Midyear check in!

Oh, you sad, neglected blog.

At the beginning of this year, I posted my professional goals.  I intended to use that as a springboard to document the various things I did this year to meet those goals.  This implies that I would be posting more frequently.  Sadly, this has not been the case.  Something about working 4 jobs and always having to be somewhere does not lend itself to writing blog posts.  Such is life.

Back to those professional goals, though.  I've actually done some things with them.

First of all, I tackled my file cabinet as intended.  I now have my one functional file drawer organized in a useful manner. The first section is for emergency sub plans and procedures, with a laminated set of class lists, just in case.  The great thing about this is that if something comes up and I am not able to be at school unexpectedly (which means something along the lines of... a bear attack, I suppose?), there are enough plans and activities in that drawer (and in the office) to keep my classes busy for several days (while my limbs are reattached, I suppose).  I also tossed the old paperwork that was serving no purpose. Honestly, I don't know why it took 5 years to scrap the fundraising paperwork from 2009, but apparently it did.  I also organized my IEP/504/Medical Alert folders so they were clear and consistent and easier to access, put my copy masters together, and rearranged a few other categories as well.

Essentially, I feel like I started using a file cabinet like a grown-up.  Now if only I had a hanging frame for more than one drawer....

What you can't see is the frustration caused by trying to file things that have no place to be filed.  Argh.

The two middle drawers still have my pool noodle rhythm pieces, I need to find a time to use those again soon.

The bottom drawer is mostly sound-related stuff - microphones, cables, microphone boxes, etc. Some day I will go back through this and make sure everything in that drawer is organized, too.  But not today.

Second goal - organization of my table/desk space and mailboxes!

I am not going to show a picture of these.  They're currently a big jumbled mess.  This is partly due to just having a concert last night, and partly due to me being a mess when it comes to organization.  In some ways the switch to a smaller table has helped.  It frees up a little space in the room, and limits the surface area that is able to be cluttered.  In other ways, it didn't make a difference.  I still find myself with piles, I still end up perching things precariously next to my laptop, and sometimes that is a recipe for disaster.  However, thanks to the laws of physics, those piles are a bit smaller than they had been.

Yes, please.  But not the chair. It looks uncomfortable.

The mailboxes have worked great so far, especially since I have not done my usual routine with student folders.  I need to get on those folders, since my mailboxes are pretty much filled with student work.  I also have some things stacked on top of those boxes, but not as badly as it has been in the past.  Baby steps, I suppose.

Also, I ended up taking a large shipping label, measuring and marking out the small pieces I needed, and cutting them out and attaching them to the small binder clips to make labels for each class.  I think it looks pretty darn good, especially since my handwriting is a bit suspect at times.

Third - the hot rod music cart!  So having a PVC tube with drum sticks in it has been useful.  The problem I have run into is that zip ties and smooth PVC aren't exactly the most secure means of attachment.  What has happened is that one zip tie has slid off, which caused the whole thing to tilt.  The good news is that makes the opening point toward me when I stand at the cart.  The bad news is it also flops around and sticks out kind of awkwardly.  What I think I will do is drill a couple small holes in the side of the pipe, then lag bolt it to the cart to hold it in position at a slight angle.  Every now and then when I (or a student) move the cart those sticks will catch on something.  Not a huge problem, but fairly annoying.  Also, I don't like my slick cart looking kind of ghetto.

Fourth - greater student independence.  This is definitely a work in progress, but I have in many ways increased the things I have students do on their own exponentially.  Sometimes I still have to spell things out in ridiculously literal terms, but most of the time I can give a direction and set the kids to it.  It usually works out as planned, but not always.  One of the most helpful things in this area is definitely the use of band and strings students as helpers in general music. These are the kids who spend the most time in my room, so they are the most familiar with things.  They're also less likely to do silly things that they shouldn't, so I am able to trust them with more responsibility.  One more reason parents should encourage their kids to learn an instrument.


I have a confession to make.  It's terrible, yet funny all at the same time.

Thankfully, this is not my confession.

Funny.  But not mine.

One of my ongoing goals is to become more organized, to keep ahead of messes, to avoid creating piles, etc.

