Afternoon Ti

 Season Seven Episode 140 Book Launch! This episode is a Virtual Party that you’re invited to attend with me as a way to celebrate the launch of my first book - the Afternoon Ti Guide to Teaching Music: Strategies and Support for Becoming Your Best Teacher Self.  It’s been almost a year and a half into the making and I’m beyond excited and nervous to share it with you. WRITING PROCESS Started in September 2019 Read articles - Jeff Goins ... so much wisdom in his article about tips for writing a book Takeaways that kept me going: Work on one chapter at a time! Set a daily word count Write every day - doesn’t have to be a lot, but does need to happen often Don’t edit as you go. Would open a Google Doc and write about something that happened that day or a thought about teaching or various things that came into my head… repeat this over and over… then some of the thoughts began to flow together.  And an outline of what I felt was important for teachers to know began to for...

 Season Seven Episode 139 Books I'm Loving, Listing, and Launching Reading is one of my favorite things.  For this last week of January and throughout the month of February I’ll be focusing on books. Music education books that I believe you need to read.  There are several reasons I’m sharing about books for the next five weeks.  One in particular.  It’s something I’m beyond excited about.  Feeling vulnerable and nervous about and thrilled and all the things.  As Laura Tremaine tells Kendra Adachi - the Lazy Genius - “Let Good Things Happen to You.”  Really awesome talk of theirs on The Lazy Genius Podcast Episode 194 this past week that has really helped grow my confidence in sharing news about what I’m putting out into the world so here it is.  My goal in 2020 was to write a book for music educators.  And I did it.  I wrote the book.  My goal for 2021 has been to publish this book and it’s happening next week on Monday, Fe...

 Season Seven Episode 138 Composing with Students:  Lesson Processes and Ideas You Can Use Composition can be an intimidating word.  Where do you start?  How do you make the process meaningful for students, but not too difficult or so stressful that you want to pull your hair out in the process.  I’m going to share the process I used with my fifth graders this past week.  There are several ways you can go about the composition process with this lesson and the nice thing about it is that you can decide where your final product ends.  There are always ways to extend the process, but these steps are not always necessary.  The goal is that students create something that they are proud of, that demonstrates their musical skills, can be performed well, and that students can understand.  Here are process ideas as well as the specific process I used with my students. Before you begin teaching the composition process, figure out what music concept ...

 Season 7 Episode 137 Incremental Changes Make a Difference I’m recording this on Monday night after a full day of teaching and an afternoon involving hair, makeup, and photos.  I’ve got a big project that I’ve been working on and needed to get headshots done for it because I don’t have any and I’m not good at DIY pictures or selfies or anything related to visual arts.  Better to trust the experts with this.  I’m fortunate to know Cameron Spooner, an amazing photographer in Dallas, and booked a session with him to take headshots.  I’ll link his website so that you can contact him if you’re interested.  He’s truly phenomenal and wonderful to work with.  I was nervous, shy, excited, and ready to do the best I could so that he could get a few shots that would work. Cam suggested a makeup and hair stylist named Yvonne who worked her magic to help me look my best.  I felt so glamorous and it was a fun experience to get dolled up.  We went into ...

 Season Seven Episode 136 Soundtrap Rap Project Cheers to 2021!  I’m ready for a new year of new lesson ideas and thought I’d share one of the projects I’m doing with my students as we return back to school.  This project would be a really fun one to do at the beginning of the school year as well - it’d be a great way to get to know your students, what they like, and who they are.  Since I see my students in trimesters, sometimes I have to modify when I do lessons and introduce material so I decided to use this project to start off the new year with my fifth graders. I first saw the idea for this lesson in the Soundtrap Blog.  The original idea was created by Meredith Allen and inspired by Katie Wardrobe.  I took their amazing idea and expanded upon it.  You can find the links to both the Soundtrap Blog page - click on ‘That’s a Rap’ to see the lesson plan - as well as the Google Doc with the lesson idea from Meredith.  I highly recommend Mered...

Season 7 Episode 135 Yearly Goals: Reviewing 2020 and Setting 2021 We have finally left 2020 behind us and it’s the first day of 2021. We can truly say that hindsight is 20/20. Hallelujah! It was a doozy for sure. This past year I set 20 goals for 2020. If you want a full rundown of how each goal was met or not met I’ll have that info on the blog soon. I’m going to share how a few of my goals went during this unexpected year and a few goals I’m working towards for the 2021 year. I always take the month of January to ‘test out’ my goals for the new year and solidify exactly what I want to continue working on for the remainder of the 11 months. The first month is like a trial period that gives me the chance to see what I’ve over-estimated to be able to occur each day or week and a chance to see what other goals might be fun to try.   To hear my goals and more info about how I set them, check out the bonus episode on January 1, 2019 and episode 74, which came out o...