Blah

Two posts in one week? Crazy, I know. SPOILERS: If you want to know the theme of this blog, just take a sec and look at the tags at the bottom. 

Yeah.

I've been thinking a lot about what the future holds and why it's so upsetting to me that I might not have a job next year.  I ended my last post with this semi-optimistic statement - "But at least my fiance has a job and at least I can leave this position knowing that I did a good job in the time I was there."  Well I think that the problem with that statement is that I can't just leave my current position with the confidence and knowledge that comes with being told my multiple people that you do a good job. (That last sentence sounded cocky. Whatever.) I think it's in the human condition to want to be better and to improve as much as possible. If I was not "in to" teaching, hated it, or was doing a bad job then maybe I wouldn't get sick at the thought of not teaching. However I know I'm pretty good at teaching and this year has shown me that I was meant to teach.  The money stuff will sort itself out because based on the budget my fiance and I did, we can survive on his salary alone.  That's great for the future if I want to stay home with kids (way down the road) or in case something happens and I can't work, but right now I actually want to work.  It's really hard to stay positive and keep my situation in perspective with the "everything happens for a reason attitude" that I usually have but I have to stay focused on the day-to-day things I can control such as finishing writing my class final and learning to use a Scantron machine (which I'm actually really excited about). Still...about once a day I get a terrible sinking feeling that I'll be unemployed which doesn't help mitigate the stresses of moving and getting married. This is going to sound either nerdy or lame or whatever, but all I've ever wanted to do - minus when I was a in elementary school and wanted to be a comedian - is teach music.  Teaching music is my dream job.  Even on the worst days when the kids are being difficult, I still end that class knowing that this is what I want to do.  I think the other thing that is frustrating is that many job interviews might not happen until July (please...not during my honeymoon pleeeeeease) so there's no telling when this poopy feeling will end.  

So that's where I'm at - just trying to stay above the blah feeling.  

An update

Well, May came and went and I didn't blog. I think about blogging...then I don't because nothing interesting is going on. I guess now that it's June and my year is drawing to a close, I may as well sum up what's been going on. We just had a pops concert that was organized mostly by the orchestra teacher which included the 2 jazz bands and some members of the chorus.  It was a great concert and lots of fun - I got to play snare drum and hi-hat for a couple of the orchestra pieces! I also co-arranged the grand finale (Gangnam Style) with the orchestra teacher which featured the jazz bands, orchestra, a Korean student doing the rap, and dancers! 

After the concert back in April, I began a strange new journey into figuring out what the heck to teach the kids for the rest of the year. Being that this is the first year the 8th and 9th grade band kids are separated and being taught by 2 people, I got to figure out how much of the composition project that the other teacher traditionally does I would use and how much I would come up with on my own. I spent about 2 weeks doing sight reading and teaching the kids about phrase structure, doing improvisation exercises, working on ear training (more on that in a later post), one listening assignment, and a little theory as we went for the kids to understand the details of what I was teaching a little better.  After that I decided I wanted to teach them about compositional techniques such as theme and variation and assigned a theme and variation assignment - to write 2 variations on Hot Cross Buns.  I had a lot of fun writing the rubric for the composition assignment because that really forced me to realize my end goals for the students. Probably in real life, you're supposed to come up with firm objectives and then do the rubric, but it was sort of a hand-in-hand thing. I mean, I knew that the kids needed to have an understanding of how to write a manuscript so I borrowed (and was sure to credit) the 9th grade band director's rubric about correct number of beats per measure, if the key, clef, and time signature were in the correct order and were there, musical terms were spelled correctly, etc. I used that for 50/100 points then wrote the next 50 points of rubric.  It was hard for me to quantify "musical creativity" which was a main part of what I hoped the students would get out of the project so I came up with categories such as using more than 2 elements of variation for full points (changing rhythm, adding pitches, changing the time signature, altering the octave of the theme, adding in new sounds like clapping or trills) and making sure there was variation between variations.  So far as I'm grading the variations, all the kids have been getting good scores and some of them wrote great stuff! 

Besides the compositions, the students had etude testing (which is happening now) and also had a chamber group project.  That chamber project had another cool rubric that emphasized that a chamber group of any size needs to have communication, have well-thought out positioning, leaders, agree on style, basically all the stuff that college musicians still work on in chamber music. I hadn't conducted a full-group-reading-a-piece-type rehearsal in a long time until we were working on 3/8 and 6/8 this past week. Now I have to finish compiling the info for the written final and the review sheets and grade all the playing tests. Woooo! Busy busy push till the end of the year. 

