The Haydn Hideaway

 What is a blog? It's been a minute, folks. Lots has changed since I posted about our spring concert awhile ago. And like I mentioned in that blog post, I wouldn't post again until December.... surprise, I'm not posting until January! I took the time to really enjoy my holiday and NOT think about work. St. Laurent School presented "A Nutcracker Christmas". Each performing group (K/1, 2/3+3/4, 4/5+6) had at least one song to sing, and a 'routine' act to a piece from the Nutcracker suite. K/1's sang Gingerbread Cookies , I Want to be an Elf , and a scarf routine for Dance of the Reed Flutes . 2/3+3/4 sang Don't Eat a Poinsettia  and performed a flashlight routine for the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy . 4/5+6 sang Here Comes the Snow  and performed a cup routine for Trepak . Then we had all K-6 students on the stage (or in front of it) singing Jingle Jive . In between each performing group, we had a storytelling session presented by two high school st...

       Well, hello there! Welcome welcome, if you find yourself back to this blog. Remember how last post, I mentioned blogging every Friday? Is it okay if that Friday post is approximately 60 weeks late? I hope so!     Of course, a lot has happened in the last 60 weeks. I'm not sure I can write about all the things that happened in those 60 weeks. A lot of great things, and some not so great things, but the great things outweigh the bad... I think. Gillam     I have left Gillam and started a new position in Winnipeg. I felt (and still feel) bittersweet about leaving Gillam. When I think about Gillam I am often tempted to cry! I made wonderful friends and had such wonderful students. I applied for MusiCounts Band Aid Grant, and  we won !! With $10,000 I was able to buy a class set of tubanos, and 15 steel pan drums. We received the instruments in late May, and you bet I spent that last month really soaking up my time with the new equipment. T...

Hi readers! It has been a few weeks. I didn't mind having a small holiday from blogging. I really didn't do a ton - moved to my new apartment in Morden for my student teaching placement, and started student teaching. Almost as quickly as I started teaching, we were told that schools will be closing for preventing the spread of COVID-19. Needless to say, it's been a stressful few days trying to sort out what is going on with placement and with my upcoming job in Gillam. Thankfully, we have more than enough things to do while the students are away. My cooperating teacher has been excited to have the extra set of hands in making an escape room activity for the students, so that will be one thing we're working on, among other things. I'm hoping to get a lot of my specific planning done for my job in Gillam, now that I know my schedule. What do we do in the next couple days, is the bigger problem. My cooperating teacher and I have been brainstorming, trying to find...

We just finished up our last class of Internet for Educators at Brandon University. I guess it's time to update the 'About' page. I figured, with the time I should be in #I4Ed, I'll write a blog post to discuss my reflective thoughts on not only this course, but also my time in the Faculty of Education. I'll save the School of Music for another day. Faculty of Education Being an integrated B.Mus/B.Ed student was an interesting experience. Because there are always constantly scheduling conflicts between the School of Music and the Faculty of Education, I take my required education courses whenever I can, in whatever stream I can - doesn't matter if the course is for early, middle, or senior years. Just fit it in there! Because of the mixture of courses, I don't really have a "cohort" in the Faculty of Education. There were some familiar faces in #I4Ed but many of them were new! And of course, no other music education students, so I stuck to m...

I'm so glad I took the time after class to really edit my Final Project the way I wanted it to be. I figured, I had a rough version available if needed to present to the class today (i.e. everyone else had gone already) so I could  present if need be, but I really didn't want to. I learned the video editing program I had didn't allow me to edit the video the way I wanted - adding extra audio over the video files. So, after downloading a few too many video editing apps, HERE WE ARE! So yes, while technically late, this is a version of my final project that I am really happy with. I never used TikTok before making this, but I admit I really liked using it. It was fun to be creative! Thanks for reading.....and watching!

For our final tech task, we are to create an Alternative CV. I decided to use Venngage to create an infographic. After using Venngage, I wish I used it to create my infographic about music careers  (click the link for my blog post). This infographic is actually legible, for free! Bonus. I wasn't too sure what to add to my CV. Since this CV is digital, I figured it was a prime time to add an embedded video of myself playing. Unfortunately, at this time I don't have any recent recordings (however, this is subject to change after my recital in March! Stay tuned...) and I feel like the recordings I do have are not representative of my playing today. This is something I plan on adding to my digital CV later on. I liked the creative aspect of the alternative CV. Building a resume is rather boring and done strategically - I didn't feel the same about preparing this infographic version. Thanks for reading!

This weeks Tech Task is to discuss infographics - what they are, why they could be useful in a classroom, and also to make our own! This will be an interesting task. I'm daunted by having to make my own, but I'll give it a go! An infographic is pretty straight-forward - it is a graphic, with information. The Wikipedia article for 'infographic' states that infographics are "graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly". Using images along with the information makes it more memorable and visually appealing, rather than just a long stretch of text. Infographics in the Classroom Very simplistic infographic for younger students I think infographics could be very useful in the classroom. I see simple ones as posters on the wall, like a rule reminder with a simple image. I could also see ones used to remind students of the goals of the class (ex. "I can feel the beat in my ...

