Author Archives: Sarah Wagstaff

About Sarah Wagstaff

I am a mom, writer, musician and educator. I write sci fi/fantasy. I play flute, piano, violin and other instruments as I feel like it. I have a degree in psychology, history and flute performance. I sub and volunteer at schools K-12 grades.

Elementary Math

I love math. Unlike spelling which makes no sense to me, there’s always been a pattern to math. I love tutoring math. I like to watch struggling students turn to smiles as they understand a new concept and master it.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned in math is: if you don’t understand something, ask a question. Ask someone sitting next to you, your teacher, a friend, your parents or a neighbor. I dropped my math minor in college because I was afraid to ask questions in class. I made it through two years of calculus only to be stumped in Number Theory.

UTOPSS

Utah Teacher of Psychology and Social Sciences is a professional organization of high school teachers in Utah. It’s grown a lot in the last decade since it was organized. They have a yearly meeting at the University of Utah. There’s also a listserv for Psych teachers to share information about new topics, hard to teach vocabulary, current psych news article links or whatever they want to talk about.

Set mini goals for each part of practice. Goals like: “I want to play this note perfect” or “I’m going to nail the dynamics”.

Head Start Music Demo

Today I was invited to perform a music demonstration for a Head Start class. (3-4 year-olds). I love watching the children learn. They sang the ABC’s as I played violin. They listened to the strange noises I made on the body of my flute. “It sounds like an elephant!” They felt the vibrations on the bell of my clarinet as I played the lowest note, an E below middle C.

They remembered the name of the flute and violin, but they forgot the clarinet’s name, maybe because it was the third instrument and their buffer was full.

While there are challenges, preschool age is a great time to start children on an instrument, because they are so excited about music and ready to learn.

Don’t practice until you can play something perfectly then stop.
Practice until you can’t play it wrong.

LtUE 2011

What I learned:
1. Send in your manuscript, once you are done revising and have it in great shape. You can never get out of the slush pile if you never get in. – Lisa Mangum – Deseret Book Editor

2. Keep writing even if you aren’t published. Attend classes and keep learning. Don’t ever give up. One author had 500 rejections before she sold her first book and now she’s a bestselling author. – James Dashner – author The Maze Runner.