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Guest Author Series #1: Why Do I Teach?
Author: Scott DiTullio
Profession: Director of Bands, Allegheny-Clarion Valley School District, PA
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I recently co-wrote an article with Dr. Susan Creasap from Morehead State University, for the NBA Journal. As I’ve reflected more on the subject and have talked to more college students about what I do, I wanted to share some thoughts with you also.

Why do I teach? As I sit and listen to the news every night and hear about all of the violence, I often ask myself the same question. I hope I am making a difference in my students. I want to instill in them, the great opportunities that I had as a student in school. My music teachers were always the ones that went above and beyond their daily duties. They were still in the buildings well after everyone left for the day. I do the same for my students, as most others are out of the building by 3:30, I am always one of the last teachers to leave (5:30 or later). I’m always trying to give my students the extra incentive, the extra push, or the motivation to excel for excellence at all they try to do, not just music.

Second, I’m not a “teacher” to my students. I am a motivator, a counselor, and then finally a teacher. I am the one that will motivate them every day to do more than just ok. I want and encourage them to work to the best of their ability and then some. How do I know when they get there? I can see the intensity in their faces, they come back tomorrow and the next day, and you can see how hard they are working! My family often says to me, “I thought you went to school to become a teacher?” My response is, “I did.” In the world of music, we get to know our students more than any other teacher in the district. We eat many meals together and travel to many events. In that time, I can tell you that I’ve eaten more meals with some of my students than they have with their own parents. They come to us for advice on many subjects, from school, to their relationships, to family concerns. We become a surrogate parent, as they seek advice, we try to steer them towards a sound solution to their problems in a caring way. I’ve had several students come back to me over the years and say thank-you for your talks. You always seem to know what to say or make us look at things differently. Once we get through motivating and counseling, we finally get to teaching.

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Note: If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed for the latest news and information. Not Sure What RSS is or how to Subscribe? Click Here!

RSS feeds are changing the web world of today.  In effect, they are making the web easier to navigate and enabling us to easily find “current” information that we are interested in. 

I have become enamoured with netvibes and pageflakes.  They are enabling me to check all of my email accounts (I have eight, I use constantly), and keep track of all the RSS feeds that are important to me in one place, using one interface.  Don’t know what RSS is? Click here to find out.

I have made two RSS sites, using netvibes and pageflakes, that may be of interest to the readers of mustech.net.  Both of these sites are compiled RSS feeds that I have found to be particularly interesting and active.  All of these sites are written by bloggers focusing on the topics of  Music, Education and Technology. 

Pageflake sites:
Go to http://pageflakes.com/mustech to find the compiled list of Music, Technology and Education feeds.

If you have a pageflakes account or register for one, make your own “pageflake” from the above links using this template: Template Link.  This will allow you to add all the a sites into your own template so that you can add to it or delete from it.

Netvibes:
Use this link go to the netvibes music and technology rss sites.
(I’ve been waiting for them to officially list it as a tab, providing an easier to read URL)

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I’ve been writing (blogging) for awhile now.  I have made a concerted effort to understand SEO, write great articles and provide a “killer” site here at http://mustech.net for all my visitors and friends.

It did not take long for me to find out who the big bloggers in Music Education were.  Take it from me, there are not many of us!  In my journey to get the message out about music, technology and education, I found out that there aren’t many music educators using the technologies that are available to them, such as this GREAT SITE! (A little self promotion, ;D). How many of the music educators and musicians reading this have any clue what RSS is?  No? Click this link.

I am going to list a number of sites and provide some link love to my fellow bloggers.  Every person or site I list here are ones that I personally visit, comment about or on, write articles about on mustech.net or have found very enriching. 

IN ORDER TO START A DIALOG ABOUT THESE SITES, THEIR CONTENT, AND OTHER SITES THAT I MAY NOT BE AWARE OF, I’M ASKING YOU ALL TO JOIN IN ON THE DIALOG, START A GLOBAL CONVERSATION WITH US HERE OR AT THE SITES I’M WRITING ABOUT IN THIS ARTICLE. START BY LEAVING A COMMENT HERE TODAY!

Let me know about the music BLOG sites (the great music education blogs of today) you find interesting, OWN or.. feel free to disagree with me about something, anything!;) .

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Hello all,

         I’m trying to increase web exposure on the internet by getting more [tag]bloglinks[/tag] on [tag]blogroll[/tag]s and link rolls in general!  If you have a [tag]blog[/tag] or [tag]website[/tag] and you think that Mustech.net is fullfilling it’s mission by providing great information, help and advice- for FREE, please consider adding us to your link! 

          I’m also in the process of adding more quality sites to our blogroll, let me know about your site and we’ll consider adding it here too! Consider adding us to your myspace or other online area as well!  While your at it, click on a few Sponsor links! Thanks!

                                                 ~Joe Pisano