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.
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.
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.
Yesterday I had coffee with a good friend of mine for the first time all semester. She’s now a middle school english teacher, and our schedules have never worked out to meet up like we once did back when she was in college. Talking with her got me to thinking of what kind of personality I will need to portray once I am in the music classroom.
My friend is a very fun person to be around with a great sense of humor, yet she told me that in the classroom she is a very serious person. She is there to teach, the kids are there to learn, and humor is a distraction. My own teaching style, for the short time that I’ve been developed, has been almost the opposite. My want in life is for kids to learn to enjoy and love music. Perhaps they won’t learn all about music theory and history, but if they enjoy music, and can appreciate it, those who want to learn more will learn it. Part of this is based on my own experiences. I knew nothing really on music history or theory until college, and I learned it because I need to for my degree.
I suppose my thoughts run along with the fact that dates aren’t as important, who lived where, when, and why doesn’t matter. What matters is that they did something great, and should be respected for it. Or like Maslow’s Hiarchy of Needs. Which is more important? Knowing who made the hiarchy, or what the hiarchy is? The only reason why I know the name is because it’s part of the title. Is it respectful to teach who created what? Yes. They deserve to be credited for it. But they are famous because of what they created, and THAT is what should have the focus. That is what needs to be learned.
But back on subjects before I take off ranting too much on learning the least crucial knowledge of a subject. I believe in teaching what’s important, and above all teaching it so that as many students as possible can respect it and enjoy it. Maybe they won’t end up music majors, or do anything with music in the future. Most don’t. But they can still learn a respect for it and a general knowledge along with it, and I don’t see myself as being so serious a teacher that I take out humor and fun, though I know that I’m setting myself up for disaster if I let the ‘fun’ get out of control.
Classroom Management. It’s my biggest fear by far when it comes to becoming a teacher. The kind of fear that at times makes me have second thoughts on what my future really needs to be. I’m good at teaching private lessons, granted my students are all a bit spoiled, and I’ve never had any extreme problems when working in classrooms so far. But so far, I’ve always had a ’safety net’ of the normal teacher being in the room to get me out of trouble before things turn bad.
I have yet to develop the ‘eyes in the back of my head’ teacher-sense. Heh, I tend to not notice things when I’m looking right at the problem when it happens! I guess it comes from the musician/writer side of me. I’ve spent so many years training me to zone out everything that’s around me except for my focus, that now it’s become a problem for going into the classroom when the exact opposite becomes the nesessity for my survival. At least I do tend to notice noise-level differences, but on several occasions I’ve just had the feeling that I’m not being listened to by anyone. Of course, I’m still not ‘The Teacher’, and have less authority in the eyes of the students, and due to my not being ‘The Teacher’, I don’t know when to call them out for getting them quieted down. So sometimes I’ll notice something, but not yet know just what to do about it. I tend to want to over-react to things, though I’m getting better on that.
Not sure where this picture is originally from, maybe King Kong? But it’s one that shows up /everywhere/ for use, including fast-food chain ads among many others.
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!
Like the title says, another interactive music website that I have managed to find is the one for PBS Kids! This is a nice game site for younger kids that are learning about music. The colors are bright without being distracting (so not too bright), and the pictures are large and of happy cartoon characters from PBS. The site has a long of good songs that have kids sing about being healthy and making good choices, and also has several different games under The Music Box, though the games tended to load a bit more slowly on the computer than the rest of the site. There’s also an area that has songs about locations around the world, as well as about varoius states.
Overall, I think it’s a nice site that uses music to teach young children important skills and beginning knowledge about the world that they live in.
My dream classroom settup would include a SmartBoard, Clickers, and PowerPoint. Especially for use in the general music classes, though not exclusively to them. But in reality, I’ll be lucky if I have a projector system even set up in the music room if I’m lucky enough to even have a music room. (I remember having music class in the ’storage’ room during my early grade school years until the first school addition, and in Jr. High and early High School we had band and choir on the gymnasium stage until the HS addition.) This has brought up my thoughts on how to achieve my ideal classroom dream. Where would I start to begin building up my technological ‘repertoire’ for the classroom? Projector would obviously be the first thing on my list of desires, but after that? Would I go for the Clickers, which are more affordable but after awhile have a rather limited potential for enhancing learning, or would I go for the far more expensive, but almost limit-less possibilities of the SmartBoard?
No matter how I would approach the matter, I’d need to do a LOT of research on all the possiblitiies, and come up with a pretty good demonstration on why a music classroom (as poorly viewed as these seem to be these days) is worthy of having something expensive for use.
So, I did a bit of searching on using technology in the classroom, and found a site that talks about the benefits of integrating technology into a classroom setting using the frame of mind that the school they are going to deal with has little to no technology in it yet. It has all kinds of information about various things. But it also listed more affordable technology gizmos (even mentioning the use of Sticky-Notes in a classroom!) as well, and also has some excellent statements on why technology is useful (and really quite necessary) in today’s classroom environment. The place also had quite a few links to other sites for furthering your technological exploration for the classroom.
Without further ado, I provide to you a link to the Star Tech Program.
One of the blogs that I am now checking up on from time to time( That isn’t one of my fellow classmates) is Music Teacher’s Helper blog, which is exactly what it sounds like! The post I’m going to talk about this time is one specifically on promoting your music program, which she titled Promoting a Class.
It’s a bit long to read, but I very much liked the way that she wrote it. She uses a very down to earth style that’s practical as well as easy to understand. Not to mention easy to integrate into one’s one program, or future program as the case may be. ^_^ For myself, I think that posting flyers would be a good way of promoting a music event. Flyers, a local newspaper. She even suggested a local radio or TV station, which I found to be quite interesting. I need to stop limiting my ideas to ’small town’ locations that don’t have such a thing as a ‘local’ channel. Or typically don’t.
Of course, her goal was to help promote for private lessons, rather than for a school setting, but for myself, a lot of the information she gave is potentially useful for both! At the least, it reminds me that there’s a lot more to do than just teaching music. If I can’t promote it in some way as well in the community, it’s going to be tough to have a good music program.
