02/05/12

Year in Review: 2010

Hard to believe it, but the year 2010 draws to a close this evening! It has been an incredibly busy year for MusicEdMajor.net, and I wanted to take this opportunity to recap some of the posts and pages that have been the most popular over the course of the last twelve months: [Read more...]

Welcome From Music Ed Week!

Music Education WeekHello, all! I come to you from the Mariott Crystal Gateway hotel in Arlington, VA, where I am getting ready to meet up with Justine Dolorfino, Brigid Moran, and Andrew Ritenour to live-blog MENC’s Music Education Week! While I wait, I want to give you a brief update of what’s on the agenda for the next few days. Don’t forget, thanks to SoundTree, you can catch all the updates at the Music Education Week Landing Page. [Read more...]

SoundTree to Sponsor LiveBlog From Music Ed Week

Music Education WeekI am pleased to announce that, for the second year in a row, MusicEdMajor.net will be live-blogging from MENC’s Music Education Week in Washington D.C. from June 25-29. This event will be the 4th live-blog here at MusicEdMajor.net, and for this event, we are pulling out all the stops. We have created a live-blogging team of four people, and are extremely excited to announce sponsorship from SoundTree to help provide you with live updates throughout the event with wireless broadband access.

Check Out the Live-Blog Here [Read more...]

Happy Birthday!

Happy BirthdayWhile on a Skype Call with my dynamic and enthusiastic co-editor Andy Ritenour, I noticed that today is a very special day in MusicEdMajor.net’s life. Today marks MusiscEdMajor.net’s first birthday! That’s right, it was one year ago today that I launched the site and welcomed everyone with the first post. Back then, I was scrambling to get things in order for my live-blog of MENC’s Music Education Week. Now? Well, things aren’t much different now, and we’re still getting ready to cover Music Ed Week (stay tuned for more info soon!). Over the course of the year, however, we’ve had some great milestones: [Read more...]

BREAKING: Select Academies FREE to CMENC Members

Music Education WeekMENC has just announced that registration for both the Collegiate Leadership Academy and the New Teachers Academy at this year’s Music Education Week in Washington will be free for all current members of Collegiate MENC. In addition, CMENC members will be given complimentary registration to the new “IN-Ovations” Academy, focusing on nontraditional forms of music education. Music Ed Week, in its second year, offered a similar promotion last year when CMENC members were able to attend the entire conference for free.

“MENC recognizes that the economic climate today can make it challenging for our student members to attend events like Music Education Week, which are important to their professional development,” explains Elizabeth Lasko, Director of Public Relations and Marketing for MENC. “We really believe that our student members will benefit greatly from the combination of education sessions and peer interaction available at Music Education Week. If waiving the registration fee will help more of them get there, we want to offer that option.”

MENC’s support of collegiate members is admirable, and their recognition of the financial troubles that many college students face is appreciated. This promotion will allow CMENC members to attend a total of fourteen sessions for free, in addition to admission to the United States Navy Band Commodores concert on Tuesday evening, June 29 and exclusive exhibit time on Monday the 28th. The sessions included in the promotion are:

Collegiate Leadership and New Teachers Academy

  • “Hero Training: How to Harness Your Super Powers” with Milt Allen, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston
  • “Policy and Practice: What Does this Mean and Why Should I Care?” with Lynn Brinckmeyer, Texas State University, San Marcos
  • “Nine Liberating Habits of Change” with Scott Shuler (president, MENC), Connecticut Department of Education, Hartford
  • “Using Technology to Keep Sane” with Jim Frankel, SoundTree, Melville, NY (Jim’s on Twitter: @jimfrankel)
  • “Can I Do This for Thirty Years?” with Jack Elgin, Oscar Smith High School, Chesapeake, VA

