Travis J. Weller

It was really nice hearing from Emily, a freshman music major, a couple of days ago. Her journey is just beginning, and knowing who she is studying with – I cannot be more excited for her.  In one of her music education classes she was asked to pose some questions to a current teacher about how they arrived at being a music educator. The answers I provided to her are not earth-shattering, but it was a nice opportunity to reflect back to decisions and thoughts that have been brewing for about 20 years. If they are help and inspiration to you, then they have done their job. If they give you pause to consider where you are now or where you want to go – brava! I hope these thoughts are help to Emily and other young educators to consider along the way. My choices are not perfect – they are the best choices I could make at that time in that context. Thank you Emily for helping me remember a few things that I need to hold onto as I continue on my journey and you begin yours…

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On my way to work today I ran into the baseball coach at my school. His son plays trombone in the bands where I teach, and he was in attendance at the spring concert last night.

“How come you never have a losing season?” he asked with a smile.

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            What does it mean to say a school is making “adequate yearly progress”? What is the value of a standardized test that produces an aggregate score for a group of students in one school and has it compared in the local newspaper against scores from another? How does student performance on a standardized exam relate to future vocational aspirations? Are teachers really able to teach skills necessary for success in future student endeavors or are they simply trying to teach concepts that will enable students to pass a standardized examination? Read more…

I am not one to make a new year’s resolution – the idea of self-regulation only once every 365 days is somewhat unsettling.  If you think that needs to happen only once every 8,760 hours, you might have some personal issues that no amount of blogging can ever fix – sorry to drop the hammer, just a personal view. That being said and out of the way, I hope to present an idea for consideration more than one day a year, and hopefully will be used more than 17 out of the 365.  It’s not so much about giving some answers or explaining a solution, it’s about finding better questions… Read more…

Four very short weeks ago, the band program at Mercer took a big leap as we started our year with a unit on chamber music that culminated in our Fall Chamber Recital.  Over twenty different selections were presented in the recital ranging from Handel, Haydn, and Mozart to Sousa, and John Williams.  You can read a full copy of the program notes and performance order by clicking here (a pdf will open in a new window (student names for security reasons have been removed, but instrumentation is identified).  During the next week, all 150 students in the band program will be taking a survey (created by Google Docs) on their chamber music experience.  The statements which the students are asked to respond to were created by some of my colleagues at Grove City College, Thiel College, Westminster College, and Slippery Rock University.  The students will use a Likert scale to respond to 16 different statements related to their chamber music performance in addition to the usual demographic information (gender, grade, ensemble).

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