independent school – Ed Castro's Blog

Conversations With Developing Musicians

While teaching music to small and large ensembles, the type of questions I often get asked is related to how musicians should practice. Therefore, I recommend reading several books for musicians to gain personal knowledge and introspection about developing a practice routine. These books have helped me think about the practical applications of learning music…
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Teaching Orchestra and Band in a Digital Space: Day 15

Close One and Cheers: Like most Friday’s before a break from school occurs, thing are bound to go wrong. Sometimes it’s students behaving unruly or planned events that disrupt the day, like a class parties. You never know what might come up of these days. Today my “WTF” moment happened due to poor bandwidth. Now…
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Teaching Orchestra and Band in a Digital Space: Day 14

Tired: On a typical day I feel like I get to move around a fair amount. With conducting ensembles and moving around campus, I might even say I am very active. On occasion I might get a work out before my day starts. However, since the coronavirus era of teaching started, my movements have been…
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Teaching Orchestra and Band in a Digital Space: Day 13

Live sound in a virtual space: Now that things are settling into what seem more and more a regular routine, I started to ask some fundamental questions about the user experience within my virtual platform. How is the sound of my voice received by my students? When I speak or demonstrate on my instruments, what…
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Teaching Orchestra and Band in a Digital Space: Day 12

Three Great Moments In One Virtual School Day Today I had several experiences with students and colleagues which are cause for acknowledgement, appreciation and gratitude. Teaching Assistant Before the term started, one of my students in the advanced orchestra approached me about being a teaching assistant. Currently, the school doesn’t have a policy regarding this,…
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Teaching Orchestra and Band in a Digital Space: Day 11

Duet with myself: Today starts the 3rd week of the spring term. Some things feel normal and routine, as mentioned in the previous post and other things feel new. One of the actives I enjoy doing with students is active listening of music. This typically involves listening to a piece of music or two with…
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Teaching Orchestra and Band in a Digital Space: Day 10

Routine & Balance After ten days of teaching remotely, plus a week of keeping track of assignments the week before, while preparing to be a virtual teacher, this thing we now think of as remote teaching, is starting to feel routine. Teaching from my makeshift home office is starting to feel almost normal too. In…
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Teaching Orchestra and Band in a Digital Space: Day 9

Teams: When considering the word “teams”, one inevitably starts to think about groups of people who work together. Until a few days ago, if you were to do a search of “teams”, using any internet search browser you’d likely get a bunch of sports related articles or sports related images. Now that we are hitting…
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Teaching Orchestra and Band in a Digital Space: Day 8

Community and Service: As part of my curriculum I spend time exploring the idea of musicians as part of a group of communities. It’s important enough to me, that I try to include work regarding music, community and service in every unit I teach. Some of the question I pose to students are; What roles…
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Teaching Orchestra and Band in a Digital Space: Day 7

Tools for the job: As mentioned in a previous post, I want to take the time to talk about specific tools used in my day to day virtual classrooms. First, I feel the need to mention that the hardware and software I use are just my preference of tools, and these are the one which…
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