It's bittersweet for sure that the end of the year is coming because I don't know if I'll have a job next year and real life approaches with rent, Internet, phone, TV, life insurance, health insurance, car payments, food, furniture, and all the other stuff that comes with moving out and on my own. And oh right, I'm getting married next month. But at least my fiance has a job and at least I can leave this position knowing that I did a good job in the time I was there. 

Almost Everything I Know About Interviewing

Over the last year, I have been getting calls for a lot of interviews. Along the way I have learned some things that I want to share so hopefully you, my loyal readers, will get the upper hand in an interview someday.

be you

I know I've mentioned this before, but it's worth repeating that I was super confident about finding an a sweet band job coming out of college.  Even when I was in an interview for a job I didn't feel confident about, I brought personal confidence to the room to send those vibes into the world! I still do that now as a teacher with experience who is again on the hunt.  I always aim to be myself in the classroom and I feel that an interview is really no time to be fake.  In one interview, a member of the panel said they were interviewing 17 people including me so in a situation like that, it is important to be yourself and be distinctive.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am very outgoing, like to joke around, and that my conversations are usually very animated.  This has worked well in most of my interviews because it helps start a dialogue between the panel and me.  However, in one interview I made a joke and none of the four panel members smiled or anything. Let's be honest - I'm used to blank stares from my peers, students, family, cats, when I tell a joke but not even a courtesy laugh?! Then it happened again with something that I didn't mean to be funny but came out wrong. It was very disconcerting because I didn't know if I was blowing my chance with my personality.  I put it in the back of my mind and continued to be confident in myself and how I was acting.  I asked my dad about it later and he said something I had never heard before - in some districts, there is a policy that you keep the interviewing climate consistent for all candidates.  That means no deriving from the questions on the interview sheet (which is something that many districts use) and no additional encouragement to or interaction with the candidate.  When I looked at the interview through that lens after the fact, I do remember seeing them relax and smile just before I played at the very end...but that didn't do me much good when I was concerned during the questioning.

be prepared 

For anyone who's ever taken a musical theater audition, you'll know you have to bring 16-32 bars to sing. Well for interviews, 2 minutes seems to be the magic number of time you are given to play.  Honestly, I spent the more time deciding on a piece to play for my interviews than I did preparing in any other way.  Make sure you know where that time puts you in the piece so you aren't caught with someone on the panel trying to stop you.  I have started introducing the piece by saying "I will now play you the first 1 minute 47 seconds of ____ by ____" so they know you know the parameters. Usually I was asked to play before the speaking started but in one interview I played at the end, so I had to do my water drinking ritual during the questioning portion as nonchalantly as possible. That being said, make sure it's something you can nail with minimal warm-up.  One district asked specifically for an example that shows your personal musicianship, so for me that meant tone and not something flashy.  I used that same pretty piece for all of the interviews.

You need to be prepared for questions that you might think are awkward.  One time I was asked what I thought of a colleague and that's a sliiiiippery slope (and it probably wasn't an ethical question to ask).  Now I know there's no way to prepare for that, but I also know that I should always spin questions to either show the panel what I know or say "I'm not sure but I know where to look".  I said something about how I respect their years of work and the consistency of their ensembles, but my teaching style is different in XYZ ways.  I turned it into something about me rather than getting myself into trouble by either loving or hating that person.  

I've been asked questions about movement in the general music classroom, my philosophy of music education, how I would handle specific classroom management situations and parent emails, how I would recruit for vocal and instrumental ensembles, and about fingerings and other pedagogy questions to name a bunch. One thing that no panel (oh and by the way, not all interviews are with a panel - many were one or two people) asked me about were specific grade 3 - 3.5 pieces to perform with a high school band.  Obviously I've taken enough methods courses to know appropriate pieces for each grade level - I mean for goodness sakes, I took an entire class on it and have pages and pages of this information in a binder at home! It just wasn't something that was on the tip of my tongue.  I'm in grade 2.5 sight reading mode right now...not that that's a reason to flounder on an answer but that question wasn't even on my radar.  I was talking to a colleague after the fact about how I felt like this was the weakest part of the interview and she recommended making a repertoire list for each interview.  It's a brilliant idea! Going on a beginning band interview? Make a list of 5-10 beginning band pieces for the first year.  A high school band gig but you're not sure about the ability of the students? Bring a list of a few pieces grades 2.5-4 that could sound good with a typical high school band instrumentation.  That's one of those items that will look great when you say "Well this is the list I made of pieces I like for this level".  It's one more thing to make you stand out and one more piece of information to not have to remember on the spot. I'm definitely doing this for my next interview and I'll post about how it goes!

