I figured I should put something in here, so my last post isn’t so depressed/negative centered, and let any potential readers of the future know that life continues on despite early difficulties.
I survived my time student teaching despite the first half of my time being done under a teacher whom I had a severe personality clash with. Don’t get me wrong, I consider the woman to have been an incredible teacher of her students, and would recommend her as being an excellent teacher of music and an expert at the Love and Logic technique. However, my own opinion of Love and Logic is that, if taken to it’s abolute, it utterly separates the emotional connection between teacher and student. Ultimately, though, the problems I had working with her comes down to two things: She didn’t like someone else working with her students, and her teaching ability has become so instinctive that she didn’t know how to actually teach her craft. Still, as a teacher of music, she is excellent.
High school was an absolute turnaround. I had an incredible cooperating teacher whom I got along with extremely well. Our teaching strategies were right in sync, and I believe him to be a true master of his craft, not only expert at teaching music to students, but also an expert of teaching the craft of teaching. I also believe my calling in music education is in the choir area. I love teaching choirs. I love listening as the music develops beyond just words and pitches but into something one can really feel. I love working with diction and pitches. And I loved how proud the students were at their concert when they performed.
As to what I will do now that I have finished student teaching, I’m not quite sure. The first half of my experience was, hands down, horrible. It has left me with no motivation (indeed the opposite) to ever teach elementary music again, something that I had been passionate about teaching since I was in seventh grade (and I am not one to change my mind easily). Indeed, I question if I even want to be a music teacher in a school system, despite the love I have for choirs. Though my love of teaching music is far from damaged, as I still hold a great love and devotion to teaching private lessons. I’m hoping to become the music director at the church I am currently a pianst at, and start a youth choir there. I’m already getting started on finding new songs to teach at the annual summer girl scout camp in my hometown area that matches the camp theme. I’ve been the music director at that camp since high school.
I may have decided not to pass through an open door in my life, but I am still passionate about the many others that yet remain unlatched and welcoming.
Student Teaching. It’s something I’ve looked forward to doing for years. That chance to finally complete a degree that I decided I would get back in 7th grade, and have often fought to keep throughout the years due to my double major. Then, in just about two weeks, my entire world crashed down around me, and I find myself loathing the very career in the very age group I’ve always dreamed of wanting to do. Part of it is my personality. I grew up as the quiet kid that never speaks, or raises their hand. The good kid that nobody notices. I had to advance a long way to build up what authority I now have, but I still don’t have that teacher aura, and I’m too nice a person to keep a classroom to the level my CT wants me to have. Part of it was that I was completely overwhelmed and couldn’t recover without extra help, making those that grade me view me as a dissapointment to the point that all they see is where I’m wrong. Not the fact that my first ‘nightmare’ class was turned into my favorite and most successful class within three weeks.
I feel as though I’m a beginning chef. A little chef with dreams of being so for over half of my life and now I’m up to the big test. I have a kitchen with every food ingrediant and measuring/cooking/baking tool I could need, and a head chef to ensure I don’t cause any big explosions and help me out. My one task is to bake a specific cake. The catch is that I have no recipe, and have only ever baked cookies in the past.
The head chef opens up every cupboard door and tells me to get out what I need, then frowns when I get out things that I don’t, or forget things that I do, and questions result in brief talks on how I must do it myself now, since I’ll have no help in the future. Using what knowledge I have, and my common sense, I piece together all of the equipment I need, and my reward is a warning that I’m taking too long to figure things out, and look at how far I still have to go. I get out the ingredients I believe I’ll need. More than I’ll need, but then I want it to be right. But when the actual mixing starts to begin, I find myself feeling the pressure. I have no recipe. I have only a set amount of time to achieve my goal or my chance is lost forever. Every time the head chef walks by I feel only dissapointment from them, and find myself wanting to crawl under a rock and vanish.
As I work, every mistake I make is torn down. I learn from it, and try again. And again. And again. Always being darkly watched. Each cake I produce has the errors pointed out, and the questions on why I didn’t do something I hadn’t known I should, with lack of knowledge being unexcuseable. Unacceptable. I want only to finish what I’ve been stuck into. Finish baking and be done forever, never to return to this nightmare career I wanted to be a part of over half my life ago.
