Do you ever get frustrated with the progress of your ensemble?  Me too.  But no matter the cause of our frustration, no matter the hurdles we must jump, no matter the...

Fact: I want my students to relish learning new things. Fact: My students will often model and imitate the things I do. Fact: My students should see me excited about learning...

James Russell Lowell asserted that “More men fail through ignorance of strength than through knowledge of their weakness.” That is probably true, but I would contend even more...

As teachers, we often find ourselves wrestling with whether to "stick with the old tried and true" or "try something new." But it’s scary to try the untested or experiment with...

Have you ever repeated a passage several times in rehearsal only to find that it starts to get worse? One theory to explain that is that after a student does it, his or her brain...

Calvin Coolidge stated, “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not;...

The older I get, the more I am convinced that piquing the curiosity of our students is one of the most, if not the most, important results of teaching. Learning a fact is great....

When students sense they are playing poorly, they can become like mules: very hard to move forward, very willing to stay put. But, we all know that if we start them with music so...

I often think of a question posed by Robert H. Schuller: “What great thing would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?” How liberating it would be if we all would be...