• Work out for at least a little bit every day
• Take more pictures with my digital camera (I touched it for the first time in MONTHS this December)
• Project 365 (one photo per day, all year turned into one photo per week, turned into no photos after March!)
• Practice my trumpet more

I don’t know what the difference in my mind between the phrase “new year’s resolution” and “goals” is, but somehow setting goals for the upcoming year seems to make more sense, and since I was inspired by Julie Manfredi‘s post of her own goals for 2012, I figured I would take a crack at writing down my own. Maybe this will help hold me accountable… or maybe not! Anyway, here goes:

1. Smile more often - 2011 was a great year for me, but the past few months have been deflating as I started a new job as the band director at South Dade Senior High School. I know any band director transition is difficult, and the transition to living on my own with not as many friends around as I’m used to has been trying for me as well. I hope to smile more often this year, both by thinking about things more positively and by creating more positive experiences for myself through improvements at work and at home. Plus, smiles are contagious!
2. Work out at least 3 times per week - I like to set attainable goals, and I think working out every day wasn’t attainable given my schedule. After all, I’m not going to want to do even a fifteen-minute set with the weights after getting home from 14 hours of band camp! 3 times per week is much more attainable.
3. Turn the corner at school - The transition to a new director has been a trying one on both me and my students. I hope to turn the corner this spring in terms of my relationship with my students. Now that my feet are more solidly planted on the ground, I think we will be able to work together much more effectively.
4. Become more active in my PLN - One of the major cutbacks I had to make in my life during the first few months of teaching was the amount of time I spent interacting with my online Professional Learning Network. I basically abandoned the #MusEdChat Twitter chat (HUGE thanks to @jguarr and the gang for keeping it going), and disappeared from the online Music Education world. I hope to jump back in and continue growing as an educator by learning from these wonderful, passionate individuals!
5. Keep in touch with the people I care about - I have lost touch with a lot of people I care immensely about over the past year. I have never been very good at keeping in touch with my extended family, and now that most of my friends are spread out everywhere from Nashville to California to Kuwait, it has been hard keeping in touch with everyone I care about. I am hoping to change that this year.

There you have it! Plain and simple, and I think they’re all attainable, too! Here’s to a happy, productive, and healthy 2012 for all

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The star-studded clinician line-up for the “AWBT” Symposium is a who’s who of American Wind Band composers/conductors:

• Craig Kirchhoff, University of Minnesota
• Frank Ticheli, University of Southern California
• Richard Floyd, University of Texas
• Richard Mayne, University of Northern Colorado
• Allan McMurray, University of Colorado
• Marianne Ploger, Vanderbilt University
• Timothy Diem, University of Minnesota
• Alexander Fiterstein, University of Minnesota
• Shelley Hanson, composer
• Libby Larsen, Composer
• Jerry Luckhardt, University of Minnesota
• Alicia Neal, University of Minnesota
• Laura Sindberg, University of Minnesota
• Jim Cochran, Shattinger Music

I’m looking forward to meeting and working with these great minds, as well as meeting some of the great people in my Professional Learning Network for the first time. You can stay updated on my experiences by following me on Twitter @Zweibz7, where I will be using the #AWBT11 hashtag to update as often as I can from the sessions.

As an aside, if you are on Google+, consider adding my profile to one of your circles! I’m still not sure if Google+ will catch on and I’m very unsure of how I plan to use it, but it has been a great resource for more long-form discussion so far!

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• Lunch at a patio restaurant on the ocean
• Phone calls to parents confirming their students’ attendance next week
• Unpacking in our beautiful house (pictures below)
• Setting up my technology room for next week’s classes
• Lunch at one of the popular places “in town”
• My first time ever eating sushi!

Today, we’re getting ready to pick up the rest of the group (five of us came out a few days early to set up) and be tourists for the weekends before we get to work next week! I have some pictures uploading right now – they should be up soon!

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Anyway, I will be updating here on the progress of my trips as often as I can, and hope to include some videos, pictures, and stories along the way! If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to my feed (by clicking the link in the sidebar) so you can stay updated during my trip. You can also follow my updates on Twitter at @Zweibz7 and updates from the Creative Music Project at @CreativeMusProj.

I’ll talk to you soon – from paradise!!

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Indeed, since I’ve gotten back from a short vacation after graduation, it has been very quiet here in South Florida. Having said goodbye to almost all of my close friends and finished my internship/school, things have slowed down a lot for me. Believe it or not, I’m BORED!

A few of the things I have been doing to keep myself occupied:

• Applying to jobs. LOTS of them.
• Working on my lesson plans for the Creative Music Project
• Applying to more jobs.
• Steamrolling through my Netflix queue (I’m currently watching all seven seasons of “The West Wing”)
• Going to an occasional interview
• Working out
• Sleeping. A lot.

I know that once I have a job lined up things will get a lot busier very quickly. Until then, I’m trying to keep busy so I don’t dwell on how quiet it is here. Any other suggestions of ways to stay occupied are welcome!

