Piano Pride
“I’m so proud of myself!,” said Marty. She has been taking class piano since August. Before that, she had a few lessons, played the violin, and taught herself the basics.…
PA Shorts: Not Exactly Pre-Reading
My students have been full of questions about how to best help their beginning readers- especially those who look at the score as though it had lobsters crawling out of…
Creativity & Method: Redux
It's the start of the school year and with it has come much discussion among colleagues, questions from new students, and personal observations about transfer student readiness. I have read…
Learning Ogi Matsuri
Everyone who teaches should try to learn a completely new skill every few years. It keeps you humble. It keeps you patient and kind to both yourself and to your…
Duty or Joy?
A gonga post by John Terrauds of Musical Toronto made me sit up and take notice last week. In it, he wrote about his experiences taking on a group of…
Just Paint! Methodology & The Nitty Gritty
Today in the Sunday paper, there was an article by Marni Jameson describing a new book on preparing surfaces for paint (not any actually painting mind you) in which there…
Creativity, Luck, and Inventional Wisdom
There was a super post on creativity by Wendy Stevens at Compose Create this week. In it, she linked to the article, 10 Creativity Tips by Donald Miller and highlighted the…