Adapting the Learnings from Year One: Assessing My Knowledge

One of my college roommates wrote a lot of academic papers during undergrad and grad school and it seemed like his profound and insightful writing always had a title with a colon in it.  I figured it might add credibility to my blog if I tried it too.

anyway...

My district has a comprehensive induction (new teacher) program that takes us through our first 4 years in the district - aka until we get tenure.  We attend monthly meetings about best practices, technology, the new evaluation model, etc.  The program started with 2 days of meetings for the 25 newly hired teachers - a lot for a little district! During these meetings, I went between feeling lucky that I knew a lot of the information already and feeling lost and overwhelmed.  I've been reflecting on that as I prepare for the students to come to school tomorrow and I think it's revealed interesting things worth sharing.  Hopefully you, my loyal readers, can get something from this post as well.  

While we were hearing an overview of the new observation and evaluation model (which hasn't been used in the district yet so the administrators have questions about it too), I felt like I had a pretty good grasp on it and wasn't stressed out like some of my colleagues.  Maybe it's because I already heard all of the freaking out in my last district? But when it was time to discuss curriculum, that's when my anxiety started to come into play.  I have no set curriculum for any of my classes which is definitely a blessing and a curse.  Blessing - I get to pick what I do every step of the way in my general music class and in ensembles.  Curse - I have to figure out everything for my general music class soon! This mixture of questioning and confidence (actually "Questioning and Confidence" would have made a good blog title...) kind of makes me feel good.  As a musician, I am inherently critical of myself because I've had to be for my entire musical life - always pushing myself to be better.  That striving for excellence can sometimes make me feel like I'm not succeeding as a teacher/performer...but that feeling lets me know in my heart that I am working and I do care, regardless of how my head perceives it.  When you worry about something it shows you care, so always worry about teaching.

In my first year I learned practical things, like how to use Genesis (an online database where we submit grades, attendance, and starting in January will also host our lesson plans), but I still need to work on figuring out grading schemes.  Being that I don't know exactly what my general music class will look like until I do a start of year assessment with the kids, I can't tell what the grading breakdown will be.  Grading is something that is always challenging, from what I'm gathering.  There are always rubrics to be written (which I actually think is fun) and always new methods of assessment to try out that will shape how grading is done and calculated. I only had to figure out a couple of my own assignments in my last position, but that was basically deciding what category of the already-in-place grading scheme to put them.  So I guess nothing in undergrad can really fully prepare you for the first year of having to hash that all out yourself from stratch.  

And now I will shortly sum up some of the other things I learned versus what still has a floating question mark above my head.

:) - confidence with kids

:/ - confindence when presenting and defending my pullout lesson schedule (more on this later, as it will be a pervasive issue in my first month)

:) - confidence planning

:/ - what am I teaching them?!

:) - picking pieces for band

:/ - picking pieces for a band I know nothing about

:) - teaching chorus

:/ - the changing male voice!!

:) - I know I have resources in my parents, friends, and colleagues

:/ - There's nothing that will make me question that fact - I just have to swallow my pride and not be afraid to ask!

I've been "inside my head" about these things so much lately that I'm excited to jump in with kids.  Soon I won't be able to stress about finding out what the kids know and I'll get into the real nitty gritty planning stages.  I'm excited to meet my students and work on a relationship with the staff because I'm not sure I got off on a good foot with my colleagues today. Let me just say as a cautionary phrase to anyone in any job - be cognizant of being "that guy" who is super resistant to change. In schools, we collaborate for greater student learning and with collaboration comes compromise.  Keep your mind open when someone pitches an idea and remember that not every new thing is scary, not every new thing is permanent, and not every new thing is going to mess up your good old thing. 

Here's to a new school year with new students and new problems (but good problems!) Keep on worrying, teacher friends.  

End.

Hello from the same place where I was when I started this blog - the lovely world of unemployment. Well, that was a moderately pessimistic way to start this post. Anyway here's the scoop. 

