Hope you're enjoying your winter break! This episode we lay out goals for ourselves for the spring semester. This is our last episode for 2017, we'll be back for more episodes at the end of January.

Recorded 12/17/17 

Veronica encountered a patron at one of her concerts that was legitimately offended by her concert programming. We discuss what those pitfalls are, and what it means for us now that we know. Also: Cookie Dough.

This week we talk about dealing with loss in your school community, processing grief as teachers, students and as ensembles.

We talk about our own experiences in teaching and looking for jobs in an effort to decipher what makes a position desirable and what sort of applicants it attracts.

This week we talk about ways we've tried to help our students practice smarter, or more efficient, or let's be honest, at all.

We talk this week about many of the extra musical skills we work with our students on especially given the amount of time we have with each of our kids as secondary educators.

We talk about how we deal with relying on kids who are involved with every program on campus and on whom other coaches rely just as much as we do.

This week Olin brings on his colleague, Dr. Sandy Babb to discuss vocal health for both students and teachers.

John grapples with pushback from his students regarding the implementation of a pre-AP theory curriculum in his intermediate and advanced ensembles.

This week the gang discusses barriers one might encounter to getting to conferences as a younger teacher and how one might navigate around them.

Sus give us highlights of her California Choral Director's Association Fall Northern Conference and we ruminate a bit on the teaching cycle, comparing the different ways we learned it, whether it's Set Followthrough Response, DAPR or 1-2-3, they all follow the same cycle.

John and Sus commiserate about the woes of teaching boys, and then we discuss a myriad of sight singing resources for use in any ensemble, and how one might integrate sight singing into your curriculum.

We talk about our idea of first impressions, who we thought we needed to be and how that worked out for us as first year teachers, and how we start the year now in years 6, 7, & 8.

Be patient, this episode is a little long (we vomit everything that happened since July onto each other for the first time in months).

We discuss what we're hoping to accomplish this summer and wrap up our third season. We'll be recording again in August so you'll probably see the next episode out at Labor Day.

We talk abut about what's on our minds, specifically tackling the end of year requirements before lock up for the Summer.

Words hard. Teacher tired. Recorded 5.21.17

Olin wants to know what folks do to keep their students signed up for band.

We meander through the idea of how to pace your concerts and what you can do if your concerts seem to go on for EVER.

Sys gets back from taking part in her district's music olympics hosted by Mark Swope at Stagg High School, and is excited by the prospect of teaching the requisite skills in preparation for next year.

Olin Brings on his colleague Dr. Wesley Brewer to talk about competition in the classroom and in our Festivals. Dr. Brewer serves on the Oregon State University faculty as Associate Professor and Coordinator of Music Education. He completed his doctoral studies in music education at Arizona State University, holds the Master of Music in Conducting from Southern Oregon University, and the Bachelor of Music in Music Education from the University of Arizona.  Prior to his appointment at OSU, Brewer served as Associate Professor and Director of Music Education at the Chicago College of Performing Arts of Roosevelt University from 2009-2016.

Veronica is trying to make better use of the reference notebook she has her students build and is looking for ideas.

What happens when you're writing up your program for your concert and realize that you programmed the same arranger/composer over and over again across groups (or even in the same group)? Is this a problem, are there ways around it? Veronica posits it's okay to hang out in Sweeneytown as its the music thats most important.

This week we go through and discuss how we deal with blend and balance as separate concepts with our younger students.

Recorded March 28, 2017

This week we talk about recruitment and working with your feeder programs.

This week we answer a listener's question as to how we try to schedule our rehearsals week to week to make sure we cover everything. 

This week we have Cindy Teresi, Veronica's former colleague from Loomis on to talk about her work with elementary music and the Education Through Music curriculum she uses. To find more information about ETM head to richardsinstitute.org

Sus brings up her struggle in introducing her students to careers in music, she also tells her life story on this episode. Veronica starts an all recorder garage band.

This episode is a collection of stories we recorded at our state music education conference. Recorded Feb 16-19.

We skyped in not just Olin this week, but an entire collegiate NAfME chapter from OSU. We vomited some thoughts all over them and then took questions until the Skype call cut out. We got it back after recording and talked with the students for another 90 minutes, but we cut the podcast at that time because any longer would have taken up too much space.

Olin, Sus and Veronica and our guest, Dr. Bull discuss the job search:interviews, cover letters and what's worth looking at when searching for a new job.

Dr. Bull's bio can be found here.

Recorded January 28, 2017

We had Amanda Craig back to discuss her use of SEL in her general music classes, and we discuss our new years resolutions as teachers.

Recorded 1/1/17

Sus brings a topic she's been struggling with: how to differentiate instruction in her intermediate ensembles where there are so many variables regarding an incoming students ability and previous exposure to music.