Afternoon Ti

Season Two Episode 46 Do-Re-Mi When I begin teaching solfege, note reading on the staff, and songs with students, I begin my sequence with three pitches: do-re-mi.  On the website Musical U, Erin Paul describes solfege or solfa as a framework for melodies. It allows us to establish pitch relationships and helps our ears identify patterns.  Plus there are so many things we can do with just these solfege syllables while keeping them engaged. Any age student can use solfege. When teaching young students, I always started my sequence with so-mi.  With older students, I choose to use do-re-mi. Older students learn the pitches quickly so it’s important to find ways of incorporating the learning of pitch, notation, and listening without killing the joy of learning and keeping their interest in music making.   Keep it interesting To teach the musical concept of do-re-mi, we need to have a range of ideas to keep students interested in doing the same thi...

Season Two Episode 45 Self-Care During the School Year A friend shared a picture with me recently of a phone battery that was almost empty with just a little red line at the end of it showing that the charge was nearly gone.  When I see this on my phone, it’s a signal that it needs charging so it’ll have enough energy to function the way I need it to. The text under the picture she shared with me said: you wouldn’t let this happen to your phone.  Don’t let it happen to you either. Self-care is a priority- not a luxury. Now I have let my phone get to this point and it always stresses me out. I see it get red telling me there is 20% battery left… then 10%... then 5% and a few times it’s simply shut down completely because I didn’t get it recharged in time.  At that point it’s of no good to me or anyone else. For us there is no visual red light to warn us that we’re running on empty.  There are other signals and too often we ignore them or figure w...

Season Two Episode 44 Enough Doing Enough. Being Enough. Doing Enough 1.  Set a firm stop time. Scott Ogle, founder of location rebel and breaking eighty, says that he sets a firm time to stop working.  His schedule is set up different than an educators, but we can look at it in a similar way.  For Sean, he wanted to work from 6:30am to noon.  Use the morning hours as the work hours.  He set noon as his stop time. As teachers it can be easy to just keep working until we notice the clock says 5pm or later at night and then we come in to work early only to stay late again.  Set a firm stop time for working.  It may take some time to adjust but work towards leaving work at a specific time.  If you find you're struggling to stop working, Sean shares the idea of scheduling something after that stop time so that you can't continue working.  Be it a gym class, dinner, phone call with a friend, walk with the dog.  It doesn't hav...

Season Two Episode 43 Kindergarten and Kodály with Lauren Bain Lauren Bain teaches K-5 elementary music at Carl Schurz Elementary in New Braunfels. She earned a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance and Music Education from Trinity University in San Antonio. She also holds a Master of Arts in Teaching from Trinity University. Lauren received her Kodály certification from Texas State University, and her Orff-Schulwerk certification from Trinity University. She was named the New Braunfels ISD District Elementary Teacher of the Year in 2018, TEA’s Region 13 Elementary Teacher of the Year in 2019, and was a finalist for the HEB Excellence in Education Award in 2019. She has served on music curriculum writing committees for both North East ISD and New Braunfels ISD. During her first 5 years in New Braunfels ISD, she field-tested kindergarten music curriculum for the latest publication in cognition and music education research by Oxford University Press entitled Kodály in the K...