Lifelong Learning
The opportunity is not merely to become better musicians. It is to become better at understanding where our musicianship can make a difference.
The rubric’s job is not to reduce artistry to checkboxes. It is to make your expectations visible so students can aim at something real. Here are three sample rows from my own program.
Teach as if the person in front of you is the whole point, because in that room, finally and truly, they are. That is not a lesser pedagogy. It might be the truest one we have.
This article argues that delivery is itself a creative act and offers a practical five-phase arc teachers can run across a semester.
The future may belong neither to the narrowly specialized musician nor to the musician who attempts to master everything. It may belong to musicians who develop something more difficult: depth with connectivity.
Students of all ages benefit from internalizing musical sounds before encountering the symbols that represent them. Only after embodied experience can students truly understand and reproduce Guido d’Arezzo’s secret codes, now commonly called “music notation.”
Tri-M should be about more than meetings. Give students a reason to want to be involved!
Young people thrive when adults create spaces where they feel safe to ask questions, take risks, encourage one another, and discover strengths they never knew they had.
Music educators have a unique opportunity to shape not only musicians, but future leaders. Starting a Tri-M Music Honor Society chapter is one of the most effective ways to do both.
Adjudication is meant to validate preparation, growth, and artistry. Yet, as educators, we must also prepare students to understand the system itself, its strengths, its limitations, and its human element.