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First, I’m excited to say I have officially finished my degree and graduated from the University of Miami! The past six months have been a complete whirlwind, between student teaching, graduation, job applications, and saying a lot of difficult goodbyes to my friends. They have, however, been some of the best months of my life, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

As I mentioned, I’m applying for jobs at the moment. I hope to have good news to report very soon (cross your fingers for me!), but for the time being I am trying to not divulge too much publicly about the positions I am being considered for. If you want more info about my job search, get in touch with me and I will let you know in a private conversation.

In addition to the job search, I am excited to be participating in two very exciting events this summer. First, I will be traveling to the Cayman Islands next week with the Creative Music Project to teach a week-long free music workshop to the students on the island. I’ll hopefully be able to provide some frequent updates during this trip, so if you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to this blog to stay updated. Also, in late July I will be attending the University of Minnesota’s “Art of Wind Band Teaching” Symposium on a new teacher fellowship. I am extremely excited to learn from some of the best in the world!

If you follow me on Twitter (@Zweibz7), you likely know that I recently handed off the Editor-in-Chief position at MusicEdMajor.net to Andy Ritenour. I founded MusicEdMajor.net over two years ago and loved every minute of running it, but as I explained in my post announcing the move, it needs to be run by current Music Ed Majors. I have no doubt Andy will lead the website even better than I was able to in the next year.

What all this means…

This means I’m back to blogging right here! I have refreshed the look of my website (including adding a digital Portfolio), and re-purposed the blog to act a lot more like a “Tumblog.” What’s a tumblog?

A tumblelog is a quick and dirty stream of consciousness, a bit like a remaindered links style linklog but with more than just links. – Wikipedia Article

In other words, expect to see more frequent but shorter posts here in the future. I hope to share random thoughts I have (called “Asides”), photos from places I go (in “Galleries”), and other media (videos, quotes, audio recordings, etc.). Some of it will be about Music Education, some of it will be random musings about my personal life.

Don’t forget, you can stay updated with what I’m posting here by subscribing to the feed for this blog.

Until next time!

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Back in August of 2008, as I prepared for my second year here at UM, I wrote a post explaining how Miami had become my home… how this was now the place where my “domestic affections were centered.” Back then, I could not wait to leave my hometown of Northbrook, Illinois and come back to Miami. Don’t get me wrong – I never really minded being in the suburbs of Chicago, but I certainly didn’t look forward to leaving UM for Northbrook. Now, here I sit, on the eve of my last day of undergraduate classes before student teaching, just over 6 months from completion of my undergraduate degree, and I feel the exact opposite. I can’t wait to go back to Northbrook, my real home.

How long have I felt this way? It’s hard to say, but I would estimate that it’s been a few months, but it has been more obvious in the past few weeks. Why the change of heart? That’s even harder to say. It’s been a roller coaster of a semester for me, physically, academically, emotionally, and mentally, so I may just be burned out on this stage of life. This is also the longest single period of time that I have been away from Northbrook; I was last back for three days over Memorial Day weekend in May, and before that was very early January of this year. Additionally, I think the Miami mindset is finally getting to me. My patience has worn thin with people who don’t take others’ thoughts into consideration whatsoever, and who make idle commitments that they don’t follow though with. This, along with many other probably subconscious thoughts, has caused me to truly miss Northbrook for the first time in the four years I’ve been here.

I was never the homesick type. I adjusted to life away from Northbrook very easily back in ’07; probably a lot more easily than my folks would have liked! Maybe it’s because Miami was new and exciting. Maybe it’s because I wanted to get away, no matter where I was. But now, as I look back on my four years here (not a moment of which I regret, by the way, despite the tone of this post), I realize for the first time what being homesick is like. It’s missing the little things… being greeted by our yellow lab Angel each time you walk in the house, even though you know it will result in all your clothes being absolutely covered in dog hair… being pestered by your mother about finding a job, even though you secretly appreciate the kick in the behind and know she is doing it because she cares… getting to catch up with a sister who has been away at her first few years of college and you only get to see a few times a year… hanging out with the boys at Buffalo Wild Wings (affectionately called “B Dubs”), watching some UFC fight we don’t really care about because we’re only there for the wings and the friends (and don’t forget the potato wedges!). That’s home to me.

Mom, Dad, Jess, Angel, Jay, Aaron, Zurad… I miss you all and can’t wait to see you in a few weeks.

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I NEED YOUR HELP!

The end of my presentation focuses on the use of Twitter (a micro-blogging service) for professional development. This is where I need a hand from my wonderful Twitter network. I have set up my presentation to automatically tweet certain thoughts/ideas/questions during my presentation, using the hashtag #mt20. If you are on Twitter and available from 9:00 until 10:00 am EST tomorrow, please fire up your favorite Twitter app and respond to some of my thoughts/questions as I present! I will have TweetDeck open, and we will be checking in using hover notifications to see your thoughts throughout the presentation! I’m hoping, as well, to get even a few people in the room involved with Tweeting through text message. Let’s show them the power of Twitter!

As an aside, my presentation materials (including an audio recording) will all be available on a landing page at MusicEdMajor.net during and after the session. I will update this post with a link to the landing page once it’s up, and I’ll also auto-tweet a link to it during the session.

I look forward to seeing you on Twitter tomorrow morning!

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