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Our greatest joy with Guitarcurriculum.com is connecting with students and teachers over long periods of time. We make music together, but even more important are the powerful friendships that develop. This summer Angelica Campbell, a former student of ours from Crockett High School who is now a junior at the University of Texas at Austin majoring in music, caught up with a few of our...
We’re super excited to announce the arrival of ten new audio recordings for our GuitarCurriculum Library!
If you’re not a GuitarCurriculum teacher that may not mean much, but if you are, then you’ll know that it means ten more of the selections in our 160-piece library have clickable reference audio recordings so you can listen before you decide to teach them. You can also download and...
Dr. Kevin Vigil is the 2014 Shenandoah Teacher of the Year for Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS). He’s the Guitar & Music Theory Director at Heritage High School, Chair of the Virginia Music Educators Association Guitar Council & All-Virginia Guitar Ensemble, and Member-At-Large of the NAfME Council for Guitar Education....
We have been super impressed by the guitar classes we've seen at Bedichek Middle School in Austin under the direction of Mr. Phil Swasey. Guests come through Austin frequently to observe guitar classes, and after the second visitor in the same month specifically commented on how peaceful and productive Mr. Swasey's classrooms were, we decided to ask him if he might share some insights into...
We all know that keeping children motivated is tricky! If students feel as if everyone around is excelling at something while they struggle, their desire to continue can fade. This is a particular challenge in the music classroom, where experience levels among students often differ widely. Sayil López, a guitar performer and teacher in Mexico City, believes the answer lies in allowing students...
We love hearing from our education partners, and this conversation with a colleague in St. Louis was so inspiring we thought we'd share it with you. James McKay told us about his path to becoming a music educator, and the success he's had teaching guitar even though it's not his primary instrument.
I grew up in an under-served community in St. Louis. We were fortunate enough to...
Originally a museum curator and folklorist in St. Louis, Jane Vidrine is a guitar teacher and musician in Lafayette, Louisiana. A few years ago she was named the Lafayette Education Foundation’s “Teacher of the Year,” and she’s part of a two-time Grammy-nominated, all-female Cajun and Creole band called the Magnolia Sisters.
Jane traveled to Louisiana after her friend, Nick Spitzer of...
We had a lot fun improvising this creepy Halloween song at our Austin training this summer, and thought we'd share it with everyone in time to prepare it for the big scary day.
Ghost of John is a well-known song. It works in a round, it's easy to play, and has plenty of room for the class to make "creaky door" and other fun sound effects to amplify the overall spookiness!
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We had so much fun watching all the videos that were submitted for our first-ever Video Challenge this past month on our GuitarCurriculum.com Teacher Forum!
The challenge was for a beginning group, any age, to record a Level 1 or Elementary selection.
Our esteemed panel of judges - Chuck Hulihan (Glendale, AZ...
As the school year gathers momentum, we thought we'd share some stories of how your colleagues address certain challenges they face in the guitar classroom. For the first edition in a continuing series, we'll hear from Vikki Schwarz, a veteran music teacher at Widén Elementary here in Austin, Texas. Vikki has been using GuitarCurriculum.com to integrate guitar into her general music...