Sarah Gulish is a high school music teacher outside of Philadelphia, PA. She teaches orchestra, guitar, and “Creativity and Collaboration,” which is a required course at her school. Sarah is a 2007 graduate of Temple University, where she later earned a PhD in Music Education. Sarah runs F-flat Books, a music education publishing company, and…
Matthew Shaffer is middle school orchestra director in State College, PA. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in music education from Penn State University and a Master’s degree in music education from Lebanon Valley College. While Matt is primarily an orchestral cellist, he also played in a band in high school. That band experience, jamming with…
Marissa Guarriello is a 6th-12th grade orchestra teacher in the Penn Ridge School District, in Eastern Pennsylvania, as well as a co-author of the book, The Creative String Orchestra. Marissa is an advocate for creativity in the orchestra classroom, even though that’s not how she got her start in music! In this interview, Marissa talks…
Abigail Blair is pre-k through 5th-grade general music teacher in the Chicago suburbs. She has a bachelor’s degree from Augustana College and a master’s degree from Boston University. Abigail has created several games that help empower her music students. Prior to creating the games, Abigail felt her student couldn’t talk about music, despite what she…
Steve Selfridge has been teaching in Garnet Valley School district in southeast PA for 20 years, teaching elementary band, middle school jazz band, and now high school band. Steve has had outstanding success creating videos to empower his band students and band students around the world. How it Started Steve created his first video in…
Holly Gage is an elementary and middle school band director in South Dakota. She has taught in a variety of settings in both South Dakota and Washington DC and during that time has worked to make her classrooms student centered. Holly likes to use checklists in her band room to give students ownership of their…
Laura Johnson is a band director at a Title I middle school in Chesapeake, Virginia. Before moving to Virginia, she taught middle school band in central Minnesota. Laura is passionate about having students select repertoire in her ensembles. She was inspired by her own high school band experience, where she and her classmates were given…
Michelle Baldwin is a music teacher and instructional coach at Anastasis Academy in Centennial, Colorado. She has been teaching music for 25+ years in a variety of settings and has been at Anastasis Academy since 2011. Michelle talked to us about how she incorporates inquiry into her music classes. Anastasis Academy follows an inquiry model,…
We had the pleasure of interviewing Allison Rakickas, a junior high school band director in Aptakisic-Tripp School District in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. She’s been in Aptakisic-Tripp School District for 20+ years, first teaching 5th and 6th grade band, and now 7th and 8th grade band. Allison talked to us about how she passed the baton to her students…
One thing we have learned over the last nine months is that music teachers are incredibly creative people and very capable of innovation! We’ve seen bitmoji classrooms, virtual field trips, bouncing ball videos and more. All of this to meet the musical needs of our students during a highly unusual time in history. Where there’s…