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.
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.
While Music Teacher’s Helper is a blog designed for private lessons, I still have found several of blog posts to be useful for a classroom setting. This one in particular, I found to be quite informative and interesting for some of the things that she suggested doing and does herself. In her post on Recitals, she discusses ways to help younger students how to settle and not be afraid of performing with so many people around. This is important not only in studio recitals (where it’s one, maybe two, students performing at a time), but also when working with young students for the school concerts.
She talks about various ways to help students to be settled and calm both when watching as well as when performing. Teaching students the proper ettiquette and rehearsing it often so that they not only know what to do, but are comfortable and understand how to do it. I don’t think it’s possible to rehearse such things enough, but a big trick is getting it done repeatedly without the student growing bored with it.
Overall, I really liked her blog post and would encourage others to read it as well. You might get some new ideas, too!
On my quest for finding good and useful interactive websites that might be used by my students either in class or out of class, I have come across this nifty little site, called Sphinx Kids.
It’s not the best of sites, but it has a nice use of bright and appealing colors and would be fun for the younger to middle range of general music grades. Maybe up to fifth grade. The games are simple, and I really like the interations that you can do for learning about composers. Overall, a good little site to keep track of possible future use.
In today’s world, it is almost impossible to not find some form of technology in any sort of classroom, music included. At the least, the teacher will have a CD player of some sort, most now have white boards which, in their own way, are also a form of technology since they are more advanced than the chalk board.
In the student teaching that I am doing in my Methods class, I have several times found myself wondering on which way is better: To use a more traditional method or use technology? The specific event that I will bring up this evening, is on what students should read off of when not using their books.
In the classroom that I am at, we spent a day singing along with popular songs. The teacher handed out an individual piece of paper to each student which held the lyrics on it, then they passed them down to return to her as she handed out the next paper for the next song. I had a thought that it would be much faster, and would save trees, if it was set up on a PowerPoint and shown on the projector. Just click next and you’re ready to go without hassle unless your computer should randomly explode.
But then I began to think. With the paper, the kids were seated rather lazily, some facing towards the front, some a bit to the side, looking down and singing rather comfortably. With a projector, the kids would have to all be staring at the same spot on the wall at the same time. The upwards angle would be no better for their posture (or their throats) than being hunched down. And while, yes, you’d be able to see rather clearly if anyone isn’t really paying attention since they would probably not be looking at the words, would it really be better for the kids? What about those with vision difficulties? Should you hand out a piece of paper to them? Which will make other kids want to read off of paper, and by the time all of that is sorted out you might as well stay with handing out papers to all of the kids.
So, when is it truly best to upgrade to a more modern use of technology (such as putting the lyrics to songs on the projector), and when is it best to stay ‘old fashioned’ (just handing out pieces of paper to the students to read off of individually)?
And is there really any sort of definite answer to it?
I found this site (or specifically, the PDF) to have an interesting and useful list of technological things that could be added to a music classroom. If I actually happened to find myself at a school able to afford them and genuinely concerned about the wellfare of its music program.
I was unable to get it to load onto Edublogs, and so had to put it onto my wordpress account (created just in case of such an event as this) instead.
This video is one of myself giving a micro-teaching lesson to my Methods class. In this project, we had to compose our own lesson plan and then teach it. I choose to do second grade, which is why I’m treating my fellows like little kids.
Mistakes that I noticed: I know I made several mistakes on here, such as I need to stop bobbing my head like a duck all the time. I got rid of the habit last year but it seems to have returned from the summer break. I didn’t really need to do the extra run-through of clapping the rhythm while the person played it because it was so simple, and in fact stopped doing this after the first or second time. I should have arranged my instrument parts on the board in order highest to lowest, and then started on the bottom and worked my way up. This, however, was because this was a last-minute change for me. I also need to develop the ‘eyes in the back of my head’ since I completely missed seeing K whacking at J with the rhythm sticks. Instead, (unseen on the video) when I turned around I saw J poked K in the leg, hense my decision to ‘punish’ her.