okay two more things

1. make a list of when the postings of the jobs you applied for close so you know if you can be disappointed about not getting a call or holding on to your phone waiting for it to ring or doing both

2. check job websites daily and sort them by date because looking through 10 pages of jobs is annoying 

Looking back on this (almost done!) first year of teaching, I'm happy that my experiences have unfolded how they have; I love the diversity that I've had in my two jobs this year and I love the friendships and experiences that have come with my positions.  I'm happy that I ended up having lots of interviews and I'm happy that I am still interviewing.  I hope that these tips helped!  May the odds be ever in your favor. 

PS: Sorry you now have the music of The Lion King in your head. My B.

Concerts and Being Let Go

I would like to preface this post by saying that I haven't gotten stress pimples in a long time...until now. But it was worth it. Please do read on, now that the hygiene comments are out of the way.

night of jazz

As I mentioned in my last post, on April 3rd there was a district-wide Night of Jazz which my jazz lab ensemble was part of.  There was very little time for the band on stage, but we were able to run every piece and check balance.  When it was finally time to line up to get on stage for the performance, I had the students in the hallway outside the stage door.  I had never been so frustrated at students ever (until the next Tuesday...more on that in the next section). I calmly asked them to be quiet because there was only a stage door separating them from the audience. Nope. Didn't work.  So then I went to whisper-yelling because it has always been an effective way to strike fear in my heart. I said something along the lines of "I know that your prefrontal cortex is not fully formed yet and it's difficult for you to decide what's right and wrong and what you should or shouldn't do, but right now you should be quiet."  That stifled their conversation for about one minute, then when they stopped concentrating on the fact that they didn't know what a prefrontal cortext was, it was back to normal.  I don't like yelling; I have a really loud voice but I don't like having to use it (remember this for the next paragraph). The overall logistics of the Night of Jazz went smoothly.  5 groups performed and it was only about 2 hours.  All of the kids played really well, especially considering it was the week after spring break!

junior high school spring concert

Our Spring Concert was exactly a week after the jazz concert- April 10th. The two sections of the  8th grade band (and the two sections of 9th grade band but those aren't my students) don't get to meet as a whole until the week of the concert.  My combined rehearsal was scheduled for the day before the concert - Tuesday April 9 - and I was looking forward to hearing the whole 110 piece band together for the first time.  We had 2 periods - about 80 minutes - to work on the pieces, talk logistics for the night of the concert, and to run everything.  I expected to feel uplifted and optimistic after those 80 minutes. Instead, after the kids left I silently stared at my computer screen for a good 5 minutes, contemplating whether or not to cry and just generally thinking "clakdfmspoidfupigjlkj". Three things that didn't help my classroom management efforts were a) it was the first hot day of the year and all the kids were wearing shorts, thus making their brains think "Summer! No more focusing!" b) it was about 90 degrees in the band room c) the kids were excited to see their friends from the other class.  I had to raise my voice and be the "bad guy" way more than I wanted to be. I always like to feel like I'm honest and acting like myself when I'm in front of kids; students of any age can see through you if you're being phony so I strive to have a good relationship with my pupils.  I didn't feel like me when I was yelling and being so stern.  Thank goodness the other band director was in the room to help quiet kids down, get them extra copies of music, and take care of the 3 suddenly broken instruments.  When it was all said and done, I felt bad for treating the kids how I did and felt like I was an ineffective teacher for those 80 minutes.   
On the night of the concert, I had the 8th graders report to the lunch room 45 minutes before the concert started.  It takes waaaay longer to tune 110 kids than one would think, especially when they can't hear you announce that it's time to tune because there are also 90some ninth graders in the same space also playing and talking. My supervisor got me a microphone so the kiddos could hear me a little better, which was really helpful.  The students played very well and I was way more relaxed for this concert than I was for the jazz band concert and way way more relaxed than I was for my one piece when I was student teaching.  The 9th grade percussion ensemble also played really well for me.  I was very happy when it was all over.  

getting my sixty day notice

So going back to how I felt terrible after my rehearsal on Tuesday...I took the time that day to make concert reflection sheets for the kids to do when I would be absent on Thursday for an interview (more on that in a future post).  I left the band room to make photocopies of the reflection sheet and of course half-way through, the photocopier was convinced it was jammed although there was no jam, so I was gone longer than I expected.  That didn't help my daily upset-ed-ness level.  When I got back to the band room, I felt like having no human interaction. However, that plan was thwarted by the fact that the principal was in the room aaaand he was there to see me.  He wanted to go into my office to chat. Great - he must have heard that I yelled at one student in front of everyone and now I'm in trouble. The conversation went something like this. "Am I in trouble?" "No!" "Oh good!" "But I'm here to give you your sixty day notice." "...lolwat?"  

