Best of 2020: Year in Review

The phrase "best of 2020" seems a bit ironic given how difficult the year has been, but I do still want to take a minute to look back on the past year here on the Organized Chaos blog! It's always so interesting for me to see which posts were most read, and look back on what we, as a profession, were thinking about most. January seems like so long...

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More Contemporary Instrumentalists of Color

One of the easiest ways to better reflect minoritized people in the music room is to include examples of people of color in our everyday lessons. About a year ago I shared some contemporary instrumentalists of color I like to feature in my lessons when I am introducing instruments of the orchestra, and today I'm sharing some more musicians on...

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Zoom for Music Teachers

Like many teachers around the world, I have been using Zoom to teach distant learners since the beginning of this school year. For most of the fall I taught distant learners on Zoom while teaching in-person learners in the classroom, but now our district is fully virtual and I am teaching everyone through Zoom every day! So today I'm sharing my top...

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An Inclusive Holiday Sing Along in Pandemic Times

I have been doing an all-school holiday sing-along the last day before December break for several years now, and when I started talking with my principal about schoolwide events we could do in full distance learning, I knew I wanted to do it this year despite the obvious challenges. We started the school year in a hybrid model, which meant no singing...

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November Highlights 2020

November was... quite eventful! When I first started writing these monthly recap posts I had a few intentions in mind: have a way to share some of my day-to-day, amplify content from other bloggers I was sharing on my Facebook page directly on this site, and highlight some of those little things I share on my Instagram account that aren't lengthy enough...

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24 Days of Family Christmas Activities: Socially Distanced Edition

One of our most treasured family traditions is our advent calendar. Since my daughters were 2, I've been putting together an advent calendar with a small holiday-related activity to do each day leading up to Christmas. I never thought it would become such an important part of our lives but now, with my girls about to turn 9, they start asking about...

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Top 3 Tips for Using Google Slides in Elementary Music

Between hybrid and virtual teaching, I have become a huge fan of Google Slides. It does everything I need all in one place so I don't have to switch between programs, or get my students (or myself) to learn how to navigate multiple platforms. After using slides in virtually every lesson this school year, here are the top functions I come back to over...

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Teaching Solfege Without Singing

I can't believe I'm even writing a post on the topic of solfege without singing, but this is the crazy world we live in right now! So far my school has been in a hybrid model in the school building wearing masks, where none of us are allowed to sing. Although this is certainly a less-than-ideal situation, I've found some creative ways to still keep...

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Advice from the Field

After chatting with some fellow elementary music teachers last week about the joys and struggles of our various teaching situations, I asked each of them to share a short word of advice to others who may find themselves in the same situation, whether that's teaching fully online, live or asynchronous, on a cart, in your own music room, or some combination...

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Music Teacher Fireside Chat: pandemic edition

Now more than ever, it's so easy to feel alone in our situations as music teachers! Today I'm sharing something simple but so very special: a peek into life on the ground with 4 of us, all teaching elementary general music in different ways around the country! We represent full virtual teaching, posting online lessons, in the music room, on a cart,...

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October Highlights 2020

I'm scared to say this out loud but... I feel like I'm actually getting into some semblance of a rhythm. I'm sure as soon as I put that thought out into the world everything will be upended, but for now it is nice to feel much more settled than I have in months! Here are some of my highlights from the past month.1. Fall DecoratingThis may seem silly,...

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