"Everyday's an Adventure, Good or Bad"

This is one of the best quotes of my CT and she has said it since day one. I have found that one day is never like the next which can be both frustrating and interesting. In someways, it gives me an ability to see which classes my lessons will work for but, if it is a bad day, a lesson that is perfectly fine may fail leaving my not completely sure if I should retry the lesson for the next days classes with some modifications or if I should simply scrap it because the lesson was not very good. It also frustrates me when I see students one day and they love me and the next they refuse to work and just glare at me for no real reason. I do use this as a way to learn about the students' lives which is the positive side of what can be a fairly bothersome occurrence. This week I had a class that was far beyond the normal level of talkativeness. They were completely out of my control and it was the day my supervisor was there. I tried every strategy I knew to get them to stop talking. Nothing worked for more than a second and it left me completely at a loss. I had tried to do a new type of lesson where I taught a general music idea and then went on from there to portray that idea in the warm ups. I can now see that it threw off my pacing which set the class up for failure and I asked them too many open ended questions that allowed them time to talk. By the time I got through all of the things that had gone wrong in the beginning, there was no chance they were going to be able to learn any part of their songs. I hated to end without finishing even one song but it would have been useless to continue. I saw that day that I was to blame and that what I did could be easily fixed but it was discouraging to have a class like that in front of my cooperating teacher and supervisor. I have had to do some real soul searching to try and determine what I want to do with the rest of my life and how to come back from such a terrible event. My plan is to take it slow. Inching forward, not jumping in head first. I will still continue to teach full time but I will not change my whole style of class in such a drastic way and I will work on speeding my pacing up to match the class. I had really only been planning for the best classes and while my lesson plan worked fantastically well for that, it left me stranded when it came to the more challenging, less dedicated classes. I will, in the future, plan out a less stressful lesson for those classes that just cannot handle the regular lesson as well as a more advanced lesson so the classes that can really sing get to learn more quickly. I am hoping this clears up the management difficulties I had but who knows. Everyday is an adventure, good or bad.

The Things I have Seen...

So...I was conducting the concert last Tuesday and there was one of the strangest occurrences that I could imagine. I was standing outside the auditorium and I watched a service dog walk in leading a man into the auditorium. I thought little of it except for simply noticing it. As I stood up on the stage helping to corral the students onto the risers I saw that the dog was in the front row. Everything seemed to be going fine until one boy tried to go past the dog to get on the stage. I was turned around at the time and all I heard was a loud bark and a growl. Apparently, the boy had gotten too close to the dog and scared it, causing it to lash out and bite him. The boy was fine and the dog never had any more problems. It was a lesson to me though. Any time you think you know what is going to happen or that everything is going to be fine you are setting yourself up to be caught off guard. I was so sure that I was ready for the concert and just when I let my guard down something went wrong. Thankfully, the principal saw and stepped in as there will most likely be a legal issue involved and the concert went on just fine. I also have to say I was equally surprised when one of my students gave me a hug and a stuffed Koala along with a card saying how much she loved choir and how she thought I was a great teacher. I had never directly talked to her but it felt great knowing that I had made things better for her. I felt more justified in my teaching just because of that and I needed that validation. Strange as it will seem to some as I am very optimistic about life in general, student teaching has made me feel pretty down about my teaching. I do not always feel like I will turn out to be a very good teacher or that I am ready to be a teacher yet but this event really helped. I am going to finish out student teaching strong and see what happens. Everyday is an adventure, good or bad.

I think these videos are fitting.

