Great Teacher Resource for teaching Recorder

http://www.angelfire.com/nb2/musicedresources/Record.html

Getting Your Mouthpieces Clean

Teachers of instrumental music are looking for an easy routine for disinfecting mouthpieces. With a high volume of students moving through the classroom and more than one student using an instrument, the mouthpieces still need to be soaked in disinfectant for sufficient time.

These pictures show the basic steps and equipment needed to do a soaking and rinsing of instrument mouthpieces.

The items were all purchase at Dollarama.

The steps are as follows:

1. Have the students place their mouthpieces in the basket which will immerse them in the disinfectant.
   
   
2. After the designated time for disinfecting, lift the basket out and rinse under water.
   
   
3. Put the basket on the drainage tray.
4. Brass and woodwind mouthpieces can be separated. The mouthpiece rack is actually a tie rack but it should hold brass or woodwind mouthpieces.

The brush's small end is for scrubbing out inside mouthpieces as needed.

Please add your comments and questions so I can keep this relevant and to all. First question: What is the disinfectant that meets the approval of the Public Health department?

Steve Jobs' Speech: Stay Hungry; Stay Foolish

Steven Jobs, original inventor of Apple Computers, speaking to graduating class of Stanford University this spring.

Quote #1
You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

Quote #2
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life...

Quote #3
Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.

Quote #4
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice.

This is the text of the [Stanford University] Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005. For the full (brief) text, go here.

My own Return to Flight

The plane is one I started building about 25 years ago, it's called Minnie Mambo. Time flies... It uses a little .049 cubic inch 2 stroke engine. The radio control gear is now in place and I'm ready to try it out.

The rocket was built last winter and has yet to be flown. I'm hoping to get permission to do it for the students at school. Should fly to over 1000 feet.

Model Aeronautics Club, anyone?

Mental Institutions as movie themes

Well now, there's a leap. Yesterday I viewed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Heard lots about it and now finally have seen it, mainly because of seeing Jack Nicholson in other more recent movies such as As Good As It Gets and Something's Gotta Give.


They say that good comedic actors also make excellent psychopathic characters. The true comedic minds are connected deeply to all parts of being human, I guess.

Anyway, Nicholson explores the vast amount of grey area (grey matter?) between being normal and being crazy in all three of these movies.

What strikes me is that very often, the person who is most repulsive, most poorly behaved and rough around the edges is the one who holds the key to meaning. As quick as we are to avoid such people, they will not let themselves be easily avoided! We lose out by shunning or trying to "protect" ourselves from them. The best we can do is accept them for who they are; the worst we can do is dehumanize them, as illustrated by the mental institution in Cuckoo's nest.

The institutional damage done to people shown in the Cuckoo's Nest is disturbing, especially when you consider that thousands of lobotomies were performed back in those days. The story of actress Frances Farmer comes to mind. There's a movie called Frances starring Jessica Lange which I'm told is extremely powerful. Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman is another. Any others? There was an oldie with Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman if anyone can help me with the name of it.

What are other "mental institution movies" that we should add to this list?

As teachers, what can we learn from them?