The Evolving Educator

The Evolving Educator is a conglomeration of and repository for everything I’ve learned and created over the years…so far. As I evolve as an educator, so will this resource.

The site is written through the lens of a string music educator, yet there is much information that can benefit any educator or music educator.

My goal is to serve a wide gamut of teachers as I include not only my current tools but also previous incarnations and how they become what is useful now.

I also envision this site as a printed book and resource so if you know of any interested publishers, please let me know.

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Be sure to check out my bass blog, MostlyBass.com and my online store which features my book, “An Introduction to Double Bass Playing”.

Check out books and products I recommend at Amazon.com.

If emotions are at the core of learning, why do music educators and ensemble directors consistently ignore the student’s emotions? Nearsightedness and for their own emotions.  Or perhaps we should be thinking about future emotions.
It is easier to look a month or two down the road. It is easier to view own your road rather than putting yourself in the students place ten years from now. And of course it feels good to win. Bringing home the gold ‘proves’ that you’re a great teacher. Or does it?
Is it really about how ‘good’ your ensemble is? Is it about how many gold medals you win? How many competitions you attend? Those are events to experience and targets to shoot for but not the end goal. It’s about the students and their experience. It’s about them having a positive experience. It’s about them walking away with positive emotions.
Think about the kid in the back of the section. He’s a mediocre player. Not always in tune and sometimes comes in at the wrong time. Do you cut him or put soap on his bow so he can’t make a sound? Of course not. But down the road, what is really going to matter? Not the fact that the group received a lower rating because of him. No, what will matter is that he participated. When he looks back, the fact that he was in the group will make the difference and in turn affect  how he interacts with people, groups, and situations.
What do you remember about your school music experience? I don’t remember what score I received at contests but I can tell you how teachers treated me and what kind of experience I had.
I remember my baseball coach not putting me in the game because…well because I sucked at baseball! It was a freshman league and all he cared about was winning. Does it really matter? How do you think I feel about that experience and how does that affect me now? Will your students want to attend a musical event as an adult or will it cause negative emotions to reverberate with them?

Here’s a note a got from a student a while ago I was impressed – that takes guts.

Warren Buffett’s Advice to Your Kids

Once a year, more than 10,000 shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) descend upon Omaha, Neb., to listen to its managers, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, answer questions for more than five hours. Buffett, arguably the world’s greatest investor, is known for his willingness to teach others. Here, paraphrased, are some of his answers to questions asked by or for youngsters.

On how to cultivate and keep friends:
What do you admire in others? Adopt as many of those qualities as you can and you’ll attract others to you. Whatever repulses you in others will repulse others if you have it. Cultivate habits that attract people when you’re young.

On how to succeed in investing:
Stay within your circle of competence. If you have doubts if something is within it, it’s not. It’s better to stay well within your circle of competence than wander around its edges. You can have a small circle of competence and do well — that’s OK. My own is small.

On preparing for retirement:
Think of any car — a genie offers you any car in the world. The catch is that it’s the only car you’ll ever get. What do you do? You read the manual 10 times, you change the oil twice as often as you need to, you take fastidious care so that it remains the car of your dreams forever.

You get only one mind and body — the same ones you’ll have at 40, 60, etc. Take care of them and maximize their potential. It will be too late to take care of your body and mind (and car!) later on. You can maintain them, but it’s hard or impossible to undo big mistakes or negligence later on. You don’t want to end up with a wreck on your hands.

Your main asset is yourself. Treat yourself as a valuable asset. I often explain to students that I’d be willing to pay today for a percentage of the future earnings of good students. They’re valuable assets already, worth something right now.

You can learn a lot from Buffett’s engaging and educational letters to shareholders. Read them online at the Berkshire Hathaway website.

What are we really training our students for? My brother is a mathematician and educator and it’s refreshing to get his perspective. We should be creating life long learners and appreciators with a foundation that allows them to pursue the field if they so choose. Too often we approach students as though every one is going to enter the field we teach. How unfortunate for the student that enjoys a subject but doesn’t want to live it! It’s too easy for us educators to squeeze the enjoyment of a subject out of the student so that they loathe it.

My goal for my young musicians is to get them to enjoy their instrument and appreciate playing. Remember in the ‘Classical’ period, everyone was an amateur musician. Most households had a piano and most people could play it. Einstein turned to his violin to stimulate his mental processes.

Does this mean we sacrifice standards and fundamentals? Of course not! But we should look at the big picture, see how we fit in that, and create a positive and understanding learning atmosphere.

My SmartBoard finally got hooked up and ready to go in my middle school orchestra classroom.

How do you use your SmartBoard with your class or ensemble?

Do you have any favorite tips or tricks?

UPDATED 02/10/10

NotifyMe – A reminder program with a web interface. Uses push notification.

