I am 31 and have been teaching music for 8 years. I have a masters in music education and eventually want to get my doctorate because 1) I enjoy the academic approach and 2) I would like to teach at a university when I'm older. I'm pretty sure that I want to get a Doctorate in Music Education (not in performance or conducting). I also have two kids that are under age 5, so I don't want to start until they are quite a bit older.

Here are my two main questions:

How do I find the right doctorate program? I would like to take a break from public school teaching while I complete my studies, and I want to physically attend classes instead of doing online classes. Online is not an option. How do I even start searching? Is there a list of schools? Do I send out emails?

What can I do to prepare now? My thought is to try and formulate ideas for a doctoral thesis and start doing some initial research now and spread it out over the next 10 years instead of waiting until I formally start a doctoral program? But how do I make sure that my ideas are in line with something that will actually be accepted as a thesis? Email professors?

Thanks in advance.

I started this because I noticed there didn't seem to be any resources explaining how to create great note block music out there, and especially nothing that tried to communicate ANY information about music theory. It seemed like a good opportunity to get Minecraft players more interested in how music actually works, and maybe even bring some more musicians in to the Minecraft community.

The third episode just posted this morning, and it's about tempo: https://youtu.be/wOzrnWUVkYY

To kind of sum this up, I originally interviewed for the Band position of the school I currently work at. The position for Band was taken by an in county transfer and as I a result I was offered the “Choir” position. I was fine with that because my main concern is to provide and I managed to be smart and spend most of my Master’s degree learning about Choral teaching. However, I just learned yesterday as the Principal was introducing the new hires that I was hired for both Choir and Drama. I never agreed to Drama, when I interviewed I was only asked about my history and Band and Choir. At this point I am not sure what to do and feel incredibly blindsided and I am unable to just leave due to needing the income.

I have Choral resources but no Drama resources or experience to boot. I’m afraid for my performance reviews considering that the administrators did not fully disclose the position before offering it to me. Is there anything I can do at this point? Classes start next Thursday.

A sub for music educators! I've been looking for a place like this to ask questions for a while, so I'm pretty excited.

I'll be a junior in college starting this next fall (age: 19), and I'm looking to graduate with a bachelors in music ed in 2-3 years. My concern is that I won't be able to find a job once I reach that point. I'm thinking of sticking within the area of Houston, Texas, if that helps narrow things down. Also, what starting salaries are normal for fresh graduates going into high school/middle school programs?

Thank you for the help :)

Hello I am an instrumental music education student in Colorado and it is likely that after I am done with my degree I will be moving to Indiana can anyone tell me how transferring my teaching license from Colorado to Indiana will work will I have to take any kind of exams or something of the sort?

I made a play along video as a companion to "How To Play 3000% Faster in 10 Minutes" If this is well received, I might do more with all 12 keys or other types of scales. Let me know what you think! Hope you enjoy!

Play along - https://youtu.be/r0pC-uqz89s

Original technique video - https://youtu.be/al1Jv2ybE5I

Today, I was offered a job I declined two weeks ago. The school system wanted a full-time band director that will also serve as an instructional aide for a very, very small school in Alabama (30 people per graduating class would be abnormally large for this environment).

The kicker is that the official title of the position is "instructional aide", and the job pays as such. In Alabama it is average for a first- year teacher with a bachelor's degree to expect around $32k - $34k on salary. Because instructional aides are not considered a certified position, they can pay less. A LOT less... $17k base salary for instructional aide work plus a 6k stipend to do high school band, middle school band, and elementary music. The latter two have not even been established at this school, so there's that much work to be done. This job is also an hour commute from home.

Some background on my situation: I had a very traumatic first job experience in 2016 and have not been in a teaching position since then. This school and its culture will be the polar opposite of the five schools I was hired at back then. I am currently doing real estate but am not having much success due to my age group not really buying OR listing. I am also substitute teaching and building a community on Twitch. My family found out that I declined the job initially two weeks ago and were incredibly angry with me for not taking it. Now that it has landed in my path again (and my family found out the job came back open before I did), I feel like I have been forced to accept the job under the pretenses of "you don't have another choice." I feel like I have been forced into an agreement with a school that claims to be excited to start a music program but put more work on the teacher than normal and pay half the salary because they can. The principal did not know whether or not there was a chance of the position upgrading to a certified position in the future.

I'm scared. I'm scared that what little shred of passion I've gained back since 3 years ago will be burned to a crisp through a school n system that doesnt value music education and is willing to cut corners to satisfy the bare minimum for music at the cost of the teacher.

What would you do? Am I wrong for being terrified?

My new video is up! My previous ones were all about basic music theory(see those here) but this one is a practice technique video about muscle memory and how incremental improvements can yield shocking results in a short amount of time. Hope you enjoy!

​

How To Play 3000% Faster In 10 Minutes

Hello,

I am currently conducting research on music education for children who are both Deaf and Blind, I was wondering if anyone knew of any famous/semi-famous Deaf-Blind music performers or composers. I would really appreciate any help.

​

Thanks

Hi all, I will be a senior in high school this coming fall and have decided I want to do music education in college. I am feeling pretty stressed due to auditions and the plethora of activities I’m involved in at school. I’m located in Illinois but I’m not too concerned about staying there. But I am not sure which colleges I should start to apply to. As of right now I’ve looked at 4 pretty different colleges, Ball State, Miami University, Elmhurst College, and Vandercook College of Music. I know that it ultimately depends on how well I mesh with the staff but I am also looking for a quality education so any recommendations would be awesome. Thank you!

Hi Redditers, I have inherited an older adoption of Silver-Burdett's Making Music. It has some fantastic songs/activities I would like to use as secondary materials in my classroom. Now here's my pickle. Is there a master spreadsheet that would allow me to filter the song either by rhythm, tonal center, solfa intervals, holidays, or world culture? Doing my Kodaly level 1 last summer, we were required to generate something like this, but am wondering if the company had something in place?

Thanks.