Afternoon Ti

Afternoon Ti Podcast Season 9 Episode 168 Take the Pressure Off I’m so hopeful for this school year.  I’m hopeful that my students will have the opportunity to make more music.  To grow in their skills.  To grow in their confidence.  To grow in their understanding and knowledge of musical concepts.  I feel a responsibility to provide an incredible music education for my students and give them the very best experience I can.  That’s a lot of pressure.  You likely feel it too. It comes from our internal desire to teach well and the external pressures and requirements from our districts and schools. Some of you are already a few weeks into the school year.  Some of you are in teacher inservice and about to begin teaching students again soon.  We’re about to encounter the start of another year that has some uncertainties because life is not back to where it was two years ago yet.  I’m hopeful that it’s going to be a better year and trying to...

 Season 7 Episode 153 Hold that Fermata   I'm taking the month of May off to focus on family, friends, my personal physical health, and ending the year the best I can at school.  Looking forward to sharing more content in June!

Season Seven Episode 152 Curriculum Design with Nyssa Brown Part II Nyssa Brown is an international music education consultant with Music Ed Forward. Nyssa specializes in empowering educators to design curriculum that is inquiry-based, conceptual, and community-specific. She has facilitated student learning for 20+ years, in addition to presenting and consulting with teachers from six continents. Nyssa was one of ten finalists for 2004 Minnesota Teacher of the Year and received a prestigious Milken Educator Award in 2004 from the Milken Family Foundation. Nyssa served as a Grade 3-5 sub-committee member in the development of the National Core Arts Standards. She empowers educators to envision what is possible in music education. FREEBIE!! The Ultimate Curriculum Design Toolkit.  Click here to get your copy! Website:   Music Ed Forward MusicEd Forward Podcast Understanding by Design Model by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins

 Season Seven Episode 151 Curriculum Design with Nyssa Brown Part I Nyssa Brown is an international music education consultant with Music Ed Forward. Nyssa specializes in empowering educators to design curriculum that is inquiry-based, conceptual, and community-specific. She has facilitated student learning for 20+ years, in addition to presenting and consulting with teachers from six continents. Nyssa was one of ten finalists for 2004 Minnesota Teacher of the Year and received a prestigious Milken Educator Award in 2004 from the Milken Family Foundation. Nyssa served as a Grade 3-5 sub-committee member in the development of the National Core Arts Standards. She empowers educators to envision what is possible in music education. FREEBIE!! The Ultimate Curriculum Design Toolkit.  Click here to get your copy! Website:   Music Ed Forward MusicEd Forward Podcast Understanding by Design Model by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins

 Season Seven Episode 150 Virtual Xylophones with Brent Geyer Vandercook FREE Zoom Music Webinar - Brent is presenting one on Virtual Xylophones using Scratch on Thursday, April 29!  Sign up here ! Brent Geyer has been teaching in the Westfield Public Schools since 2007 as both a general vocal music teacher for grades 1-5 and a strings specialist. During this time he has directed the All City Orchestra and All City Chorus and also directs the high school Men's Chorus. Brent's 5th grade choirs have sung with the NJ Festival Orchestra and were chosen twice to be aired on NJ 101.5 for their Christmas Choir contest, in which they won first place in 2015. Brent holds both a Bachelors in Music Education and Piano Performance from West Chester University, a Masters in Music Education from the University of the Arts, and completed his Orff levels at Villanova. He is also the creator of the virtual xylophones found on the coding site Scratch. On the American Orff Schulwerk Teacher Gr...

 Season Seven Episode 149 Five Priorities for Maintaining Energy and Effective Teaching for the Remainder of the Year This past Saturday I took my daughter to an outdoor party at a park.  It can be an interesting place to be in when you’re the parent of a student at the same school where you teach.  It’s a blessing for sure.  And it comes with it’s challenges too.  You want to be professional, honest but not divulging everything happening at school and oversharing, but also authentically yourself.  Two of the moms were standing around and one of them asked me if I was ready for summer.  I stopped and thought for a moment.  If I say yes, am I too eager to be done with this year?  If I say no, I’m not being completely honest.  How do I phrase it just right so that they know that I love what I do (because I do), but that I’m also tired and worn out and feeling this year’s stuff just like everyone else?  It took a little bit and then...