“IN-Ovations” Academy

  • “Teach Guitar! Everything You Need to Know But Were Afraid to Ask” with Glen McCarthy, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
  • “Across the Borders, Across the Sea: Creating Opportunities for Global Conversations and Memorable Music Making” with Patrice Rushen, Darla Hanley, and Cecil Adderley, Berklee College of Music, Boston, MA
  • “World Rhythms West African Ensemble” with Ryan Camara, Medford, OR
  • “Hands-on Introduction to Lap Dulcimer” with David Cross, Backyard Music, New Haven, CT
  • “Putting It Together With GarageBand” with Mark Irvin, LaVista Jr. High School and Jeff Ingraham, Educational Service Unit #3, LaVista, NE
  • “School of Rock” with Mark Biondi, Teaneck, NJ
  • “Performing and Composing With the Keyboard”
  • “Hand Drum Basics: Getting Started with African and Caribbean Drumming” with Mark Douglass, University of Tennessee
  • “Putting It Together With iMovie” with Mark Irvin, LaVista Jr. High School and Jeff Ingraham, Educational Service Unit #3, LaVista, NE

Are you a Collegiate MENC member? Will this offer convince you to attend Music Education Week when you otherwise would not have? Leave us a comment and let us know how you feel! Also, stay tuned in the coming week for some exciting announcements regarding MusicEdMajor.net and Music Ed Week!

The “Conference Effect”

Flickr Photo by Gaelic ArtsThis is a re-post of an article I wrote on my personal website a while ago. In light of some recent discussions I’ve had, I felt it had merit here. Stay tuned for a few other posts from the andyzweibel.com archives in the coming weeks!

I just recently was talking to a close friend, who is a graduate student in the Frost School of Music at UM, pursuing a DMA in Instrumental Conducting. She is also a graduate assistant with the marching band, and a TA for the Frost Symphonic Winds and Wind Ensemble. As a future band director, she recently went to the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA) convention in Austin, Texas. She came back with a new found inspiration, and attributed it to the experiences she had at CBDNA, which made me think abut my experiences after returning from conferences. I’ve realized that what my friend is experiencing is similar to what we all tend to experience after an event such as CBDNA-something I have come to call “the conference effect.”

On the most basic level, “the conference effect” is the sense of inspiration and excitement for the profession that many people (in this case music educators) tend to feel after spending a day/weekend/week immersing themselves in what they love at a conference. I know the feeling myself, and I know that many of the music educators reading this know it as well. When you return from a conference, you feel revitalized-almost like a new person, and ready to take on whatever challenges may approach you. In my case as a student, conferences are the times when I find myself wishing I could actually be out in the field, teaching, right away. However you react specifically, this heightened level of inspiration motivates us all to be our best in the days and weeks following the conference.

It is important, though, to keep in mind the effect that timing has on this inspiration. I have only ever been to three different music education conferences: the Midwest clinic in Chicago in mid-December, the FMEA conference in Tampa in early-January, and MENC’s Music Education Week in June. Midwest, while extremely enjoyable, comes just at the end of the semester and the beginning of the holidays, so when the conference is over, I tend to find myself extremely inspired, but with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs for the rest of December. Music Ed Week, while also enjoyable, runs into the same problem, as it takes place during the summer holiday. FMEA, on the other hand, occurs just before the spring semester begins, and I find myself beginning each spring semester with a renewed excitement for what I am doing, in part because of the lasting effects of this inspiration I get from the conference. This has been even more obvious the past two Januaries, when I had the opportunity to spend the week in between FMEA and the beginning of classes working with a high school band in LaBelle, FL at a school where a close friend (and recent UM alum) teaches. By the time the conference was over and my week of working in a real-life situation was through, I was prepared to do whatever it took to get myself teaching right away.

I’m sure any person who has been to a conference in their field has had experiences like mine, where they have felt a renewed excitement for their profession in the days and weeks following the conference. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it’s likely that we are more productive in this period than we are in any other, as a result of this excitement. So the real question is-how do we artificially create this “conference effect,” and the productivity that comes with it, when there is not a conference to inspire us? If we can somehow trigger this motivation without actually going to a conference, we can increase the caliber of the work we do throughout the entire year, instead of just for a few select weeks after conferences.

