It’s Mother’s Day weekend. What better time to talk about rules and procedures than when we think about the security of a home in which parents agree on the ground rules, and in which children know that there are reasonable consequences for disregarding those ground rules. Most of us remember those times in which mom became the arbiter of the rules, and we can probably all recall having heard a number of famous mom lines as she maintained order in the home.

What if everyone jumped off a

The two previous postings with Mary Ellen Pinzino about online professional development have addressed topics like course design and content. Now we ask Mary Ellen to address specific features of her online courses. In particular, I am interested in knowing how an online course might look and feel to the teacher taking the course.
 

Rick: How would you describe the user interface for your online courses and how easily do teachers find their way around?
 

Mary Ellen: The “online campus”

One of the more amazing conditions that I have observed through the years has been the public (and sometimes, private) teaching community’s longstanding, instinctive, and (until recently) effective resistance to efforts to evaluate and assess individual teacher effectiveness.

Resistance Factors

Want to touch a raw nerve among teachers? Ask about merit pay. Few teachers disagree that they would like to be paid more for quality teaching. Few, though, agree that administrators can be trusted

My previous conversation with Mary Ellen Pinzino about young children’s artistry continues here with Art Songs for the Very Young. While we do not receive many comments to our blogs, our tracking shows that Mary Ellen's conversations have been some of our most widely followed posts. Still, I hope that you, the reader, will join in the conversation - providing a richer base of questions on the topic.
 

Rick: You said that “Young children’s artistry is compelled by far more musically

Does It Even Matter?

What’s the big deal? A music teacher is a music teacher. Right? The proof is in the pudding. We all know folks who, having little or no formal preparation to teach music, are nonetheless very good classroom music teachers. Private schools, with a projected 5.5 million students by 2015, and home school groups, estimated in the 1.5-million-student range, often depend on non-certified, non-licensed music teachers for their entire programs.

Hiring a full-time music

In a previous discussion, Considering the Online Territory: An Interview with Mary Ellen Pinzino, we discussed the intimacy of face-to-face professional development opportunities as they compare with the online experience.

Today, I would like to address what it looks like from the perspective of both student and teacher. My previous conversation with Mary Ellen Pinzino addressed online professional development and introduced the compelling topic of children’s artistry. We have decided to

Sometimes we really get it right. So many good things are happening in the following public school classroom video that I can hardly keep up as I watch. It sometimes brings tears to my eyes. Really. (Sorry about the iSkysoft imprint. I was testing it for its ability to tranlate a .mov file into an mp4. I would appreciate any advice...)

I'll make a brief list of the things that impress me most, and then I will get out of the way. Enjoy the video, and Happy St. Pat's!

1. Most of the

My previous conversation with Mary Ellen Pinzino moved into the compelling topic of developing children’s artistry in addition to discussing online professional development. We have decided to continue both topics in separate threads, with this posting focusing on children’s artistry.

Rick: You mention leading teachers to children’s artistry. This is a tall order. What does it look like from the teacher's point of view?

Mary Ellen: Young children’s artistry is a wonder to behold! It is

So we return to our question from the previous post. What about music qualifies it to be a part of a school’s core curriculum? I concluded in that post that perhaps music does not need to qualify. Music is about more than mere subsistance and stability - which is really how educators tend to define core. Still, there are times in which subsistance and stability are all that we can manage for awhile. I have two close friends whose husbands are facing serious medical procedures at this time,

Of all the topics that music teachers discuss within the ranks, none receives more attention than the subject of advocacy. Simply defined, advocacy in music education refers to the practice of seeking to provide the rationale for a community’s durable support of a quality music program. Great amounts of time, effort, and resources are spent in developing a consensus opinion concerning those two concepts – durable support, and quality music program. Without such consensus, the rationale

We are thankful to Mary Ellen Pinzino for agreeing to share with us in this forum. What follows is the beginning of a series of interviews covering a range of topics with one of the original minds in the field of early childhood music and movement. We begin by discussing several of the key issues driving the conversation about online music teacher education.

Rick: Hello Mary Ellen. Thank you for agreeing to share your thoughts about online teacher education. What prompted you to develop an

Revolution comes in many forms. In case you hadn’t noticed, we are in the middle of a technological revolution. Like it, dislike it, ignore it, embrace it… it doesn’t matter.  Technology’s march will take its own paths, and the new movers and shakers are those who manage it best. …And they know it, don’t they? The rest of us develop a variety of techniques for managing the constant parade of technological strata, often deciding that it is in our interest to learn, adapt, and change. We have

… and I learned quite a bit about tinnitus from my ENT specialist. My appointment took nearly an hour - very cool. First, I learned how to say the word! I have been calling it tin-I-tus for several years now. It is TIN-ni-tus. It reminded me of when I was writing my master's thesis, and the word “cuneiform” kept showing up. It was not until I sat in my thesis defense that I learned it is not pronounced “CU-ni-form.” It is “ka-NAY-i-form.” The history specialist on my committee was fortunately

It is called Tinnitus. It comes in a variety of forms and is quite common among adults. For some, it is a rattle. For others, it sounds like a buzz, rumble, clicking, or a roar. For me, it is a very high squeal, seeming to be about 30 decibels, and sounding a harmonically complex pitch that is near the highest C on the piano. I say seeming to be, because the type I experience is best described as imaginary, although it is as real as the words on this page.

The Progression

Actually, mine

Building Connections – Building Lives

Christmas day was unique and special for our family. Our entire family (three adult children, their spouses, and the grandchildren) shared the day together. The day began the night before, as we all participated in Hillsdale College’s annual College Baptist Church Christmas Eve service. Our two sons had been asked to perform in the brass quintet, and as we arrived at the service we realized that many dear friends and acquaintances from past

Bringing Them to the Music

I just returned from directing our college’s 14-member Christmas Percussion Ensemble annual tour – a seven-performance tour that takes place every year at the end of finals week. Just three weeks earlier, we completed our annual fall Symphonic Band Tour, playing 22 concerts from Wisconsin to Maryland during a 12-day period.

In my previous post, I suggested that we be the music in as musically mature a manner as possible. This is why, whenever I am on these

Bringing It to the Children

This has been a peculiar semester for me. I taught only a handful of early childhood music classes because the big kids kept me busy. Two major tours with 25 concerts, two all-college chapel performances, and our triennial presentations of Tubby the Tuba at our All-Campus Bedtime Story kept the college-band hat on my head (at the expense of my early-childhood-music hat) for the entire semester. Factor in the fact that nine (yes, nine) of my undergraduates are

ECMMA Perspectives Journal is rapidly becoming recognized as the word on developmentally appropriate practices in early childhood music and movement. Ever since going online two years ago, bringing instant access to its entire inventory of past issues from its inception in 2006, thousands have enjoyed browsing, searching, researching, and reflecting on its rich reserves of information.

NOTABLE NOTES: Perspectives is for Parents, Too
What you may not know is that Perspectives is also filled

Andrea is Director of Musical Munchkins of Orange County, NY

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound, in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.  I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.  I come into the presence of still water.  And  I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their

Promotion is a normal part of any business. Promote or perish is a mantra for all but a few very fortunate entrepreneurs. Competition for students comes from many sources, natural and otherwise. Music teachers compete with Boys and Girls Clubs, church activities, family events, scouts, and a host of other valuable offerings. They also compete with one another.

Of course I empathize with music teachers who struggle to gain and keep a foothold in a community. We have to understand, though,