Monday was the last day with the kids.  I went to school for just a few hours on Tuesday to sign out and then I went back to my old home school (from when I was doing the part-time gig) to return a book and say hi to my old friends. After student teaching was over, I was really emotional - maybe because it was the end of my first time really teaching in a school and maybe because I had just conducted my first concert which made me realize that teaching was what I was meant to do and I was good at it... Regardless, I knew that there was a chance I'd be emotional on Monday saying bye to the kids but I really wasn't; I was more sad about leaving the colleagues I had grown so close to and about the fact that I don't know where I'm teaching next year. 

I have a few leads about what jobs will be open in the future but only have 1 active application out at the moment. I've had 3 interviews so far and from what I've heard, most districts won't start interviewing again until the middle/end of July. Guess what else is happening in the middle/end of July? My wedding and honeymoon! Sigh/yay. I've had to put in the final paragraph of my cover letter that I'm unavailable for contact between July 20 and 29th and I really hope that it doesn't deter employers from calling me. If not, maybe I can sue for discrimination? I'll work on it. 

I guess I should have some kind of summary of how I felt this year of teaching and what I've learned. Well I already did that kind of thing for my general music gig and I feel like I've already been keeping up with what I've learned in the band gig, but here goes. Alls I really knows is I'm a good teacher and I want nothing else in the world than to teach. I also stand by the fact that if you have good rapport with the kids and stay true to your personality at any age level they will work with you.  Being real with kids helps them achieve more so why not be yourself? Yeah I guess those are my nuggets of wisdom from junior high band. 

Here's hoping I'll report back soon with a job.

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.  

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.

Wisdom from a Convention

I've been having trouble picking things to write about. I haven't come up with anything revolutionary for the kindergarten and first grade general music class, I don't have huge issues that I feel like I need to write about. I guess my job isn't all that interesting at the moment.  However, I recently went to the New Jersey Music Educators Association Convention and I jotted down a couple things I thought were worthy of posting.  Conventions are great because you get to do great networking, you can go to sessions that make you realize what you're doing right, and some sessions make you see what you should be doing.  

I want to focus on 3 aspects of my teaching that I found out I'm doing right and how I learned to tweak it a little bit for maximum effect.  

• it's important to have a game (even if it's not really a game but a movement exercise you say is a game)
• Learned to: give kids 5-9 seconds after playing each round of a game to laugh/talk/move before getting their attention back because the behavior problems don't happen in that in between time - they happen if that's your whole class
• I used to: get their attention and keep it quiet between rounds

• use time-saving assessment strategies
• Learned to: use call and response to assess if students are matching pitch, keeping a steady beat, playing instrument properly, etc
• Learned that: using checklists of yes/no options are valid assessments and are very quick
• I used to: overthink my assessments and worry that when I collected data in the above styles that it wasn't a valid method

• it's okay to use the same song/game/listening example week after week and year after year
• Learned to: introduce a song/game/listening example briefly one class and continue to expand upon it in the next few classes
• have students dance around the room to a piece one week, sit and listen while answering 2 questions the next, follow and active listening chart the next
• I used to: teach a game/concept/song in the same class then return to the game for fun over the next few classes or later in the year as an extra treat instead of continuing to teach using that song
• Learned to: teach aspects of a song in lower grades then expand on that from year to year because students don't get bored of things each year - they actually enjoy the familiarity of the songs and can reminisce year to year
• K) pat steady beat while listening 1) come up with a dance in small groups 2)  compose and write out a rhythmic ostinato to go with the song 3) write a story about/discuss mood 4) read and count rhythm of the melody 
• I used to: avoid using songs/listening examples in lower grades that are traditionally used in higher grades because I didn't want to step on the toes of the other teachers and so they wouldn't be bored of the songs

I hope that these main three things can help you think about your teaching as much as they did mine. Look forward to another post with some exciting news later this week!!

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.