Confessions of a Traveling Music Teacher

Reflections teaching Orff workshops around the world.

Thursday, December 4, 2025

Relationship

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I just spontaneously recorded a 33-minute Podcast without a single written word in front of me on the subject of  relationship  in education...
Tuesday, December 2, 2025

Still Climbing

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Yesterday I played piano and led a group singing with 50 elders at a new place for me, The Sequoias Home for Senior Living in Portola Valley...
Monday, December 1, 2025

The Eldest Elder

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No, this is not a post about me at the recent AOSA Conference amidst the twenty, thirty and forty year olds. There's something else afoo...
Sunday, November 30, 2025

Almost December

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Today I wore my winter coat that hangs unused most of the year in the closet. I put on gloves as temperatures in San Francisco hovered in th...

Far and Near

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As the very nature of this travel Blog makes clear, I take a great deal of pleasure in traveling around this great big, beautiful world. I n...

Advice to Young Teachers

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At the far end of a long career, I think often about what useful advice I might pass on to the teachers coming up. Though music teachers are...
Saturday, November 29, 2025

Sam and Heidi

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Growing up back in the bygone days of the 1950’s, supermarkets were just taking hold. On Elmora Avenue in Elizabeth, not too from my home in...
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About Me

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Doug Goodkin
“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” (E.B. White). Early on in my adult life, I was convinced that the world is a mess that needs fixing. But I also sensed that life is short, that miracles and beauty abound and that we would do well to pay attention to them. In a stroke of good fortune, I stumbled on a life that allowed both to happen at once. Teaching music for 45 years at The San Francisco School with children between three and 14 years old guaranteed a fair share of miracles and beauty. The sense that happy children playing, imagining, thinking and creating might help a bit with that improving-the-world side of things made it easy to plan my day. Alongside a half-century of teaching children is a parallel life of traveling and teaching the Orff approach to music education—some 50 countries to date banging on xylophones and slapping our bodies. This blog now in its fifteenth year sharing these experiences. Settle back in your armchair and enjoy!
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