My cakes begin to improve. The shape begins to hold, the taste and texture, while not perfect, are edible. But it’s not what they want, and so it is wrong. Unacceptable. The good of it is thrown out with the bad. And then, suddenly and unexpectedly, I make a leap in progress. The cakes are beginning to taste better. They still aren’t right. Still they end up being thrown out, but I can see it for myself that they aren’t as bad. That bit of hope lets me suddenly bake a cake of perfection. A vanilla cake that held together perfectly, every ingredient mixing properly with everything else. I show it with pride to the head chef, commenting happily at how I feel I’ve done.
“You’re free to believe that.” The cake is thrown out. As completely unacceptable as all the others before.
I seem to be rather bad about keeping a blog. Or three. ^^” Oh well.
Life continues on, and summer has almost gone as I prepare to student teach. Otherwise, there isn’t much to actually say on here. Musically, I’m enjoying the freedom of playing what I want, which is largely Scott Joplin and Super Mario Bros. theme music. Oh, and music for a wedding.
I suppose the main reason I decided to put anything on here at all, is becauses I came by and saw all of those little blue word highlights all over the place. O.o I find them to be… very distracting. And a bit annoying. And rather useless since this is one blog that really doesn’t have any readers, minus myself. Ahh well. Someday, perhaps. Someday.
One would think a student who pays a good 6-7k a year for tuition only would be at a university that can take care of its students. As it is, I’m only barely ‘tentatively’ accepted to student teach this fall. Why? Because the university isn’t updating my audit to get rid of the small list of classes that /I don’t need/ for my degree. As a piano major, I don’t take vocal diction, and I’m opted out of group piano lessons. But they’re still listed anyways. The music department sent in, over a month ago, for the corrections to be made but the university has yet to make them. If they don’t get around to it by the end of this semester, I won’t be allowed to student teach. -_- Not annoying at all…
9:00 am – I get up, take a shower, and eat a light breakfast of Blueberry Mini Wheats.
10:00 am – warm up scales on the piano, start painting finternails, Alia comes online and I begin rp’ing with her.
12:00 pm – Finally finish fingernails. Still rp’ing.
12:15 pm – Eat a light lunch of one pizza slice. Still rp’ing.
1:30 pm – Finish getting ready to leave. Still rp’ing.
1:40 pm – Leave for campus.
2:00 pm – Arrive on campus, change into formal, head to the concert hall to find Dr. D already there.
2:10 pm – Begin working on warm-ups again.
2:15 pm – Parents arrive. Get programs put out on music stand in the lobby.
2:35 pm – More people begin to arrive, I go backstage and sit there waiting to begin the recital.
3:00 pm – Call the technician because he didn’t get the broken piano string cut off of the second concert grand.
3:05 pm – Begin the program.
- Slight mistake in Prelude in D Major by Rachmaninoff, repeat about four measures and on track for the rest.
- Rock out on Polichnelle by Rachmaninoff. Hey, I knew I’d not get it perfect no matter the tempo. So boo-yah.
- Discover that nail polish and glissando’s don’t mix. Leave lovely blue streak down half the keys of the $100,000 concert grand piano. Oops.
4:00 pm – Everyone claps, little cousin, looking VERY proud, carries up two bouquets of a dozen roses. I give one to Dr. D. Little cousin comes back carrying a blue gift bag which she gives to me, which I then give to Dr. D. Dr. D says I really shouldn’t have.
4:30-ish – I give my little cousin one of the roses from my bouquet. She was still holding it with both hands, kissing the rose, when they leave. ^_^ So adorable.
5:00 pm – I change clothes, go with my cheer squad to the mall. Parents and other family members head to buffet.
5:20 pm – get sixteen inches cut off of my hair. It’s now chin length which is shorter than I’ve ever had it before.
5:45 pm – Arrive at buffet and eat with family.
7:00 pm – Return to my place. Share the fun with friends. More RP’ing with Alia.
Her name: Miss. Schwartz. Her job? Music teacher. The catch? I’ve not seen or heard of or about her since the end of my fifth grade year (when she came, and left again), and I’m now into my fifth year of college.
The story is rather simple, really. My hometown had just lost it’s last music teacher halfway through the Spring semester, and Miss. Schwartz, newly graduated from college, was given the joy (or perhaps nightmare) of being the replacement. She arrived at a small town school that was at the time filled with various random blackmails, replacing a teacher who gave the high school girls A’s based on what they did with him, and a town wide belief that music is generally worthless.
In three months, the high school band SOUNDED like a high school band. But, sadly, she was an honest teacher, and (the story as I know it) after she gave a teacher’s kid a B, she wasn’t rehired. Or else she chose (probably wisely) to leave.