 

Words, Words, Words

Last Tuesday was the concert for Roosevelt Middle School. The "concert" was split into three parts, one for each grade starting at the hour that corresponded to their grade level. The concert went well in my opinion. I got to conduct all of the pieces. I learned a lot about conducting from this as I realized that the students couldn't follow a pattern. It was not that they couldn't have learned to follow it but the majority of them had never been in a choir where the music was conducted. Their best way of staying together was to listen to the piano and follow that. My job became very different then. I still conducted a pattern and I cued the students with my hands but I it was the words that they really needed. We performed the whole concert memorized and that was just fine for the most part. Sure there were a few mistakes in rehearsals but I was able to help that with my conducting. I learned how to lip sync the whole concert so that I could mouth the words to them as I was conducting in order to remind them of how the words went. When doing it, I had to mouth the words earlier than they arrived to give the students time to learn them. This really tested my memory of the music and forced me to study it hard and think a lot. I would say that it was actually harder to conduct in this way and also much more effective for helping the students than simply waving my arms. I also began incorporating unusual gestures such as rubbing my eyes to show the word crying or faking laughter to represent the word laughing or pointing at my ears to represent the word hear. This way of conducting a group is perfect for a middle school or elementary school. When the groups get into harder music such as high school and college level works, it is more important to show the other musical aspects and only mouth the words at a tricky or new part. Knowing what my choir needs will be important and I find that situations can often vary by location. When I conducted the concert for Xavier's ninth grade boys, they began forgetting the words at one point. I wish that I would have had the forethought to mouth the words for them. This is another trick I will add to my tool box and use when I find it useful.

This first video is a song I would NOT like to try and mouth for a choir.

and this one is something I would love to do! (and it is a little similar to what I did)

What did you say?!

A story that just has to be told is this one. At Roosevelt, the kids don't like to work very hard so it takes a lot of motivation, explanation, and force to get them to sing. The seventh graders are singing "Fame" from the musical "Fame." Their performance was okay but nothing was really interesting about it. It was flat. So me being a student teacher I was standing off to the side not saying much. I thought I had an idea for how to get them to sound more like the song intended them to. The girls at this school are often very sassy which is normally a problem but works to sing this song. So I took the lead and tried to tell the girls that they should use their attitudes to their advantage. TRIED being the important word in that phrase. What I wanted to start with was, "This song is all about sass!" And I still swear that is what I said. However, my CT and all the students claim they heard, "This song is all about sex!" Needless to say, things went south and I turned a shade of red that I did not even know existed. I was quiet for the rest of class and have since been very cautious about annunciation when I speak. This can be translated to an even broader message, know what you are going to say before you start talking. It is helpful for life and teaching. I did not have a very structured plan for what to say and I word vomited something I had no intention of saying. Do not pull a Mr. Wilson.

Here is a song about annunciation. It is nonsense lyrics meant to sound like English. See if you can guess what they are saying. If not, the second video has subtitles :-)

Day Two...

                 It takes a lot to see the silver lining a day like today when my CT told me this is not even too bad of a day. It is hard to imagine that things could be different from one side of town to the other. my new placement has a culture that I can hardly fathom. My CT told me that the school has an extremely high free and reduced lunch percentage which has a large effect on the dynamic of the school. They also have a large number of African refugees as well as Hispanic students which means that the school essentially has a culture filled with diversity of language and origin. I actually love how diverse the school is but the that is not the biggest problem. The students have extremely large behavioral issues.

In the two days I have been at the school, the teacher has already decided to cut a song, sent multiple students to the office, and stood in the middle of two fighting boys today. I feel as though she never has any free time and when she does, she is constantly doing something for the rest of the school. Whether that is subbing in rooms where they cannot find someone or keeping kids in the hallways in line, she is constantly working to try and help the school in whatever way she can. I feel terrible for not being able to do more. We can only rehearse music, on average, for 20 minutes of the 50 minute class because the students break into a rebellion if they are forced to work anymore than that.

We are able to do some small amount of learning at the beginning and end of class through videos. Usually that includes watching Pentatonix and creating snap-clap games to them or, since I have been there, teaching them the way the voice works by showing obscure voice types such as countertenors and contraltos. I had never thought watching videos would be a good way to spend class time but at least it keeps these kids listening to music and thinking about singing while in choir class even if they refuse to do it themselves.

