11.13.08
Posted in Blog Reference, Music at 8:55 am by Abby
While Music Teacher’s Helper is a blog designed for private lessons, I still have found several of blog posts to be useful for a classroom setting. This one in particular, I found to be quite informative and interesting for some of the things that she suggested doing and does herself. In her post on Recitals, she discusses ways to help younger students how to settle and not be afraid of performing with so many people around. This is important not only in studio recitals (where it’s one, maybe two, students performing at a time), but also when working with young students for the school concerts.
She talks about various ways to help students to be settled and calm both when watching as well as when performing. Teaching students the proper ettiquette and rehearsing it often so that they not only know what to do, but are comfortable and understand how to do it. I don’t think it’s possible to rehearse such things enough, but a big trick is getting it done repeatedly without the student growing bored with it.
Overall, I really liked her blog post and would encourage others to read it as well. You might get some new ideas, too!
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11.01.08
Posted in Blog Reference at 4:21 pm by Abby
One of the blogs that I am now checking up on from time to time( That isn’t one of my fellow classmates) is Music Teacher’s Helper blog, which is exactly what it sounds like! The post I’m going to talk about this time is one specifically on promoting your music program, which she titled Promoting a Class.
It’s a bit long to read, but I very much liked the way that she wrote it. She uses a very down to earth style that’s practical as well as easy to understand. Not to mention easy to integrate into one’s one program, or future program as the case may be. ^_^ For myself, I think that posting flyers would be a good way of promoting a music event. Flyers, a local newspaper. She even suggested a local radio or TV station, which I found to be quite interesting. I need to stop limiting my ideas to ’small town’ locations that don’t have such a thing as a ‘local’ channel. Or typically don’t.
Of course, her goal was to help promote for private lessons, rather than for a school setting, but for myself, a lot of the information she gave is potentially useful for both! At the least, it reminds me that there’s a lot more to do than just teaching music. If I can’t promote it in some way as well in the community, it’s going to be tough to have a good music program.
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10.21.08
Posted in Blog Reference at 6:01 pm by Abby
I’m writing this post tonight about another post on a blog that I have started to keep up with that is not that of one of my fellow classmates. The blogger, Mystro2b, has a lot of inspiring and thoughtful things to say, and I enjoy reading them. Go give him a visit and see for yourself!
This post is specifically about one of his own posts called “You can never have too many sharpies on hand“. In this post, he gives quite a few wonderful technique suggestions, as well as ideas on how to word things not only when talking to students, but also to their parents, something very useful to keep in mind for the future! I think the best thing about this post is that it takes a humerous approach to things that are really quite serious for keeping in mind. You need to be highly prepared and have an abundance of resources of the oddest things because the kids will ultimately forget them when they need it. I had never thought of the fact that I might want to be certain and have numerous sharpies handy for use! Nor had I ever thought of having kids ‘fake play’ while working with the rest of the ensemble, though it seems like the most practical thing in the world to do!
His post just makes me think that despite the number of years of education classes that I’ve taken to prepare myself for the big picture of teaching, there’s still a LOT of fine points that I don’t yet know about. But it’s people like Mystro2b that helps me to learn those fine point things before I go to the job!
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