Processing Time

long time no blog

I've been trying to think of what profound pieces of information to impart upon the world of the interwebs over the last two-ish weeks.  All I keep thinking is that I am just pushing forward and that I haven't really had time to process what is important to take note of.  Despite this, I'm going to put some of my thoughts down on paper laptop.

opinions of the faculty room

I'm sure we all, as current/potential music educators have heard to stay away from the faculty room! All those teachers do is complain about their kids, about administration, it's crowded, you don't know anyone, yadda yadda yadda. During student teaching, I never set foot in the faculty room (mostly because we ate pie during lunch in the middle school band room and I'm not one to miss out on a baked good) but I did when I substitute taught during semester breaks.  That was a little bit of a different experience because almost everyone in the faculty room was a parent of a friend or was my teacher when I was in school, so it was more of a "How are you?!" type situation than a listening to complaining situation. I don't have a classroom or space to call my own in any of my four schools and since I travel so often and that means I spend a lot of my prep times in the faculty room.  I have found that it is very important for me to have face time in the faculty room because no one really knows me anywhere. I think that for any new teacher, especially music teachers who touch so many students, it is important for you to get a sense of the school community, chat with other teachers, and let them know that you exist when you're in the faculty room.  Yes, sometimes I do overhear a lot of jibberjabbercomplaincomplain, but also sometimes there are cookies and bread with spinach artichoke dip. You take the bad with the good.

observation

I was observed for the first time. It was fine. Real people observations are different than student teaching observations.  When we got observed for student teaching during undergrad, we got instant feedback; our junior year student teaching supervisors gave us written sheets along with the discussions we had in the car on the way to/from the school and senior year, our supervisors met with us as soon as we were done teaching to give feedback.  With this observation of a kindergarten class, my supervisor left as soon as I was done teaching and that was it! I know that I will have a post-observation meeting with him, but hey, I think it went well!

based on our old data...

Okay, that was a very brainy heading. I'll explain. When my two research buddies and I coded our data from our junior student teaching, one thing we discovered was that at one point or another we all felt like we had no idea what we were doing.  To some extent, I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing.  The one thing that I have to keep reminding myself of is that my kindergarteners and first graders have never had music in the public schools before, so sticking with the basics for a while is just fine for them...and me! Some of the other teachers in my district are very well versed in Kodály and that's how they work their lesson plans.  I, on the other hand, had an overview of different methods that included Kodály but that wasn't the main focus.  I'm very happy that I've had a big overview of methods because it's helped my bag of tricks, but I still feel a little like my skill set isn't up to par.  One other thing that has made me feel a little like I don't know what I'm doing is the fact that there are a lot of general music teachers in the 8 district elementary schools, but we aren't covering concepts at the same times. For example, I've already started with rhythm sticks, jingle bells, and tambourines with all of my students but other teachers save that for later.  I talked to my mentor teacher about this and she said to just try it and if it fails, then I know for next time.  It's nice to hear that there is some leniency and that me wanting to try things is okay.  I like that I still feel a little like student teaching, that I can learn about what works as I go and I don't need all the answers.

My dad once told me that he feels like he shouldn't have gotten paid for his first few years of teaching because he didn't know what he was doing.  I thought he was joking, but now I know it's not an exaggeration because I feel the same way! For some reason, I thought that having a job would mean that I felt super confident about everything I was doing - like a job gave me this treasure chest of knowledge that I was unaware of until then.  Nope. 

last but certainly not least, lesson planning

Writing plans for general music is way different than lesson planning for beginning band lessons or high school band. I can very easily open up Essential Elements 2000, turn to the next page, know what will be difficult, and say SWBAT within two seconds, or even open up a score and know what passages you'll have to work.  While the general music teacher editions are full of tons of information and well laid out ideas to teach the kiddies, I don't want to do everything in the same order as the textbook editors want to.  I mean, yeah, we all start with steady beat and high and low, but I've been taking time to get songs from different kindergarten and first grade books across publishers. It also takes a lot of time to tailor the lessons to the short attention span of 5-7 year olds.  The lessons are so full of different activities that it inherently takes longer.  In any lesson planning situation, it behooves you to plan extra just in case but with the little ones, it's especially true.  I'm starting to get more in the flow as get to I know my students, their interests and abilities, but lesson planning for general music is a different beast. 

Now it's time for one more small tidbit of information.  If you don't have time to work out in the morning before school, do an activity with your students that incorporates a workout. For example, the song "I'm Tall, I'm Small", I had students squat down when they sing about being small and then jump up when they're tall.  After doing that approximately 50 times on Monday and 50 times on Tuesday, my legs were KILLING me yesterday. Win.