Mr. B's Blog

Going Beyond the B-flat Scale Whole/Half/Quarter/Eighth/Sixteenth Band Warm-Up!   Over the past few weeks I have been doing some major soul searching of what makes a great band rehearsal.  This semester I passed out "Songs of Earth, Water, Fire, and Sky" by Robert W. Smith.  I quickly collected this piece back when I passed it out to my band a few years ago.  I gave it a go this semester and found excitement in the piece when my young clarinet section basically mastered a tough sixteenth note ostinato passage from just one day of sectionals. I knew my philosophy on selecting music needed to change along with a new-found focus on creating a very balanced and consistent warm-up routine for my band rehearsal.  I did something very unusual this past week as I stopped the learning of all sheet music and instead had section leaders run sectionals going over all 12 major scales and specific tuning tendencies/solutions for their instrument family.  The results were amazing.  Now

I am happy to announce that I will be teaching a new graduate course titled "Technology Integration for the 21st Century Classroom."  I consider myself a technology guru when it comes to integrating technology into the curriculum.  I will not lie, I have no idea and no interest in what makes a computer or internet work.  What I do care about is going through the vast educational technology that is out there right now and weeding out the good from the bad.  I have much experience working with other subject areas and have received a lot of technology training from Apple and from my years teaching for Virtual High School.  While at Pentucket, I served on the District-Wide Technology Committee.  As a result of all these experiences, I want to give teachers a hands-on opportunity to embrace technology and feel comfortable making lesson plans using technology. Here is the course description: This course is aimed at giving educators hands-on training of the latest tools for creat

When coming to Lowell I immediately began working on trying to capture the cultural value in the city with a vision of a new multidisciplinary project.  Lowell is a melting pot rich with many different cultures and has a great art scene.  This project in particular brought together high school and kindergarten students. The high school received grant funding to start a new program called "The Literacy Lab."  This is where students who are brand new to the country and the English language come to learn.  The room is staffed with a full time teacher and four tutors representing many of the students' nationalities.  As the students progress they are slowly introduced to the regular high school schedule.  This is an exceptional program lead by Kristen Colon. The 95 kindergarten students I teach at the Rogers School is a new pilot program focused on giving a full-day experience for students who specifically have little or no pre-K education.  Here we were trained on Teac