to take time away from that to help kids sing, when that’s not folks expect at your concerts.
My guest for this episode is music technology guru and master educator Katie Wardrobe. Her Midnight Music website offers amazing resources for music educators including help with all things tech – from lesson plans to general advice.
I invited Katie to join me for this episode because she is a wizard with one of the most common pieces of classroom technology: Google Classroom.
If you’ve ever wondered about which technology you should be using in your classroom, this episode is for you. Joining me are two of my most tech-savvy contacts, Stephen Keys and Ryan Sargent.
Stephen is a Google certified educator and trainer, an Apple teacher, a Flipgrid Ambassador, and a Soundtrap certified educator.
The school year is almost over – and in my case, things are ending with a bang! Three weeks ago the band teacher at my school had surgery and needed a week off. I agreed to sub for him while he was out, especially since I’ll be taking over for him next year when he retires.
Many music educators leave college planning to lead a secondary school music program, but find employment teaching elementary music. In our previous episode, master elementary music teacher David Row and I had a great discussion about how to get started with an elementary program. As it turned out, much of David’s advice applies to the secondary classroom as well!
Be honest: you had a dream job in mind when you graduated with your music education degree. Maybe you had your heart set on leading a major national marching program as a head director. Maybe you wanted to teach beginning strings. Unfortunately, your ideal position may not have been available when you did a job search.
I’m a huge fan of parent booster groups. They can really help promote your program, make fundraising easier, and engage your community. Joining me to talk about booster groups this week is Ryan Crabtree, president-elect of the Colorado Bandmasters Association. More importantly, however, Ryan is my daughter’s band director. Since I’m an active member of Ryan’s parent booster organization, you’ll also get some behind-the-scenes glimpses at how and why Ryan’s approach works so well.
Led by the National Association for Music Education, Music in Our Schools Month (MIOSM) was created to demonstrate the powerful role that quality music programs play in the lives of young people. This month we highlight how critical it is to make music education available to every student. Your mission is to go out there and promote the heck out of your program!
In this very special episode of the Music Ed Mentor Podcast, we welcome our first GRAMMY-winning guest! I’m excited to share my conversation with Melissa Salguero, who was recently named the GRAMMY Music Educator of the Year. You may recognize Melissa’s voice from Episode 12, where she shared tips on how to get the most from music education conferences.