The Pursuit of Excellence: A Band Director’s Guide to Success 34 years as the Director of Bands at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Prince George’s County, Maryland, Sally Wagner brings all of the tricks of the trade together in one perfect little package.  She discusess everything from intonation to preparing for assessment to starting chamber ensembles within your large ensemble. The book is organized in a very simplistic way, breaking it down to four major sections: The Pursuit of Excellence, Strategies That Make a Difference, Fine Tuning Your Program, and Quotes that Inspire.  Th ..read more

One of my blog initiatives is going to be sharing various materials, resources, perspectives, and opinions from my experiences in the classroom for future music educators. Below is a presentation I did in April 2020 for my alma mater’s Marching Band Techniques Class.  All of the links in the presentation are clickable.  Feel free to check things out.   ..read more

Part 1 In the fall of 2015, I ran a panel discussion at the state music conference with a handful of other young music teachers across the state of Maryland geared specially for pre-service and new teachers.  I have made some updates and have shared them below.  Although that was the intended audience, I would like to add veteran teachers to the list who may find themselves in a new school.  Besides sharing some nuggets of wisdom for rising teachers, these truly are good practices. Just a note to the reader: the topics are in order of importance for the pre-service teacher based ..read more

Finally, in my 8th year of teaching, I attended the Midwest Clinic in Chicago.  All I have to say it “Mind…Blown.”  Well, that’s not everything, but I have never experienced anything like this in my entire career.  State conferences cannot even compare the caliber and size of Midwest (except maybe TMEA, so I’ve heard).  This year, attendees broke the record for the most ever attending (over 18,000) and the largest exhibit hall that the conference has ever had.  I believe it. I walked into sessions that were jam packed with standing room only.  And by standing room ..read more

As we sit here wrapping up the last two days of the school year, I received my daily email from Accomplished Teacher from National Board Certification for Teachers.  I click on the email to see what education and NBCT articles they were sharing today.  As I’m scrolling through, I can’t help but think how insane it is that I spent three years working towards this certification, the first two while I was completing my masters full-time and teaching full-time, and the last year during my first year at teaching high school in a new county.  Now, a year later after completing the ent ..read more