I am thoroughly frightened of what the next eight weeks will be like. I can already feel my patients being stretched to the breaking point and I am developing a wall against caring whether I come off as me. I shudder at what my attitude will end up being.

For today's songs, these are the two pieces I played for the students. See if you can tell which is male and which is female. (SPOILER!: the beginning of the second video will give it away!)

Go in Peace

In looking back at my first placement, I have learned a lot not just about teaching but myself as well. I have found that student teaching is so different from being at Coe and I had not prepared myself for that. The idea of not getting to see my friends or fiancee throughout the day, not having specific assignments and knowing that everyday I will be doing some assignment, be it teaching or planning really threw me off. I tried to plan my day as I did for being a student but that was the wrong way to think about this. I need to rethink how to prepare and think about student teaching. In the next placement, I will dedicate more time to preparing myself for the challenges of teaching and bettering myself as a teacher. That will help me think less about myself while I am in the classroom and allow me to address the needs of the students. That is the ultimate lesson that I have heard before but did not heed enough. Teaching is easier when it is student focused because you have a good purpose behind your work. I am working on growing up and accepting these things as my life because that is the case. I hope that it will get easier and I will strive for excellence but I have to stop comparing it to what college life is like and accept that college life is over for me.

I have also learned a great deal about teaching. One of the most clear things I learned was that teachers are humans. They give of a persona that they always know what they are doing in order to be the fearless leader of the class but they make mistakes just like me. There were days that they were not as prepared as they would have liked or that the did not achieve their goals. I also learned new skills for handling classroom management. I learned that preparation is one of the most key points in have a productive classroom. If you are not prepared then your students will not be able to feed off you because you will not be confident enough to teach them. I saw first hand the way placement of the teacher in the room makes a huge difference in how their students behave.

I also learned a lot about things I can do that will specifically help teach music. The fact that Xavier was a One to One school, meaning every student and teacher had an iPad, allowed my CT to show me how to App-Mash as he called it. This is where you can take three or four apps and use them to get you from point A to point B with less trouble. He showed me how to me a song a pdf, make it editable, create practice tracks that could be played over music as well as other things. He also helped me to negotiate my lack of piano skills by having students sing with a recording. I believe, although I have never seen it done, I could find a way to scrub the vocals from recording to create an accurate accompaniment track for the students to practice with.

I am looking forward to the future. I have not yet figured out how to get myself into the mindset that I am a teacher but I am getting there and I know that in my next placement that I will have a chance to reestablish myself as a teacher and leader of the class not just an observer. Although I am scared for the differences and the changes that will come, I relish the chance to better myself and prove that I have what it takes to teach.

In the rush of student teaching, it can be hard to remember the small things. Hopefully this helps you keep them in mind.

The Road lies both ahead and behind

It is a great thing when everything just seems to get easier. As I went into these last weeks and full time teaching I was concerned that I would be overwhelmed by the extra. instead I found it quite the contrary. I think that having more of a rhythm to when I was teaching helped me to get faster and better about my planning which boosted my confidence, and ultimately made me a better teacher. I still have to work on classroom management and my piano playing as well as pacing but everything is getting easier the more I do it. I have gotten to my favorite part of teaching music, the part where I get to add in musicality instead of simply teaching notes. This helps with my attitude and the students' because we all love the way it sounds when the piece actually starts coming together. I can now easily pull warm ups out of thin air instead of planning them as well if I need to and I am learning to be more independent with my decisions. I was hesitant early on to do anything without permission because I still felt more like a student. Now I see that I can be more productive if I simply plan and ask questions only if I don't know how to do something. That way, even if I fail, it was my own plan that is being judged and not one I had help with. I can't wait to head off to my next placement where I have learned I will have more independence and a very new environment. I am also scared to death about my second placement however and I am still trying to wrap my head around what I will be getting myself into. Is this the same for anyone else?

This song is to wish all of you a great second placement through all the challenges and uncertainty.