When you're in a leave replacement position, the district has to let you know that you won't be returning with the same contract, so they give you your 60 days.  However, when one has had a trying day and feels that one is an inadequate teacher, one does not want to hear "here's your sixty days!" It's kinda funny in retrospect.  

Overall, I feel good about the concert! I look forward to the rest of the year when we get to work on improvisation, composition, and small ensemble pieces.  

"Ms. Teacher-lady?" Who? Me?

Tomorrow I have my first concert! It's the district's Night of Jazz.  The jazz band from the 6th and 7th grade school, my jazz band, the auditioned jazz band from my school, and the high school jazz band will all play before a college band plays.  I really should have said "my" jazz band; I saw them twice and pretty much just polished what was already taught.  It's going to be a great night for the kids 6-12 to see not only their peers play, but to see a highly advanced band.  The only downside is that I haven't been able to rehearse with my kids since before spring break...so here's hoping the sound check doesn't spell disaster!

Okay, so now to explain the title of this post. It's been great having my own band classes and not really having to answer to anyone.  I have two veteran teachers that I share the room with so when I have questions, the answers are easily within reach.  Maybe that's why I never feel like I'm clueless like I did when I was doing general music. I love having preps, an office with a desk, a computer that I'm always logged in on.  I feel great.  Somehow, though, all these thinsg don't make me feel like I'm a grown-up.  Yeah, I have authority in the school to call kids out in the hallway when I'm on duty or to discipline kids in my class.  Yes, I'm getting paid to do what I have worked pretty much my whole life to accomplish. But it was a funny moment when my dad told me he'd be coming to my school to visit.  

My dad is the acting supervisor of fine arts in a school district now (he's supposed to be retired!). The high school in his district is creating a band room out of what used to be a big storage room, so my dad and the high school band director are going to visit band rooms that would serve as a good model when they design the space.  The instrumental music room at my school used to be the cafeteria (the lunch service windows are still on one wall to prove it).  Since it's a re-purposed space like what they'll have in my dad's district, he'll be coming to look at it tomorrow. Last night, my dad told me about when he'd be visiting and I said that he should email the other band director and tell him.  My dad goes "Why do I have to email someone else? You're the teacher!" 

Woah.

Yeah, I am the teacher.  I already said I do understand that.  But somehow those things didn't equal me being able to make a decision like approving a visitor to come scope out the room. I guess this whole being an adult thing is an on-going identity growth issue.  

The Score After 2 Innings

I'm a little excited for baseball season - can ya tell?!

So I survived the first 2 days at the new job! I love it! Doing rehearsals, small group lessons, lesson plans, etc. has been so intuitive for me.  Being up on the podium (or down off the podium which I did a lot of today) is so easy and planning time has greatly decreased because this is my comfort zone.  I love having an office all to myself. I don't have to go outside the building all day. People know who I am. It's like a whole new world! I also really like how the instrumental music department is set up in this school. The old cafeteria was turned into the band room (we still have the lunch windows behind cabinets to prove it!) so it's large enough for part of the room to be set up for the orchestra and half for the band day.  There are two overhead projectors, 2 computers, 2 whiteboards. The schedule is such that the orchestra has rehearsals when the two band directors are either on prep or have pullout lessons, which occur in the spacious (not being sarcastic, it's huge) instrument storage room. It's nice to always have kids in the room; there are only 20 minutes in the entire day when none of the 3 teachers are scheduled for anything. While the 9th grade band director teaches his band classes, I pull out his brass and percussion kids from rehearsal to do group lessons/percussion ensemble. He teaches his woodwinds by taking them out of their other classes.  The opposite is true for the 8th graders - he takes my woodwinds and percussion and I pull out my 8th grade brass from their classes.  It works nicely and we're very lucky to be able to have it scheduled that way. 

