AMusEd

We discuss how each of us recruit and grow our programs as well as the unique challeges that each of us face based on our specific schools and student deomgraphics.

We sit down with our friends Kevin Diggins and Amanda Poon, both of whom attended Holy Names to earn a Masters of Music in Music Education with a Kodaly emphasis. They discuss how they fold the Kodaly method into their teaching in general music and elementary and middle school choir and band.

No guest this week as we check in on Olin's favorite topic to debate: which is more important in Music education, the process or its product.

This week we re-visit general music, this time with a 3rd year teacher from the Washoe County School district in Nevada.

We sit down with Bethany Moslen, the Assistant Director of the Cal Aggie Marching Band-uh to talk about teaching special populations. Bethany has a M.Ed. in Special Education and our conversation leans towards how that affects her teaching practices as a music educator.

We invite our friend Shane on to talk about his first year teaching general music and elementary band.

We met up with Dr. Seggelke in McCormick place, so there's a bit of background noise in this episode. Dr. Seggelke is the director of bands at Illinois State University and currently serves as the artistic director and conductor of the San Francisco Wind Symphony. His bio can be found here: http://www.seggelke.info/wordpress/?page_id=2  

We arranged an interview with Dr. Chapman while we were in Chicago. Dr. Chapman is the director of bands at Oregon State, where Olin got to study under him for two years. His bio can be found on their website http://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/users/christopher-chapman

In which we discuss our experiences at Midwest. All of the materials and handouts from the midwest clinic that we reference will be available on the Midwest Clinic's website: Midwestclinic.org

This week we tackle some stocking-stuffer sized topics regarding the end of the semester. Midwest recap is coming next week, followed by our interviews.

Olin, Veronica and John are headed to Chicago today for the Midwest Band and Orchestra clinic. On this episode we discss the value of local and national professional organizations and their annual conferences.

This is the first installment as we try to work through the new National Core Arts Standards and unpack them. Also on the table is how we incorporate the standards into our teaching and how we can do better.

We address the challenges we're facing and what we're doing to improve as teachers over this year and into next semester. The followup of how exactly we're doing with that will be coming in a blogpost on the website. aMusEdCast.org

This week we invited Clyde Quick to join us and he brought with him the desire to talk about who we are teaching rather than what we teach. This is brought about by watching his student teacher in the classroom and the work she is asked to do.

Our expected guest called in sick this week, so we turned the topic around to do a self check-in and figure out how we stay healthy and focused as each semester wears on.

This episode we evaluate our music selection process. This isn't a "You should be playing these pieces" sort of deal. Again, we're not experts, and we each have our own way of choosing music, mostly based on the needs of our program and our sudents.

Here it is: Episode 10! We're missing Sus this week but the topic is focused on Music Education Advocacy regarding both the public and students (current and prospective) as well as our beefs we have with the way Music ed advocacy has been done in the past.

Updated and audio corrected. 

Basically this is an "It Gets Better" for teachers in the middle of BTSA or other induction programs. The discussion leads to assessment and NCLB (this year is the year every student is to be proficient, according to the language of the law).

This week we take a break from being band nerds. Susanna leads a discussion on vocal health and choral techniques.

We bring on another guest, Tom Slabaugh the director at Davis High School to speak as a percussionist and band director and answer our percussion questions.

We touch on a few topics that could easily take an entire episode for themselves; focused more on the parts of our job that happen outside of the classroom. Olin talks about what it was like to host 10 high school marching bands and the work it took to pull of his Band Day. Sus shares horror stories regarding travel and busses.

This week we go over the some of the warm-up and technical exercsises we use in our ensembles as well as review some of the literature available as method books for beginning, intermediate and advanced instrumental ensembles.   The audio quality is poor this week, but the content quality is top notch!

We invite a guest, Travis Maslen the director at Christian Brothers High School, who has tons of questions (for Olin) about Marching Bands. 

We discuss the differences in experience between student teaching and our first weeks in our own classrooms, as well as discovering what motivates our students and a few tips and tricks we've pick up along the way.