Mistakes and Other Updates

I know I said that I wanted to keep this blog positive because it's so hard to see past what we perceive as "bad" things in our lives, but I've been saving up these things to post.  Below is my list of mistakes I made so I won't do it again and neither will you!


Make sure you check all of your school-owned instruments before letting kids play them. 

I feel dumb even typing this for public consumption.  I stupidly assumed that instruments were left in working order in the summer before I was hired.  False.  I found a bari sax mouthpiece that looked like this...

I also found a baritone whose valves were so stuck that no amount of my work could get them loose and a different bari sax that was missing a spring and a key guard on the low C key.  

Don't assume that your students know anything in your first year.

...especially the older they are when you start.  I know that the elementary band director who has them for two years before they come to the middle school teaches them appropriate terminology but a lot of 8th graders claim that they have never heard of dynamics, articulation, or the difference between B-flat and B-natural.  If I had a nickle for every time I had either of these two conversations in a band lesson - "What do we call louds and softs in music?" silence... "It rhymes with sch-my-namics?" silence... Or "What note does the E-flat scale start on?" with the response "E?", I would have a lot of nickles.  I just have to keep the faith that the 6th graders who will have me for three years will be brilliant!

Remember that the winter concert comes way too soon, especially due to how many days school is not in session in November.

I thought that December was so far away and that as long as I picked easy-ish music we could do 3 pieces for both the 6th Grade Band and 7th & 8th Grade Band. False.  Each band is doing 2 pieces and I'm on edge that it's not going to sound like anything but a hot mess.  I even had to cut out the B section from one of the 6th Grade Band pieces which makes me sad but was a necessary move.  In my district and many in NJ, the kids get off an entire week in the beginning of November - 2 days for the NJ Educators Association convention, in-services for 2 days, and that Wednesday is off as well because it would be dumb to have one day of school.  We also had 4 half days that make our normal 15 minutes of rehearsal time cut down to approximately 2 (aka I attempt to have the kids come early but they all forget and less than half the band is there).  Then there's Thanksgiving and Black Friday...then December 11th happens.  In comparison, the spring concert will be a breeze in terms of prep time.  Also in my defense, I didn't know the kids and that plus the above assumptions put us behind the 8-ball.

So those are my three big oopsies thus far.  In other world news, my musical went really well! There are many things that I will do differently next year, but for my first time doing a musical (I'm totally not counting the 3-5th grade musical I did last year because there were no scene changes, no blocking, and the dances were confined to stepping in place and moving arms) it went well.  My choreography was surprisingly not bad, the staging worked, and the kids had good diction and sang at a healthy volume.  I'm already looking forward to next year and so are the kids, so that's a sign I did something right! For now, I will enjoy being home at a reasonable hour and not being stressed constantly...that is to say I won't be stressed unless I think about my concert. : )

To close, I want to repost a status I wrote about 2 weeks ago.  

I remember junior year when I thought I was on the struggle bus during student teaching. Then senior year was super stressful and my first year of teaching was so busy and I felt unprepared for life. Comparatively those things seem like nothing to how busy and stressed I have been this year. But through everything, I've survived! It puts things in perspective when you think back on what (at the time) were the "hardest" moments of your life and see that now you're doing way more and kicking butt doing it. Exhausted but grateful.

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.

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.

Ta Ta Ti Ti Ta

Hello again, world! So. A lot has happened since my last post.  I'll try to break it down.

You Bettah Werk.

I've always been goal-oriented and have accomplished almost everything I've set my mind to.  I worked incredibly hard during my undergrad to prepare myself to be the best music teacher I could be when I was let into the real world.  Also, in general, I like to be in control (or at least feel like I'm in control) of my situations.  So I thought that I was setting myself up for success and putting myself somewhat in control of my job search with my hard work. Nope.  By the time September rolled around, I still had no job.  I kept not getting jobs for reasons I never really considered - I wasn't a percussionist, I wasn't a vocalist, I wasn't a brass player, I didn't have experience.  I have always considered myself a well-rounded musician - I have decent piano chops (although I'm not as good as I was when I was 14...), I have a pretty extensive choral music performance background having sung in choirs since I was in 4th grade, I have solo singing experience as a cantor, I'm a good doubler, and I'm really modest.  I'm a good young teacher and, minus the phase in my life when I wanted to be a comedian, teaching is all I've wanted to do.  So when I had no job for legitimate but hard to swallow reasons, it was crushing and made me question pretty much all of my musical life.  It was horrible and I felt really down and out. I know I know, I've heard it a million times and I really do believe it, but when you're in a bad place, it's hard to keep your mind on the idea that everything happens for a reason. 

A New Job (or is it pronounced yob...maybe it's a soft J), A New Identity.

One of the districts where I interviewed had a maternity leave position and since the supervisor was impressed with my teaching and interview the first time, he interviewed me for this position.  It's a part-time (noon - 3:15 every day!) kindergarten and first grade general music job across 4 elementary schools.  I was hired on Tuesday, went to a department-wide in-service day on Wednesday, and taught on Thursday.  It was a really fast turn-around which meant I missed the new teacher orientation day. I didn't know in which rooms I was teaching until I got to each school the day of my classes because I didn't have time in the preceding days to visit each building. I still don't have access to my school email, the online district resources, the class lists, the grading system, haven't signed my contract, or been board approved.

All things considered, the first two days are all I've done so far and I think I'm doing okay! I like the little ones, but I've never taught them music, having not student taught with that age group.  You can't bargain with them; saying "Boys and girls, we have to be able to accomplish this task and listen to our directions or else we can't have fun with the next music game" doesn't go over as well with them as it does with middle/high school kids.  But laying down the rules - using ta ta ti ti ta to get attention, being quiet before entering the room, using a quiet raised hand, etc. seems to have worked so far.  Things that are making me feel better when I start to worry that college has not prepared me for this? Remembering that this is the first year this district is having full day kindergarten means that NONE of my students (K or 1st) have had any in-school music class.  It makes for easier lesson planning thus far because the K and 1st have the same objectives.  One thing that is less in my control is my teaching space.  I was unaware, because of the aforementioned reasons, that I was teaching some kindergartens in their rooms, some in the instrumental music room, some in the general music room. However, I made sure to cover my bases and I planned for the whole first lesson to be a cappella so that I could accomplish my objectives regardless of a CD player, piano, board, or Orff instruments.  I'm looking forward to collaborating more with my mentor teacher and the other K and 1 teachers in the schools I'm at.  I know that even though I only had my one general music methods course, my musical sense will guide me through this phase of my teaching life.  I feel like I'm going to learn more about general music and teaching in general from doing it even part-time then I would have from student teaching for 7 weeks.  I'll check back in with you, my adoring public, after my first full week.  

As for my identity, a funny anecdote.  My fiance and I joined the church choir at the parish we now belong to and Thursday was our first rehearsal.  I asked the choir director what he wanted me to sing because I could do church soprano (aka not super high) or alto (or honestly church tenor because it's not super low and practically alto II range but I didn't mention that because this choir actually has men).  He said soprano because this group has a lot of altos. Thursday was also the first day of school, so in one day, I became 2 things that I pretty much didn't think I'd be at this point in my life - a general music teacher and a soprano.