While I was out sick recently for a week with COVID, one of my lesson plans for the Select Choir consisted of having the students break into their Sectional Sprint Groups and check and memorize their music for their upcoming Pops Concert the following week. At the end of each student-run Sectional Sprint rehearsal, I […]
Search Results for: purposeful teaching
Leading Voices: Developing Audiation in the Choral Classroom
I almost stopped conducting. It was the first song for our first concert of the 2021 school year. My 9-12 Select Choir was singing Set Me As a Seal by René Clausen, and they struggled to lock in D major for the first few measures – it was a bit wonky. By the second phrase, the choir […]
The Conductor as Yogi: Why I Yoga
We are busy people. We have full lives; we live at the center of a wheel that turns constantly, with professional, family, health, spiritual, and personal spokes of responsibilities, challenges, and joys. We bounce between feeling full and satisfied and just plain busy with lots of activities that don’t seem to be organized into anything […]
The Conductor as Yogi: It’s Buffer Time
Ramona M. Wis A few years ago, I became aware of how energy-draining it was to move directly from one rehearsal to the next, with the short in-between time filled with “quick” questions from students (they never are), “emergencies” of colleagues (they never are), and singers filing in as I am re-arranging chairs and figuring […]
Peak Performance: What It Takes to Produce the Best from Anyone
By Stuart Hunt Leadership is the ability to get extraordinary achievement from ordinary people.– Brian Tracy Never mistake activity for achievement.– John Wooden Have you ever pondered just what it takes to produce world-class results? Genetics . . . coaching . . . “the breaks”? Thirty years of research into this particular question produced detailed […]
Leading Voices: Spring 2020, A Look in the Rear-View Mirror
Like many of us, I can clearly remember where I was on 9/11. In the months and years later, after this tragic event, our world and our model of national security evolved and changed into a new recognition of personal and social safety. Now, after months of teaching online this Spring, attending Zoom meetings, […]