Season Seven Episode 147 Self-Care with Beth Duhon Part I Resource  for Self-Reflection  Self-care is a buzzword we hear everywhere.  The way we take care of ourselves and others affects our everyday life and I love the ideas that music educator Beth Duhon shares with us today.  There were so many ideas for self-care shared so our talk is broken into two episodes.  Today you’ll hear us touch on the acronym MAP and self-care ideas for professional and personal aspects, the difference between self-care and self-soothing, ideas for meal planning and reminders for giving yourself grace along the way.  About Beth Duhon : Beth Duhon is, to borrow Tracy King’s phrase, the K-5 “ambassador of joy” at Travis Elementary in Rosenberg, TX.  This is her fifth year teaching in Lamar Consolidated ISD.  She has received over $14,000 in classroom grants for a keyboard lab, iPads, and music manipulatives in addition to regularly receiving travel grants for music ...

 Season Seven Episode 146 A Tween's Perspective of Covid:  Julia's Story This episode is a talk between my daughter Julia and I.  We just passed the one year mark of Covid arriving into our everyday lives and I wanted to give each of our girls the opportunity to share about their experiences and memories during this season.  If you want to do something similar with your family, here are the questions and topics we focused on: 1. Our last 'normal' day.  March 11, 2020.  Last day of school.  What do you remember about that day. 2. What was hard about the spring of 2020? 3. What made it better? 4. What do you remember about summer? 5. What has this school year been like? 6.  What do you want to remember about this time?

Season Seven Episode 145 A Teen's Perspective of Covid:  Riley's Story This episode is a talk between my daughter Riley and I.  We just passed the one year mark of Covid arriving into our everyday lives and I wanted to give each of our girls the opportunity to share about their experiences and memories during this season.  If you want to do something similar with your family, here are the questions and topics we focused on: 1. Our last 'normal' day.  March 11, 2020.  Last day of school.  What do you remember about that day. 2. What was hard about the spring of 2020? 3. What made it better? 4. What do you remember about summer? 5. What has this school year been like? 6.  What do you want to remember about this time?  

 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 Six Episode 134 Three Things 2020 Taught me That I Didn't Want to Learn Welcome to the Afternoon Ti Podcast!  I’m your host Jessica Grant.  This is the second super simplified podcast episode that gets to the good stuff right away.   I’m focusing on simplifying what I can as I soak up time with family and finish out this crazy year.  Last week I talked about the importance of rest and why it’s just as important as our work.  In this episode I’m sharing what 2020 taught me that I didn’t want to learn: perseverance, waiting, and hope.  And how these three things have prepared us for what’s ahead. I love this definition of perseverance:  It is persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.  Isn’t this what we’ve done all of 2020?  We didn’t know at times from one day to the next if we’d be teaching in-person or online.  We didn’t know how many students might be in our classrooms compared to ...

 Season Six Episode 124 Fictional Character Theme In this Soundtrap lesson I created a lesson plan where students design a fictional world, character, and theme song.   Links: Head to my shop at www.jessicagrant.org to purchase the Fictional Character Soundtrap Project!

Afternoon Ti Podcast Season 6 Episode 122 What's on Your Cart? Teachers are some of the most resourceful people in the world.  A few days ago I put a question up in my social media about what other teachers consider essential for their carts.  So many great ideas came in!  I’ve had several ‘oops’-es as I’ve been on a cart the past two weeks - I stole an eraser from one room after erasing the board, setting it on my cart and bringing it with me to the next room.  I left my lesson plan binder in the previous room I had been teaching in when I set it on the table.  I’ve completely forgotten to bring my water.  And my expo markers.  And my snack on a day that I didn’t have a break for lunch until 1pm.  I was so hungry.  Each time I’ve entered a room and didn’t have something I would have needed or left with something that had been in a room or left something of my own in the last room I taught in, it helped me learn what I really needed to hav...