AwesomeNote – Simple yet refined note program that syncs with Google.

GeeTasks- To Do list that syncs with Google Tasks

Chronology – Simple, elegant timer

Calengoo – Sync with Google Calendar

SplashID- Keep track of all your usernames and passwords… I have been using this since the Palm days of 2000.

Shovebox – The ultimate digital filing cabinet. Syncs with Mac program.

What are  yours?

What do you do to counteract the mid-year blues?

Here’s a newspaper blurb about a recent school concert!

Post your 2010 goals, resolutions, and thoughts!

from “The Perfect Wrong Note” by William Westney

“Education consists, not so much of knowledge, but of knowledge effectively and persistently APPLIED.”

I hope everyone is having a great and restful holiday break!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Camino – Fast, clean, simple – it’s my web workhorse. Not as powerful as Firefox but not as cumbersome either.

As an employee of a not-for-profit organization, teachers are entitled to participate in a 403(b)(7) investment program. A 403(b)(7) plan is a tax-deferred retirement plan often available to employees of public schools or non-profit organizations.

You hear your corporate friends talk about their 401k. It’s kinda of like that but with no employer match and you get a choice of mutual funds to invest in.

Talk to your business or payroll department about information. This is a great thing to do as it invests PRE-TAX dollars, thus reducing your taxable income and each dollar has more buying power.

Yes, most teachers have their TRS, but come on, don’t you want to live comfortably? Start planning for your future NOW!

Jeesh, I wish I could sell these things

Looking for  online to-do and project management? Check out Toodledo. It is very powerful and can sync with many computer, phone, and handheld platforms.

I use it in conjunction with Notebook and Pocket Informant.

And there’s no reason why students can’t setup a free account that they can access anywhere.

Check out this great post at Betty’s Blog.

“The development of ability is strtaightforward. This can be absolutely relied upon. People either become experts at doing the right thing, which is seen as a fine talent, or they becme experts at doing something wrong and unacceptable, which is seen as lack of talent. So it behooves everyone to become expert in the right things, and the more training he receives, the better. Depending upon these two things – practice and the practice of the right things – superior ability can be produced in anyone.”

-pg. 20 of The Suzuki Violinist by William Starr

An article I wrote on productivity was published on the GTD Times blog at http://bit.ly/1R124o

Performing in the Zone

Performing in The Zone by Jon Gorrie is a book to help ease and manipulate performance anxiety. It follows the lineage of Mental Toughness, The Inner Game of Music, and other books in the genre. Gorrie impressively incorporates information from this rich history but still writes an original and very practical book. He refers and quotes such texts but doesn’t just reiterate their contents.

Performing in the Zone is sectioned nicely with each page divided into easily understood and straightforward chunks and sections. This makes intellectual topics very palatable. His use of analogies are always unique and appropriate yet meaningful to the reader.
Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part of the Teachers Certification Map’s “lessons from the field”, a series of posts featuring passionate, inspiring educators from across the country discussing some of the lessons that they have learned over the years that would help young teachers as they embark on their careers.

I recently bought a new digital video camera. My intent was to have an instant feedback tool for my practicing as well as my students (and for me to have a new toy!). It serves these purposes exactly as I had hoped.

But wait, there’s more…

Last week I decided to video MYSELF teaching my beginning orchestra students. I have alway felt teaching beginners is the most difficult and every year I refine that skill. Over the course of two days I shot several hours of videos. Right afterward, I quickly edited out blank time since I just set the camera and let it run. (For those interested, I use Quicktime Pro to quickly edit .MOV files.)

This week I started watching them and taking notes as I did. I always recommend waiting a bit before watching yourself in a performance situation. (n.b. practice is different – that is for instant feedback)

The result? Good! I’ve been doing this for 13 years so I have my system and had a good idea of what I would see. I did however take lots of notes on what I said and the order of which I presented the material.

There is always room for improvement and even seasoned teachers can sharpen their educational blade. We often tell students to listen, watch, or video themselves and we should take our own advice.

Is differentiation a regression to the 19th century one room schoolhouse? Probably not, but I wanted to post a controversial question.

Will we return to tracking students again as was popular in the 80s and 90s?

Great teachers have always differentiated and taught to the learning standards.

What are your thoughts?

“…moving gradually forward is so much better than going full-speed in reverse!”

- Jon Gorrie

Education is an interesting and delicate phenomenon. Should we promote the often touted ‘well-rounded’ or generalist concept, or should we track students early on to become specialists?

What are your thoughts?

•3 minutes Warmups
•    Long bowing
•    Frog-tip (from Sevcik)

•3 minutes scales
•2 minutes arpeggios
•2 minutes scales / arpeggios with bow – tip exercise

•10 / 10 Book – 10 minute teach, 10 minutes practice
•15 Orchestra Music – practice on own

Joe’s Goals