I had a student a few days ago ask why my room was so messy.

I kind of hung my head and mumbled "...I know..."

The good news is that I had it mostly sorted out with a couple days.  The bad news is that the struggle is very real and continues.  However, for my two remaining professional development credits I plan on taking a course on practical classroom organization strategies.  Hopefully if the course is structured like I understand it to be it will be a better resource than looking at music ed blogs and Pinterest.  If not, I'll at least have two credits out of it and my room won't be any worse organizationally.

If you have a great organization system, would you be so kind as to share it?  I feel that all teachers can benefit from the ideas of others, especially in our own personal area of weakness.

Until next time, keep up that good work, folks!

TeachersPayTeachers Sale Extended!

Good snowy morning!

Ok, I'll admit it, I am NOT thrilled about the snow that is currently falling outside.  Partly because I need clear part of my roof to avoid making the leak worse that I discovered during the last snow melt.  But mostly because we were just getting back to having everyone back into the routines of school.  Things were finally getting back to normal, projects were underway, learning was happening.... And now... more snow.

Sigh.

But there is a bright side to today.  TeachersPayTeachers has extended their Teachers Are Heroes sale another day.  They are offering up to 28% off sitewide for an extra day!

Thankfully, teachers are the kind of hero that doesn't wear tights.  Well, mostly.

For me, that means that you can snag absolutely everything in my store for 28% off using the discount code HEROES at checkout.  Want to save almost $3 on music education resources?  Try the Great Big Boomwhacker and Orff Collection!  Looking for some beginning band arrangments?  How about Chameleon or Kookaburra?  You could also go straight to my storefront and browse the items that are on sale for less than a dollar! 

So hopefully this TpT sale will help keep you warm on a snowy Winter's day.  And fingers are crossed that the snow stops soon and melts this afternoon and we're back on track tomorrow. (A teacher can hope, right?)

Teachers Pay Teachers Sale!

Greetings!  I just wanted to make sure anyone and everyone knows about the upcoming TeachersPayTeachers sale - Teachers are Heroes!

On Wednesday, February 25th, everything sitewide is going to be 10% off using promo code HEROES, and many stores will be an additional discount up to 20%.  My store is going to be 20% every item, so by combining the two discounts you can save 28% on anything I have listed.  This is a great opportunity if you're looking at possibly purchasing any of my Boomwhacker resources or beginning band or orchestra arrangements.  Those are the most expensive items in my store, so this is a great chance to scoop them up at a discount.  Here are direct links to each item:

Boomwhackers Introduction Powerpoint

Mary Had a Little Lamb Boomwhacker

Boomwhacker Song Collection #1

Boomwhacker Song Collection #1 with Heart Beats

Boomwhacker Song Collection #1 with Notation

Boomwhacker Song Collection #2 (Pentatonic Songs)

Great Big Boomwhacker Collection

Orff Instrument Bar Labels with Boomwhacker Colors

Big Rock Candy Mountain for Violin

Chameleon for Elementary Band

Kookaburra for Elementary Band


Alternately, you can click the link below to go directly to my storefront:

Have a great week, everyone!

Wow, that's a bit of a break....

Let me start off by apologizing to my followers - all both of you.  I did not intend to take such a long break from my blog, it just kind of happened.  So with that said, here's a quick summary of what I've had going on this school year:

- I started the year with a student intern named Grace, and she had some of the most original ideas for elementary music I've ever seen.  We did an activity with a loop pedal for her second observation and had the students create a loop-based composition using improvised body percussion and vocal sounds.

- I have students who are struggling like never before to play brass instruments.  Two trombones and a trumpet, all three who started at the same time; one of the trombones plays everything too low, the other trombone and trumpet play everything too high.  It's making for a bit of a beginning band struggle.

- I was observed by my principal doing concert prep.  Very strange.  We dissected the form of one of their concert pieces which made for a very useful lesson, but I'm a little concerned it cost me some valuable time that could have been spent on performing and rehearsing.  The neat thing is that I  think I did the best lesson on form that I have ever done, and I will absolutely use it as a touchstone throughout the year.  (Also pretty awesome is that the write-up for my observation was overwhelmingly positive - we'll see how that comes up in the post-observation conference.)

