Hello again future fellow music educators.

What a fun few months it has been! Our annual KCOMTEP conference was fun and informative. I loved having the chance to meet those of you who came to the Sundae Night social as well as those of you I met in other general conversations. We had 5 chapters in attendance which came up to be somewhere around 65 collegiate students. Guest speakers in attendance represented at least three different universities in addition to several school districts and the Kansas State High School Activities Association (KSHSAA). On Monday, our guest speaker was Marcia Neel. She spoke to us about interviewing do's and don'ts as well as how we as future teachers can encourage more students to engage with music.

As part of KCOMTEP, the other state officers (Ashley Norman [Collegiate State VP from Friends University] and Stephen Meiller [Collegiate State Secretary from the University of Kansas]) and I led a panel discussion, for College Freshmen and Sophomores, all about tips for surviving your journey as a Music Education Major. The questions asked from our audience were harder than I could have expected, not because of content difficulty but because of the depth of personal opinion and self-evaluation they called for. Going into this discussion, I had expected questions about practice tips, scheduling, and content that they were learning. Instead, we were given such questions as "How do you balance your social life with everything else or can you?" and "Do you really believe that you can teach a student something about music that you are not that solid on?" Such questions, to be honest, sometimes made me a little uneasy because I realized that any answer I could give to these questions would be based on my own beliefs and not on tested and tried experience in the field.

However, I enjoyed these questions in that they called for a deeper kind of thinking that shows a side of people and their passion that we often don't get a chance to see because we haven't spent enough time with them. As I like to call it, these questions "pick the brain" of those we ask and, if followed with the same type of persistent questions, can lead to some of the most amazingly interesting, informative, and inspirational conversations that you will have during your time as a student. I would further venture to say that these same conversations are just as valuable for the teacher in the field, which may explain why we as musicians are refreshed after we go to conferences like KCOMTEP. There is just something about seeing the passion and inspiration of others in action that makes it next to impossible to keep from getting at least a little inspired yourself.

So my advice for all students would be to have those "brain picking" moments as much as you can. Have them with professors, teachers in the field, and even fellow students who you respect or just in general are curious about. Sometimes some of the greatest learning happens when we ask inquisitive questions to someone when we don't agree with or understand what they are doing. Remember that part of your continued education and the continued education of your students as life-long learners is learning to make your own questions. So give it a shot! Go out and ask your own questions and let me know how it goes. Who knows, we might end up picking each other's brains in the process.