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A&GC: Week 1 – If the World Were a Village

Part blog post, part field notes. This post is part of a series of reflections on a 10-week elective I’m both teaching and conducting active research on. Entitled” The Arts as a Path to Global Citizenship” our goal is to explore our roles as global citizens using the arts to approach complicated and difficult topics, such…

A&GC: What is an Action Research Project?

Action Research is something most teachers have done in one form or another, just without the title. A multi-step process that has you as the educator select a focus, develop a theory, implement while gathering research, and then analyse the results. I’ll be undertaking an Action Research Project (ARP) as the capstone project of my…

Let’s Celebrate Lunar New Years

Lunar New Years is the single most celebrated holiday in the world! All across Asia countries and cultures enjoy this holiday much in the same way we celebrate New Years Eve. Based around the Chinese Zodiac calendar each year ushers in a the reign of a new animal, and depending on the year you were…

Graphic Novels for Global Citizenship

UPDATE: FULLY FUNDED! As part of a larger 10-week elective course I’m preparing for, I wanted to teach a short unit using graphic novels. However, we have no communal library at our school and acquiring a class set of texts can be expensive. Regardless, I think that Global Citizenship is an important worthwhile goal, and graphic…

Winter Concert: A new approach to old ideas

With another year in the books I wanted to take a look at what I felt was one of the most successful Winter Concert / Holidays Shows I’ve ever put together. A thematic show is something that a lot of music teachers struggle with, since there are only so many options year after year….

Vince Guaraldi & A Very Jazzy Christmas

Jazz up the holidays with this fun and informative lesson about one of history’s most well-known & commercially successful jazz composers, Vince Guaraldi. The man behind the memorable music from the Charlie Brown Christmas Special did more than just a short soundtrack. Explore the beginnings of his story and the history of a genre with…

Note-Cards: A Musical Matching Game

Have your cake and eat it too, with this fun and educational card game. Players will be exposed to & learn about various notes, rest, clefs, and other musical symbols. Based on the classic line of Crazy 8’s (UNO) card games, this version has slightly altered (yet intuitive) rules that reflect the nature of the…

The Power of Positive Relationships (a personal journey)

“You can catch more flies with honey” a friend used to tell me. How does an old adage like this apply to your classroom? I’ve had a great deal of behavior struggles with my students this year, and I want to share my experience of what worked and what didn’t. I’ve found a few methods…

Beyond What: The Why & How

I tend to focus on a lot of practice and tangible activities. Functional thoughts and ideas that you can take directly into the classroom and implement immediately. Sometimes as an educator you need to take a step backwards and look at your lesson from a philosophical standpoint thought and think beyond simply ‘what’ you are working on,…

FREE: Materials from Arts Education Conference

Thanks to CPS Arts & Ingenuity for putting this amazing conference together! I enjoyed it not only as a presenter but as an attendee as well. In the spirit of the event’s theme “Collaborating for Quality” I wanted to share all the resources I discussed in my presentation, making them available to download and use. The…