- I have second grade students working on rhythmic fluency using pool noodle notes as well as a worksheet I created.  They are using the noodles to work out rhythms in three dimensions and getting used to drawing notes on the paper, which is a pairing of ideas I got from Tracy King over at Mrs. King Rocks.  If you haven't already, go check out her blog and then her Teachers Pay Teachers store, they're both pretty fantastic.

- First grade and Kindergarten have been working on found sounds, body percussion, and enhancing stories with sound effects and music.  This is especially great around this time of year as I have found many great Halloween-related activities.  As a side note, I have no students at my school with any kind of religious or cultural barriers to celebrating the various holidays throughout the year; I cannot begin to tell you how much easier that makes my job.

My beginning band and strings groups are making progress, painful though it is to listen to at times.  My choir is off to a good start, though I suspect I could be pushing them a little harder.  We have honor chorus starting this week, which I am really looking forward to (aside from fighting traffic to make it to the rehearsals on time).  In about 2 1/2 weeks we have our fourth and fifth grade concert, which should be interesting.  Here's to hoping we pull it off in time!

So that's what's going on in my world, how about yours?

Forgotten Instrument Records

I don't know about you, but a kid who forgets their instrument is the bane of my existence.  For some reason, printing out a monthly calendar that shows EVERY SINGLE DAY a kid will need their instrument isn't clear enough.  For some reason, having classes meet on the same days EVERY WEEK isn't regular enough.  For some reason, kids seem to think "I was in a rush." is a good reason to forget their instrument.

Ugh.

Incidentally, the worst part is when it's my private students who forget.  Because clearly you won't need the instrument that you are paying someone to tutor you individually on.  Sigh.

But I digress.

I have been trying to come up with a solution to this problem since day one of my teaching career.  I've written letters home, sent home form notes, sent home handwritten notes, sent emails, made phone calls, written student names on the board, included it as a comment in report cards, had face-to-face conversations with parents... You name it, I've probably tried it.  I even had kids copying out of the dictionary (regular and the Harvard Dictionary of Music).  Nothing seems to truly work.

So I am going to try something I just stumbled across.  The No Instrument Binder.  This is less a means of prevention (which I am still looking for) and more a means of tracking.  This was originally intended as a No Homework Binder, and the idea came from the blog "Teach - Bake - Love."  The original idea was to have each student write their name and the reason why they forgot their homework, and then put their homework in the binder.  This helps with organization, tracking student work, keeping up with grades, etc.  The only catch is that as a music teacher, I really don't assign "homework" per se.

So what I am going to try is to have kids write their name and the date in the binder, along with the reason why their instrument is not in class.  I think to start out I will allow students to write "I was in a rush." as their reason, but I suspect that once it becomes obvious how many of those lame excuses I get I will require a little more thought to go into it.  Hopefully this works better than my patented "Mr. Earley is disappointed and frustrated by your lack of responsibility" look that I give.  We'll see.  Check back for developments, I plan to create this over Spring Break and give it a limited run to the end of the school year.

Product reviews and thoughts

Happy Daylight Savings Time!  Or, as many of my teacher friends think of it - "That day when we lose an hour of sleep and go back to leaving for work in the dark for several more weeks." Daylight Savings has a bit of a nicer ring to it...

One of the things I have learned through my years of teaching so far is that often I have need for particular products that I do not yet have first hand knowledge of.  This means that I am forced to either buy things sight unseen or trust the reviewers on Amazon.  Frequently a product will have hundreds of reviews, but to find the ones that seem like they are done by a person with appropriate qualifications can often be a daunting (or impossible) task.  My hope is that by reviewing music-education-related products on here, I might help guide folks to beneficial products (or steer away from not beneficial ones).  I also have opened an affiliates account with Amazon.com that will provide a small compensation for products purchased through the links I provide.  That said, please know that I will not be receiving compensation directly from manufacturers, so I am free to review any products I see fit, and I will always give you my 100% honest opinion.  Especially if it turns out to be a lemon.  There is nothing that I hate more than reading gushing, glowing reviews on something only to purchase it and find out it is in fact garbage.

