The Noisy Room Down the Hall

 Hi. I'm still here. I may not have posted in over a year, but I'm still here. I hope if you're a fellow educator who is reading...

 When the school year started, I had the best of intentions in sharing my experiences of navigating this school year. And then the school ye...

So I started this post yesterday (Sunday) and I was feeling fairly OK. But I think that line about feeling guilty about not being more stres...

Borrowing from my friend Joe Guarr , I want to try my best to document whatever ::gestures all around:: this is and will be as we navigate t...

Discussion of whether or not most states should even be returning to in person schooling aside, let's talk band. After the prelimina...

I've started several posts since school's been out due to COVID-19 and I haven't been able to finish one. I started one when oth...

For the second summer in a row, our building is under some serious construction. The end of the year  has been a frenzy of packing and movin...

For those playing along at home, I had a moment (embarrassingly, much more recently than I'd like to say) where I used female pronouns i...

That's what I found myself asking as I sat on a plane for the first time in over ten years. As I was sitting in a hotel room in another ...

In two hours, we'll be hosting our instrument rental night and within a week, nearly 200 new instrumentalists will begin making mus...

Somebody (quietly points to self) has been slacking. There's been a lot of stuff happening over the last six weeks or so that I would...

I had an odd moment a while prepping for our Spring Concert. For the first time since playing Anne McGinty's Red Balloon  several years ...

I completed my Michigan School Band and Orchestra Association (MSBOA) adjudicator training last December, with the thought that next school...

There are a lot of rules for attending Festival (Contest, Assessment, etc), and many are in relation to music selection. Things like: A ...

I was one of those directors that an adjudicator brought up to our Solo and Ensemble coordinator today. "Who's the director at Hart...

Early in my career, a student came up to me after class to say she couldn't make Band Festival because she was going to her mom's fo...

I was tired on Tuesday. It was another in a string of long and busy days that included the weekend and most of the week before. It had been...

Yep. I went there with the title and I'm going to roll with it. I have a brass problem and I need help. I knew it wasn't great, bu...

I feel like I should write something, but I can't seem to brain together a solid post. Too many random thoughts and ideas bouncing aroun...

A friend once told me a story about working a high school band camp in an area filled with camps that other schools used as well. A hazard o...