I have a pretty decent library of music and I like to loan it out to my students. Honestly though, I do a terrible job of keeping track of who has what. I cannot seem to wrap my mind around how to create a working lending library. What you do? This seemed like a great […]
Teaching
The Anatomy of a Practice Incentive Theme
Every year the process looks slightly different, but in a nutshell there are some tried-and-true steps that seem to work for developing a practice incentive theme that will captivate students! In the spring, use year-end questionnaires to collect input on what they liked best and least about the theme, what things they’d like to focus […]
Monday Mailbag – Teaching Note Recognition
I need some new ideas for the same old problem…teaching note recognition. I am so tired of students asking, ” is it ‘every good boy does fine’ or ‘good boys deserve fudge always’? What works for you? I have several Monday Mailbag questions dealing with teaching note recognition in my inbox right now, so I […]
Monday Mailbag – Quest for Capital Questions
I’m trying to decide on a theme for the year and I’m still unsure about how Quest for Capital works. Could you give me a little more info on how you invest in a particular stock? I guess I don’t know how stocks work myself! I’ve been getting quite a few questions about this Quest […]
Reaching the Younger Generation with Classical Music
Any outing to a local classical music concert will quickly reveal that the median age of attendees is somewhere around sixty, give or take a few years. But not anymore at the Utah Symphony thanks to the efforts of a group of high school students who have started their own Symphony Club. You’re sure to […]
Monday Mailbag – Advancing Students Too Quickly
What dangers are there, if any, in advancing a student too soon? This is one of those lessons that I learned the hard way. There are a lot of disadvantages to advancing students too quickly. Here are some of them: they often struggle with complex rhythms in the harder pieces technique skills don’t match the […]