So, you might find yourself asking, what exactly are you reviewing?

Well, I intend to cover as broad a spectrum of music ed related items as possible, ranging from curriculum materials to pieces of music to instruments and accessories to classroom equipment and anything else not included in that list (which is completely devoid of commas).

For starters, I am going to pick a topic that is near and dear to my heart.

Trombone slide treatments.

Some of you may know that the trombone is my main instrument.  I have been playing now for 20 years now, and still love the trombone the most.  However, as it is an instrument that is often poorly understood, I have several axes to grind as to the day to day maintenance of the instrument.

First and foremost is slide maintenance.  Most music teachers, and band directors in particular, are not trombonists.  This is understandable, in that most music teachers are nowhere near cool enough or laid back enough to truly understand and master the demands of an instrument that requires more discipline and humility than those that require pressing buttons.  Ok, keys, but still.

The trombone slide is a surprisingly fragile object that requires a good deal of care.  The inner tubes must be straight and perfectly parallel to ensure smooth operation.  The outer tubes must be straight, parallel, and dent-free.  Given that the thickness of the tubing is fairly thin, and that brass is relatively soft, this is often far more difficult than you would think.

Assuming the above conditions are met, the one missing ingredient is slide lubrication.  This has come a long way over the years, with treatments ranging from "You put stuff on it?" to "Lemon Pledge.  But only the kind in the aerosol can, not the pump spray." to "Ponds Cold Cream and water." to far more boutique (and actually instrument-oriented) solutions such as slide cream and valve oil.

Regardless of your product of choice, please know that step one in having a smooth, trouble-free slide is that you start with a clean slide.  Wiping down the inner slide with a clean, lint-free rag will do wonders.  Make sure you are using gentle but firm pressure and wipe the entire length of the tubing.  If you have allowed gunk to build up, a little warm water can be all the cleaning solution needed.  If you have more gunk than warm water will cure, use a damp rag, a TINY amount of Ajax/Comet (something that is powdered but NON-ABRASIVE) and more gentle but firm pressure.  If you see scratches being left by your cleaner, it's the wrong stuff and is damaging your slide.  I only do this when absolutely unable to remove crud any other way.

The second part of cleaning your slide is removing any gunk from the inside of the outer slide.  There are two ways to do this, though both are very similar.

The first is to get a standard trombone cleaning rod like this:




This is just a metal rod that has a flattened eyelet on one end and a ring on the other, sized to fit all the way down one side of the slide tubing. You put a piece of cheesecloth through the eyelet, poked far enough through to keep it from coming out, then wrap the length of the cheesecloth around the length of the rod.  What you end up with looks like a giant mummified Q-tip, with the end slightly larger than the rest.  It must be wrapped such that the leading 5-6 inches makes solid contact with the interior of the tubing all the way around, but not so much you really have to force it.  Make sure you hold the same tubing that you are cleaning, otherwise the force will bend it.  And that is bad.  Swab the tubing until it feels warm (friction is a wonderful thing in this case), then switch to the other tubing and do the same.  Re-wrap the cheesecloth if necessary.  Once the cloth comes out looking fairly clean (the first time you do this you might actually go through several sections of cloth, especially if you have done a lot of playing and not cleaned the slide before), you can put the cleaning rod away.

Now the fun part.

There are three products I recommend for use on slides.  The first is Slide-O-Mix .  This stuff is what got me thinking (way too much) about slide lubrication. It comes in two bottles, one large and one small, and contains a lubricant, a protectant, and a cleaner.  You put a small drop from the small bottle on the bottom of each inner slide, then work the outer slide back and forth over it.  You then put a larger drop or two from the larger bottle on each inner slide and work that back and forth.  You have the option of using a water spray bottle, sometimes that makes things even smoother, other times it may not make a difference.  This stuff will do wonders for most slides.  The only problem I have had with it is a few times I have had the liquid in the large bottle get a little gloppy.  Nothing that seemed to truly prevent the liquid from working, but getting small cheese-like chunks from a bottle of liquid can be unsettling.  Also, having the two bottles plus a sprayer can be kind of a pain.