Yes, this blog title is definitely a play on Jerry Seinfeld's show "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee". This week is the Brandon University Indigenous New Music Festival. The festival brings in Indigenous composers from across the country to perform and work with the New Music Ensemble (BUNME). Because of my weekly travels to Winnipeg, I was asked to pick up one of our guests from the airport, Cris Derksen . Cris Derksen is Juno-nominated cellist and composer from NorthTall Cree Reserve in northern Alberta. She is of Cree and Mennonite heritage. She combines her classical training, Indigenous background, and electronic effects to create new sounds and share new perspectives. She has performed and collaborated with other notable artists including Tanya Tagaq, Buffy St. Marie, Kanye West, and A Tribe Called Red. Derksen completed her Bachelor of Music degree at the University of British Columbia where she played principal cello in the UBC Symphony Orchestra. The ...

For this Tech Task, we are asked to discuss our Twitter experience! (Click here for my educator account, in case you are not following me already...!) Personal Use I've had my personal twitter account since 2009 and now have a collection of 16,000 tweets from over the years. I couldn't tell you how I managed to tweet that much, other than the character count used to be much shorter than it is now. I liked Twitter for the simplicity - the short little thoughts that someone may be having. For example, here is a screenshot of the first tweet in my feed at the moment: This is the quality material I enjoy from Twitter I use Twitter as a platform to share the small thoughts I have that I don't think are "important" enough to constitute as a Facebook status (read more about that here  under the "My Digital Identity" heading). Facebook is for things I want to share with a wider circle of family and friends, and Twitter is for things I may want to j...

This week, we had our guest speaker Dr. Rennie Redekopp zoomed into our classroom. This was the week I had been waiting for! Redekopp taught my high school business class when I was in Grade 10... almost 10 years ago! It was neat to have to opportunity to work with him again. Presentation Dr. Redekopp began his presentation with a quote: "You can't have the benefits of globalization without some of the responsibilities" by Bono. He began talking about how our smartphones and devices affect others in the world by their design, materials, manufacturing and shipping, and energy use.  By their design, cellphone companies almost ensure that we need to replace our phones every few years. Many designs do not allow the user to remove the battery of their phone, which is typically the first thing to go in a cellphone. Though the phone is in otherwise perfect condition, consumers will be likely to throw their phone away because the battery life doesn't last as long as...

In this Tech Task, I am to share one of my favourite online resources, explain why it's great, how it can be used in the classroom, and some great (or not so great) features about it. The Tech Task also says this can be for classroom use, or professional use. Does that mean I can talk about both? Classroom Use For my favourite classroom use online resource, I must talk about Musication  and their series of boomwhacker videos, as I previously mentioned in this blog post. Musication has a collection of boomwhacker play-along videos - think karaoke, but for boomwhackers! First, I really like these videos because I feel they give boomwhackers a purpose in the classroom. Boomwhackers are one of those instruments that are typically left behind in the music class. Their pitch isn't super clear if they're not played properly, and when you have an instrument that is played  by 'whacking' it, you better have some good classroom management skills and practices alre...

Last Thursday, January 30th, the Brandon University New Music Ensemble had the opportunity to travel to Winnipeg and perform in the Millennium Library Skywalk Concert series as part of the Winnipeg New Music Festival. It was a great day filled with learning and experiences that I wanted to share. We first set up our stage in the Carol Shield auditorium in the Millennium Library. Thankfully, this library has a large underground parkade, because we all know how terrible it is to find street parking in downtown spaces! It made it much easier for us to unload all of our gear. BUNME, after (finally) finishing set up Immediately after finishing set up at the Millennium Library, we had to quickly get to the Centennial Concert Hall, a few blocks away, to watch the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra rehearse for their concert the following evening. They were preparing for their show called "Metropolis Symphony" which featured Michael Daugherty's work based on the world of Superh...

In my third Tech Task, I am to find an edublogger I like, describe their background, why I follow them, and what I have learned from them. Thankfully, the task mentions that if there are other bloggers I follow and like, I can link them also. Wonderful, because there are so many great music education blogs out there! I will only describe one in depth, or else this task will take too long. Mrs. Miracle's Music Room by Aileen Miracle Aileen Miracle has taught for over 20 years in both Ohio and Michigan, anything music including general music, band, choir and strings. She currently teaches K-5 general music, but has taught K-7 general music as well. She is a past president of the Midwest Kodály Music Educators of America, and has taught Kodály levels at different universities. She also has her own Teachers Pay Teachers store with lesson plans, unit plans, sub plans, holiday activities and visuals, among other things.  I first followed Miracle when I decided to swit...

This week in our Internet for Educators class ( #I4Ed ) we talked about ways to use social media in the classroom. In Monday's class, we had  Tyler Letkeman  who is an English teacher from Vincent Massey Collegiate in Brandon present to us about how he uses technology in his classroom in a meaningful way. On Wednesday, we had  Kirsten Thompson  (familiar face!) and  Andrew Mead  call into our class using Zoom and discuss using social media in the classroom. Tyler Letkeman He described how he does writers workshop in his classes and makes the work authentic and gives it purpose. Letkeman uses writers workshop to introduce students to the craft of being an author - the goal is publication and writing for an audience, not for grades. He uses  BLURB  to publish the works into a book that is added to the school library for other students to read. Knowing their stories will have an audience after its written, students are wanting to do their be...