// Blog
A music education framework toward self-actualization and collective liberation through composition, performance and music technology.
As I reflect on my sense of purpose as … Read More »
This Is How We Fight Back
This Is How We Fight Back
This has been a week. There is so much to do and there is not enough time to do it. There is also no time not to do it.
Silence is Violence.
In my role as an educator, my guiding light has always been, “Teach individuals; … Read More »
What Feels Alive, Part 1 of 3
I’ve been doing lots of thinking and reflecting on what feels alive these days for me personally as an educator, as a music educator, as an activist and as a person. These days, what feels most alive within me as a music educator is not music education for the sake of … Read More »
It’s the first day of school and I’m not talking academics. I’m talking justice and I’m talking peace.
Welcome to the new school year! Today we won’t be talking about key signatures, or paradiddles or quavers or demisemihemidemisemiquavers (256th notes). Today we are gonna talk about justice and about peace, and about how one will ensure the other as we music make together this year. Being in community as we learn about music … Read More »
Hopes & Dreams
It is almost that time in NYC for public school students, teachers and staff to come back together and build. What a fertile time! What a scary time! What a freeing time! What a stressful time! The ocean, the iced coffees, the sun, the travel, the post-beach-sand-in-my-apartment and the meet ups with … Read More »
Highlightin’ the US in perc-US-sion
Highlighting the “US” in perc-US-sIon
Four life building blocks we learn through percussive arts.
When my little buddies of percussion club and I jam together on a Afro Cuban “3:2 Clave” rhythm, we are of course learning how to drum in steady tempo, play different polyrhythms, play with different dynamics and even use correct technique and sticking … Read More »
ABC: Actively Boost Community
To make music is to make community. To be in a band is to be in a community. To be a music maker is to be a community maker. Music brings communities together to celebrate, mourn, communicate hidden and literal messages, synthesize feelings and emotions, calm down, rile up, protest, agree, make peace, make … Read More »
Transforming Classroom “Management” into Classroom “Flow”
What is the hardest part about teaching a class? Most folks would not say teaching the content, or waking up early. Most teachers will tell you that “Classroom Management” is by far the hardest aspect of being a school teacher. I agree! Reflecting back on my eleven years working in the classroom teaching instrumental … Read More »
Five simple, but not easy things, we, white teachers can do outside the classroom to make the world a safer, fairer and kinder place for our students, and colleagues of color.
I am a teacher. I have always been. I will always be. I have always loved to share information and make connections with humans. I love essential questions; those questions that make us think critically about who we are and why,not how,we are doing what we are doing. I believe in essential questions and … Read More »
Dance Party Island; Why I host a dance party every class I teach.
For the better part of the past two school years, I have hosted a dance party during every single class period that I taught. As I reflect on this past school year, I am willing to say that co-curating dance parties with my students has been the single most transformative experience in my classroom. … Read More »