Let’s examine what types of activities take place at these conferences. For music education, specifically, we can narrow it into three main activities: learning, networking, and concert-going. Generally, any music education conference will include each of these three aspects. Attendees go to sessions where they learn about a specific subject, they speak to other professionals in their field and network with them, and they attend concerts put on by performing ensembles over the course of the conference.

So, how can we recreate each of these in our daily lives to artificially create the “concert effect”?

  1. Learning-Now that the Internet has improved the way we share information, there have been tons of blogs set up in which educators share their thoughts and ideas on the field. By subscribing to these blogs and reading the new entries, we can stay informed and continue to learn even when we’re not at a conference. For a great place to start looking for music education blogs to subscribe to, check out the 100 ME Bloggers, organized by Dr. Joseph Pisano.
  2. Networking-Networking can be difficult when you’re the only music teacher in your school, but the advent of Web 2.0 technologies and Social Networking tools have changed that. Dr. Pisano has a great list of music educators to follow on Twitter, and if you’re interested in more discussion, consider participating in our weekly #MusEdChat on Monday nights!
  3. Attending Concerts-There’s really not a great techie-answer to this one, but my only suggestion is: go see concerts! Whether it’s a school band in your area, the local community band, or the symphony orchestra in your closest city, continue to expose yourself to music performances, and listen to them critically!

Hopefully these tips will help everyone be able to re-create “the conference effect” in their every day lives. Do you have an experience with this effect? Do you have a great story from a conference you’ve been to? Thoughts on my ideas? Leave a comment!

Collegiate Leadership Academy at MENC’s Music Ed Week

MENC has been planning for it’s 2010 Music Education Week in Washington, D.C. since last year’s event concluded. Music Ed Week is a week of advocacy, networknig, and professional development in the heart of the nation’s capital. I had the opportunity to attend last year, and was extremely pleased with my experience. The professional development portion of the week was done through “academies” in different concentrations (music technology, performance, jazz, research). The specialized academies were a wonderful way to separate the fantastic sessions that were presented.

The preparations for Music Ed Week 2010 (June 24-29, 2010) have begun in earnest over the past few weeks. MENC recently announced that housing and registration for the conference is open, and on Tuesday, they sent information out regarding a new academy for this year’s event, the “Collegiate Leadership Academy.” This academy is geared specifically towards collegiate members of MENC, and has sessions geared specifically towards future music educators. The (tentative) list of sessions includes:

  • “Hero Training: How to Harness Your Super Powers” with Milt Allen, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston
  • “Policy and Practice: What Does this Mean and Why Should I Care?” with Lynn Brinckmeyer, Texas State University, San Marcos
  • “Nine Liberating Habits of Change” with Scott Shuler (president, MENC), Connecticut Department of Education, Hartford
  • “Using Technology to Keep Sane” with Jim Frankel, SoundTree, Melville, NY
  • “Can I Do This for Thirty Years?” with Jack Elgin, Oscar Smith High School, Chesapeake, VA

Additionally, registration for Music Ed Week grants you admission to many other fantastic concerts and advocacy events over the course of the week. The other academies that are being offered this year are:

  • Choral
  • General Music K-12 Technology (keynote by Amy Burns)
  • Instrumental, “IN-Ovations” (Teaching techniques and opportunities for teachers of non-traditional curricula)
  • Jazz
  • Marching Music (registration includes ticket to DCI Show)
  • NACWPI (National Association of College Wind and Percussion Instructors)
  • New Teachers

Attendance at this conference last year was a very enjoyable experience for me, and one that I would strongly suggest you try to gain. If at all possible, try to find a way to get to Washington, D.C. between June 24 and 29 for this wonderful event! Hopefully, I will also be “live-blogging” the event this year, just as I did last year! Stay tuned for more information regarding this.

Are you already going to Music Ed Week? Let me know in a comment, and we can try to find a time to meet up!