This brings me to the next option, also from Slide-O-Mix.  It's called Rapid Comfort, and is essentially the contents of the two bottles combined into one.  It works exactly the same way the original does, but in a single step.  I have not run into the cheese problem with this stuff, but I also have not used it as heavily as the original.

The third option, and the one that I use is called "Super Slide " by Reka. It's manufactured in Germany, so it costs a little more, but is absolutely worth the extra money.  I do not know what the true difference is between this and Rapid Comfort, they are applied pretty much the same (minus the water - I rarely need it).  The biggest difference is in how much it takes and how long it lasts.  I can apply about half as much Super Slide as I would Slide-O-Mix and it lasts probably 4-5 times longer.  This is fabulous, since the bottle itself is smaller.  In the end I would imagine the cost works out to being less for the Super Slide since I have to buy it far less frequently than I did the Slide-O-Mix.  I bought a bottle of Super Slide at the Eastern Trombone Workshop when I was in college that lasted me nearly 3 years.  I have a bottle that I bought not long after I started teaching that I just used the last of a few weeks ago (5 years out of one bottle!).  I cannot begin to describe just how smooth this stuff makes my slide.  One of my favorite things to do as a teacher is to offer to clean the slides of students who have been putting whatever on their slide.  Three minutes of cleaning and a couple drops of liquid later and they almost always panic due to nearly dropping their now-super-slick slide.  I have made converts of all of my private trombone students and gotten them turned onto this stuff.  It's wonderful, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Now, you may have noticed I have not addressed slide creams or oils.  I hate them both, and for different reasons.

Slide oil is really just valve oil with a different label.  It's thin and runny and smells terrible.  Just ask anyone who has used it and they can talk about the smell that gets on your hands and clothes no matter what you do.  On top of that, it is petroleum-based and can actually cause corrosion.  Or, in layman's terms, it will eat your slide (which you may note is the exact OPPOSITE of what you want).  Unfortunately many students like to use it because it is quick and convenient and doesn't build up.  These students are lazy and need to be shown the proper way of doing things.

Slide cream can be fantastic.  However, it is thick and creamy, and builds up extremely quickly.  The amount of slide cream required to treat an entire slide is so infinitesimally small that most students overdo it without meaning to.  Once there is too much on the slide, you have to clean it off and start over.  Too much is actually worse than not enough.  The purpose of the cream is to make a fine layer of oily stuff on the slide which causes water to bead up.  When you finish applying the cream, you have to spray it with water (not optional).  The droplets of water are then acting like ball bearings to minimize the friction of the slide.  This only works under ideal conditions.  Use too much cream and it's like spreading peanut butter with a knife blade (the sharp part, not the wide part).  Just no good.  You might remember I mentioned cold cream.  It's essentially the same stuff as actual slide cream, and might even smell better.  This method has been causing grief to trombonists for decades, as they are often harassed and questioned as to why they are in the makeup aisles.

So as far as actual slide treatments go, please stick to one of the three I mentioned. They are the best I have found, and cause the least amount of grief.  Here they are again:





Side note: I just noticed that Slide-O-Mix is also manufactured in Germany. I still don't know what the difference is between it and Super Slide, but the Super Slide is definitely worth the difference in price.

Also, another handy item to have is a cleaning snake - do this BEFORE using the cheesecloth for best results.  Here are two options:




I hope this has been a useful and informative review.  I don't know that my reviews will always be quite like this, but time will tell.  If you have experience with any of these products, please feel free to leave a comment.  However, if you are one of those people who worships at the altar of Trombotine, I don't want to hear it! :)

Wow, it's been a while...

Greetings internet!

I should have realized that keeping up with this blog would become a challenge once the school year really heated up. Thankfully I come bearing good news.

As with many music teachers I find myself constantly fighting the practice battle with my instrumental students. Even the ones who are motivated. In some ways u feel like I am making proofread on that front through music selection and bribery (I may have offered baked goods in exchange for stellar performance in our most recent concert), but in many ways I feel like it is the same uphill fight to get students to pick up their instruments, let alone put in quality practice time.

Thankfully I was in Pinterest the other day and came across a fantastic article from NPR about practicing and how students might be motivated to do more of it.

