Sample 2
A Sample from Flute Roots
Module 7: Superb Sound
I built Flute Roots after recognizing a gap that almost every music educator experiences but rarely names directly: flute is one of the hardest instruments to start a beginner on, and most band directors dread teaching it because the two weeks of flute pedagogy typically covered in a college woodwind methods course simply isn't enough.
College pedagogy training teaches future teachers what to teach, but rarely how to think about teaching it, how to diagnose why a specific student isn't progressing, and what to actually do about it in real time based on how the individual student learns.
To date, the program has been used by 100 musicians in the United States and Australia, and has also been adopted by university faculty as required pedagogy course curriculum, replacing a traditional textbook in at least one woodwind methods program.
Module 7 is a three-lesson session from Flute Roots addressing how embouchure and lip shape affect tone production, using comparative analysis of real student footage to build a band director's or private teacher's diagnostic eye rather than teaching a single fixed embouchure model.
The audience
Band directors, private flute teachers, and college music education students who were taught a single "correct" embouchure model in their own training but lack the diagnostic skill to recognize and adapt to the physiological variation they actually encounter in beginning students.
The problem
Most band directors and even college-trained teachers don't know why a specific beginning flute student is struggling, because they were trained on one fixed embouchure model rather than how to diagnose variation. They default to generic advice that doesn't fix the actual problem in front of them.
The solution
I designed a three-lesson session that builds a diagnostic eye instead of teaching a single fixed technique. The lessons climb Bloom's Taxonomy in sequence (analysis, then evaluation, then applied intervention) and the overall structure reflects Gagné's Nine Steps of Instruction.
The approach uses comparative case-based learning with real video and audio of multiple students' embouchures side by side; a single real case taught through narrative (a student who used her top teeth instead of her top lip), grounded in Self-Determination Theory, which weighs a student's own goals before applying a standard correction; and worked-example instruction for a common complication (orthodontic braces), with two physical interventions modeled on camera and cross-referenced back to lesson one.
My role
I personally designed, scripted, and recorded this session and the eight other modules that make up Flute Roots, drawing on over a decade of in-the-field teaching across private studio, classroom, and clinician contexts.
The barrier here isn't emotional, it's diagnostic, so I built the entire program around teaching diagnostic thinking rather than a single fixed method.
All video content includes captions, and PDF guides are built with accessible formatting, clear heading structure, sufficient color contrast, and screen-reader-friendly text rather than text embedded in images.
Outcome
Teachers completing this session recognize and respond to physiological variation instead of defaulting to one "correct" model, and can apply concrete interventions immediately with real students.
One participant credited the program with the confidence to move her teaching online during the pandemic, and said it helped her refine how she teaches flute fundamentals for intermediate and advanced students as well as beginners.
Constraints
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Embouchure and tone production vary enormously by individual physiology, so a single fixed script fails most learners
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Teachers needed a transferable diagnostic skill, not one memorized example
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Content had to work fully self-paced, with no live instructor in the room
What I Built
Comparative Video Analysis
Side-by-side real student footage used to teach pattern recognition.
Case-Based Troubleshooting Guide
The real narrative case of an adapted embouchure.
Physical Intervention Demonstrations
Video-modeled techniques (chopstick exercise, medical tape technique) for hands-on application.
Tools
Kajabi (course hosting)
Canva (visual design)
Zoom (recorded lessons)
Loom (tutorials)
iMovie (video editing)
AI tools
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