I’ve no idea if she even remembers me, but I was the scrawny little girl with braces and glasses who played the flute. By chance, her own main instrument was flute and I guess my enthusiasm towards music inspired her enough to give me private lessons (for free) after school, advancing my skills considerably.
After she left, we went through another nine or ten music teachers in a five year period, one after another being driven away until it became a contest betweent the classes to see who could break the teacher first. Some actually finished a semester before leaving. A couple left partway through. None had even a smidgeon of the luck that Miss. S had during her three months of teaching here.
And during those years, I began to wonder why there weren’t more teachers as good as she had been. Why we were getting new teacher after new teacher that – half of which – really had no idea what they were doing. It lead to my own motivation and decision that I wanted to be a music teacher. Prove that music was of real value, and that there could be a good music teacher that knew how to teach it. But my role model to this day, the one I’ve always wanted to take after, was Miss. Schwartz.
She’s probably married by now, maybe not even in the state of Kansas any longer, but perhaps someone that might someday skim over this blog will read this, and might even think ‘I know who she’s talking about!’ and let me know.
It would be nice to let her know what a powerful influence she was on even one kid from my hometown.
Interesting thoughts can come at interesting times. When going to let the dogs out last night, I was fortunent enough to notice movement in the shadows by the house. It was a opossum, and as the little ankle-bitters (still inside) went ballistic, the creature came right out in front of the doorway. Just a glass door pane (and sunroom walls) dividing about a three foot space between us and it. Of course, I went for my phone (and the camera specifically) but it was scared off by the dogs and gone by my return.
Then came the fun of getting my lantern and a good flashlight to search around the backyard in the dark to be certain it was well away before letting out the dogs.
It was an interesting situation, one that reminded me that often times things that are, in fact, constantly around us develop a strong ‘out of sight, out of mind’ opinion. I know there’s opossums around. And coons, deer, coyotes, and who knows what else. But I don’t see them, so that awareness is in the background and all but ignored until a situation awakens it.
I think that this experience is one that can also be related to teaching. Events exist, students have lives outside of the classroom that affects them, that exist and are very real, but are out of sight of the teacher. As a future teacher, I need to learn to become consciously aware of the things that I am not a part of, by being aware of the surroundings around me to identify the consequences.
After all, if I hadn’t noticed the motion in the shadow, the dogs probably wouldn’t have won.
The beginning of this year is the beginning of the home stretch of college study in my life. My music will be finished this Spring with my Sr. Recital, my teaching will be finished this Fall with student teaching. Then I’ll be done with my Music Education. 2010 will finish off my English degree.
Finally reaching this part of my life is quite exciting. I’ve spent the last four and a half years to reach this, and while it isn’t over yet, it’s close enough that it really feels achieveable. That and I’m so far into both degrees that I’d be a complete fool to even want to change either one now.
I see this New Year as being one filled with good completitions, and hopefully new beginnings as well.
I first saw this on another fellow classmate’s blog, and I loved it! I think it’s incredible how something so simple as a toddler’s/young child’s toy can become something really fun and cool to use even once older. If it didn’t cost so much, I’d want to have one! It would be of great use in the classroom for all ages, I think.
In my Methods class, awhile back we discussed the use of story books for using as action books. We did a few in class which we now have the lessons for which gives what suggested actions to use when, or with what words.
This lesson got me to thinking of Girl Scouts, and all the various action songs that we have in there. Some of which aren’t even known anymore! From a Cadette level on, or rather, once I became one of the ‘big’ girls, I was always ended up in charge of the songs because it’s what I do. Unless the main activity/song leader of the council came down, I tended to have more songs memorized than anyone else, free to call up at will and do. And still today, as a lifetime member, whenever I get to come down to my hometown’s summercamp for the girls, I’m usually the one in charge of two things: Song time, and the annual Snipe Hunt.
But after my memories of old action-filled girl scout songs, my thoughts turned to some of my favorite books as a youngster. Fun picture books that perhaps might be good for turning into an action song, and the one that came instantly to mind was the book “If You Give A Moose A Muffin”. I loved this book as a child. It’s still in my bookcase at home today unlike many others that are packed away in a couple of boxes. With thoughts of heading home for the holidays, I think I’ll go and get out that book and read it again, but not for entertainment (entirely), but for seeing if it’s one that I could incorporate into the music classroom. I’m sure I could, which leaves me quite excited.