Getting kids to practice music without tantrums or tears - via NPR.

I will definitely be employing some of the ideas from the article, and I already emailed the link to all of my band and orchestra parents.

I am especially intrigued by the idea of using practice beads as a visual reminder of what has been covered and accomplished. To use them as described would definitely take some training by both the teacher and parents, but it is something I am seriously considering adapting to use in my classroom.

So there is my thought for this evening, hopefully I can get some rest tonight!

Mary Had a Little Misfire...

It occurred to me that when I assigned my beginning strings students the task of figuring out "Mary Had a Little Lamb (MHALL)" by ear, not everyone would succeed.  I expected that, and told the students that while I didn't expect it to be perfect that I did at least expect some progress from each of them.  What I had not counted on was to have 90% of my students come back whining about how hard it was and how they didn't know how and couldn't do it and it was so unfair.

Really?

Apparently I'm just a mean music teacher who wants to see my kids fail.

Wait, what?

Since I gave my students the starting pitch (F#), and told them it only used the three notes they knew at that point, I kind of thought that they would be able to at least get a rough idea of how the song went.  Especially after we sang it together several times in class, and I had a fairly solid feeling that everyone knew how MHALL went. 

So it looks like next week we will be discussing two things - the importance of sticking with an assignment, regardless of how daunting it may be, and how you can make a pretty good guess about what the next note in a song is just by knowing if it is higher or lower than the previous one.  Especially when you only have three choices. 

Now, in all fairness, not everyone complained, not everyone came in with tales of how impossible the given task was.  I actually had a handful of kids who could play MHALL or some approximation.  That's exactly what I was looking for, just a starting point to get them playing using the new notes they had just learned.  There were a few kids who, when asked to play what they had figured out, froze in the spotlight and couldn't seem to remember how to hold their instrument.  We'll work on that later.  For right now, I want to get the rest of the group up to speed on actually attempting an assignment rather than either giving it two or three halfhearted minutes and giving up or just not trying at all and giving me some lame excuse.

I hate lame excuses. (I forget where I picked it up, but I have been known to tell students "Excuses are like armpits.  Everyone has one and they usually stink!")

Next week I am going to teach everyone "Hot Cross Buns" and have them attempt to figure that out by ear.  This time, though, I will give them some more structure, spend some time dealing strictly with the rhythm of the song and have that written out for them to refer to. I might even given them a sheet with the rhythm written out and blanks for them to fill in the note names. 

We'll see how that goes.

More about practice...

Continuing the theme from the last post, let's talk some more about practice.  Specifically, how does one get a 3rd, 4th, or 5th grader to practice.  Today I once again had the joy of having my third grade strings class (all twenty of them - holy cow!).  I'm already seeing the patterns in who practices and who does not.  Part of me thinks that there is not much to be done about that at this point.  But part of me thinks that there has to be some solution to get students motivated to practice.

So here is the plan:

Today's class was about using one and two fingers on the D string for the first time.  I spent a good five minutes just going around and correcting hand positions (why do students have great hand position until you ask them to move one finger?  Suddenly I had kids using the wrong hand, turning their hand around, and shifting way up the neck of the instrument!.  Once I felt we had some measure of success with basic finger placement I had everyone play a couple exercises out of the book just using E and F#.  Once they had been through those (though admittedly it was toward the end of class and I was trying to push for just a little more time), I gave the students their challenge - figure out "Mary Had A Little Lamb."  Yes, it's in your book, no it isn't called that.  No, I don't want you to find it in the book.  Yes, I am serious.  Yes, I do think you can do it, you know all the notes now.  No, really, this is completely possible.

The best part was that there were quite a few students who looked genuinely excited to give it a go.  That doesn't mean everyone, or even a majority, but it was nice to see what looked liked some enthusiasm for going home to practice.  The other best (bester? Bestest?) part? Even if most of these kids only give it a halfhearted effort, I would be willing to bet it's more practice than they've been doing. Given that some kids still can't figure out which hand to hold the violin/viola with, anything to get them playing has got to be an improvement.  I don't expect many of them to come back Thursday morning and really be able to play "Mary Had A Little Lamb," but I am hopeful that most of them will try.

