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Note: this is the sixteenth of a series of posts investigating the leadership style of John Wooden and its applicability to choral music education. We have reviewed the fifteen traits John Wooden included in his Pyramid of Success. Throughout, I felt there was a universality to his selected traits as applicable to all disciplines, despite his developing them as a basketball […]

It’s getting to be festival season for high school choirs and bands, and that means a reminder is needed: Every performance is a snapshot. A single picture of your actual potential. Will every snapshot show you in the best light? Of course not: even the most photogenic people take pictures with their eyes closed. […]

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a speaker who inspired action. He was a writer of great grace and power, but he knew his words were only as powerful as the movement they inspired. Here we are, nearly 50 years after his death, still working to follow his lead, and always searching […]

I have made a personal vow never to complain about the letters in my rack in Scrabble. The thing is, if you play enough games, you get lot of great sets of seven, and lots of terrible sets with no vowels or all vowels. The trick is to anticipate how the word you play […]

You have to slow down for poetry. In good poetry, the words are placed with such care and precision; we must treat them with respect. Too many adults leave poetry behind with their high school English classes – something for smarter people than I, something for more sophisticated people than I. […]

Mondays are many people’s least favorite day of the week (and cats, apparently). The truth is, though, it’s the transition from weekend to weekday that people hate. We thrive on rhythm, on routine. The weekend disrupts our routines, and the shift back into the routine is what people dislike. This is the dark side of Snow Days […]

Our school district presents a thrice-yearly series of speakers and presentations called “Developing Healthy Kids” – meant to address often-overlooked educational issues. Last night there was a powerful 90-minute presentation titled “Surviving and Thriving During the Teen Years.” Spearheaded by my colleague and friend Kris DeYoung, it was a mixture of video, […]

Note: this is the fifteenth of a series of posts investigating the leadership style of John Wooden and its applicability to choral music education. We have reached the peak of John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success. The personality trait he places atop his pyramid is COMPETITIVE GREATNESS. Wooden says, “Competitive Greatness is having a real love for […]

I’ve written before about snow days, and the special opportunities they provide. Today, I’m thankful for the snow day that gave me a morning of writing, an afternoon of family games, and an evening of listening to my president address the nation. I enjoyed it so much, I almost forgot to share […]

You can choose to do more. Or you can choose to do what you already do, but better. Our society values more. If there is one overarching motto to 21st Century America, it is More. More stuff, more channels, more extracurriculars, more friends on social media. More is not the same as better, though. Too […]