Back to school.... two years later!

Hello there! So I'm not even going to try to explain/excuse my two year blogging hiatus, and though I'm not making any promises this time, I do plan to blog regularly throughout this year. Despite the lack of blogging, it's been a great two years, both personally and professionally! Here are a few of the professional highlights:

• Started a beginning winds and strings elective in the Middle School! This Fall, I'll be offering both the beginning elective and a continuing elective that will include students who've started their instrument through private lessons.

• Completed two more student-created and directed Lower School Springfest performances, based on Stone Soup by Jon J. Muth (2015), and Julia's House for Lost Creatures by Ben Hatke (2016)

• Integrated the fun and wonderfully designed, technology-rich Quaver's Marvelous World of Music curriculum into the Lower School music program. This year, I'll also be using Noteflight for my upper elementary and middle school students.

• Combined my Lower and Middle School rooms into a single teaching space that's my room all day (yay!)

• Replaced original set of classroom ukuleles with a much better model, leading to more ukulele playing, especially in the 3rd and 4th grade.

• Musically directed two amazing, large musicals in the Middle School: Seussical, Jr. (might be my favorite ever!) and Michael Sirotta's Alice in Wonderland.

• "Graduated" my first 8th-grade advisees who had been my advisees for four years and my students for eight years (proud and sad!)

• Continued conducting the Piedmont Youth and Family Orchestra, designed new website, and made plans for a 2016-17 year of renewal and growth (starting Sept. 11, 2016!)

• My first professionally published short story, "Bully," appeared in the January 2016 issue of Cricket Magazine. A lifelong dream come true! Hoping my novels are next...

Okay, enough tooting my own horn (which reminds me, in moving spaces I discovered the most amazing Marx-brothers style bicycle horn stuffed in a box, along with lots of other shiny stuff). School starts Tuesday, and music classes begin the day after Labor Day. Better go organize!