This also highlights my beef with many strings method books - why, oh why do method books start on open strings and then immediately move to G on the D string?  Is going from no fingers to three fingers really the best way?  Instead I have my students find the E exercise (#14 in Essential Elements 2000 for Strings, Book 1), then once they have mastered that (and don't get nearly so many thunking sounds), we go backward to the F# exercise (#11 in EE2000).  Once they have the hang of that, we go to the G exercise (# 10 in EE2K - and I believe I will be calling it that from now on).  Once they have the idea down for each of the first position notes on the D string, then I have them fill in all of the exercises in between that we have skipped.  I also have several exercises that I wrote myself that I pass out and have the kids work on using only open D and first finger E.  All in all there ends up being quite a bit for students to work on in this very beginning stage of using only a few fingers on one string. 

I'm including a link to the scores for  my D& E exercises - hopefully you'll get some use out of them!
Exercise1  -  Exercise 2  -  Exercise 2.5  -  Exercise 3  -  Exercise 4


I will try to remember to update our "MHALL" progress after Thursday's class. My fingers are crossed!

Practice makes... Something...

Today I got a piece of news that I love to hear.  A student of mine, a beginning violist, spent something like an hour and a half the other night practicing on her own in her brand new strings book.  She came in this morning and told me she's already done the first 11 pages (the class is still on page 5).  I love to hear that a student is so motivated and willing to push themselves beyond what we are currently working on as a group.  I wish I had more students like that, students who are so eager to learn and do and create that they don't wait for instruction to be given to them; instead they want to blaze a trail on their own and ask for help only when they feel they need it.

Of course, like all things, this comes with a caveat.  While it's great that she is so motivated, I worry about any bad habits she might develop forging ahead on her own.  I also wonder how faithful she is being to proper technique, and how in-depth her practice is going.  Is she actually working out the notes and rhythms to be able to play them correctly, or is she glossing over some things just to get to the end?  Is she focusing on tone quality and a good, characteristic sound, or is her viola just making whatever sound it makes and that's it?

I feel like I need to overhaul my method of teaching students how to practice.  Clearly it does not do to only have one or two students motivated to practice, which is precisely what I am hearing right now (strange, both students whose parents have told me they are extremely motivated are third grade violists...). Practice needs to be something that is both useful and fun, otherwise it serves no purpose.  But how do you get a student to understand that practicing is fun?  And that down the road they will reap benefits that they currently cannot see?  I remember the feeling of standing in my parents' basement holding my brand new trombone in fifth grade and honking away for 5 minutes or so before getting frustrated that I didn't know how to do anything.  I wasn't a strong enough music reader to be able to pick up much from the texts, and I couldn't decipher the more advanced music in our method book.  I tried halfheartedly to pick out a few tunes by ear, but felt like the instrument was too cumbersome to be able to accomplish anything.

I don't want my students to feel that they don't know enough to make the next step on their own.  I also suspect that in a perfect world the motivation to practice and the benefits of practicing go so obviously hand-in-hand that all students grasp the importance of individual work.

Unfortunately, I suspect that so often in this world of standardized testing and group-think that the importance of each group member working out their own difficulties and facing their own barriers is downplayed.  The worst part is that students are avoiding practice because of the things they don't know during a time when the information they need to improve and succeed is more available than ever before.  In a brief search of YouTube I know I can come up with pages and pages of trombone lessons or clarinet lessons or violin lessons.  I'm fairly certain we can even find lessons on the serpent or ophicleide if we wanted.

But do students know this?  And more importantly, do they understand the incredible power that can give them?  Granted, watching internet videos, no matter how hi-def and in-depth, will never replace having a good teacher; the hands-on supervision of a lesson or ensemble can't be duplicated by the internet.  I find myself thinking that maybe my practice focus needs to shift on teaching students not only how to play and how to practice, but also how to find guidance and inspiration outside of class. If I can get a handful of students each year to find inspiration to work on their own who wouldn't otherwise do so, that would be a major victory.

I wish someone had told me just how much I could accomplish on my own with the right tools when I was in elementary music.  I can't help but wonder where that might have taken me.

Thoughts?