similarities and differences

I realized that it's almost 1 year to the day since I started student teaching. When you student teach, it's important to establish a good rapport with the kids. You should try to become a part of the program yet still make your own decisions and make your own personal statement.  Because I am coming into this job after the students have already established a routine with their other director, I feel almost like I did when I was student teaching...except now I get the whole 40 minutes to myself and don't have to share with my cooperating teacher! Haha.  I'm still trying to get to know the kids - by name and attitude equally. 8th grade is rough. So far, my take on it is that they act like kingergarteners most of the time but view themselves as hot stuff.  I had a discussion with one of my bands yesterday that ended in me calling them "boys and girls" and saying that I hoped I wouldn't have to treat them like the little kids I used to teach.  That class was great today, but the class that gave me no management issues (well few issues) was super chatty.  I mean it's probably because this is the week before spring break and I'm new and they're moody, but I need to figure out a way to get them to respect me a little more and act a little less like children. An obvious difference between student teaching and real life right now is that it's all me in front of the class. Logistics for the concert, getting info to the kids, making sure that everything is set for my ensemble, parent emails/interaction? Me. Thankfully I can ask lots of questions of my colleagues and the fact we share the room is great.  It's still daunting though that I have to write an email to a parent tomorrow. Also attendance and grading are things that have a new level of protocol that I have never dealt with; kids don't cut kindergarten general music like they might do in band and I only did 1 report card for the little ones. 

checking in on real life

Full-time pay checks are great and my bank account and I are looking forward to the first one. My sleeping, gym-ing, and eating schedules are all wonky now - partially because my job report time is now 7:15 when before it was noon (lol), and partially because I'm just beginning the 4th of 5 musicals I'm playing this musical season and that makes me sleepy. But as I mentioned in a status last week, I really can't complain about being tired when I spend all day doing what I love (aka music and eating). Oh and my wedding is in 4 months and my man and I are looking for places to live starting in June. WOAH. Look forward to more posts more frequently since I'm really into what I'm doing now!

Endings and Beginnings

In my last post, I mentioned that I had some good news to share, so here it is - I will be starting a new job on Monday! My part-time elementary general music job was only a year long leave replacement, so when I saw there was a maternity leave position posted for one of the band directors at the junior high school in my district, I applied. I ran it past my supervisor first, because I knew that it would create a problem if I got the job and he had to hire for my position.  He okayed it, I interviewed and got the job! I'm super excited because band is what I've always wanted to do.  Also, my resume looks sweet because I have K-1 general music experience and 8th grade band experience (not to mention that my position has me teaching brass and percussion lessons and not woodwinds which looks great for me as a flute player).  The other great thing about working in my district is that it has a great reputation in the state for academics, athletics, and the arts so administrators have heard of it when they see it on a resume.  Alsoooooo, the full-time pay for the last few months of the school year makes my bank account smile. 

end

It was bitter-sweet to have my last day at the elementaries today.  I've been prepping my kids for the last day since last week when it was all official that the new job was going through, but I don't think it really hit them that I wasn't coming back until today.  One class gave me an adorable card. 

I hope the kids are good for the new teacher and they don't think I did a bad job with them... Eh, but I know that I taught them well, so it's fine. 

Looking back over my first teaching job (woah), I learned a lot. I thought I'd have more things to post about with more lessons I've learned along the way to document and share.  Clearly that wasn't the case, but nevertheless I learned a lot of tips I want to share, as evidenced by the series of bullet points below:

•  it's okay to feel like you have no idea what's going on because once the kids come in the room, your planning kicks into gear and it works itself out
• you have to stick up for yourself and your classes, especially when you don't have your own teaching space
• be proactive and work to find available spaces in the building where you can teach
• always present a problem and a possible solution at the same time to an administrator
• "I know that it's difficult to find space for all the traveling teachers, but I noticed that this room is open during 2nd period. Can I use it to teach my music class on Mondays?"
• it takes WAY longer to write general music plans (okay maybe this is just me personally) than to plan for a band rehearsal or group lesson
• in the beginning of the year, familiarize yourself with delayed opening, half-day, early dismissal schedules
• aka make sure you have one that matches across multiple schools if you travel
• ask all of the questions, even if you think it's dumb
• ex: How do you draw a quarter rest and time signatures in elementary general?

beginning

I have two concerts coming up shortly after I start my new junior high  job - one the week after spring break and one the week after that. I'm excited to jump right in and go! I spent the day at the school yesterday so I could see the whole day of classes, lessons, duties, and the after school jazz band rehearsal.  I also was able to hear 3 out of the 4 pieces that the 8th grade band will be performing on their concert so I can plan what I'm doing next week.  The schedule is such that I will see the students every day for band - split into 2 sections of 8th grade band - so it will give me a good amount of time to continue to work on the circle of 5ths, rep, technique, etc. 

future

I already got a call for an interview for a permanent position for next September. Things are going well. I foresee having more to blog about from now on! Woo!