mondays will never be the same

Thank you all for a wonderful class this semester...I really enjoyed hearing indivduals speak their minds about issues that concern us all, and even when we disagreed with someone else, it was done in a respectful and professional manner. I felt this semester that I did not have much to contribute myself, but I have also learned that it's not about ME. One of the problems we faced in this class was getting the personal out of our statements, which I think will develop with time. By reading and commenting on the blogs and doing a lot of active listening, I feel that my world and the worlds of those around me really came into light and focus.
Have a wonderful winter break, and keep sharing your love of teaching others with the world, for we knopw the world needs it.

Sort of sad

I'm kind of sad that this semester will be coming to a close. I really enjoyed our dialogues in this class, both during class time and in the blog.

I would also like to extend my most sincere thanks and appreciation to everyone in the class. This semester, I feel like I've learned a lot about myself through discussions that we've had, or points that were made in blogs. This class has encouraged me to constantly engage with new ideas and people.

I would also like to say that, through the duration of this course, if I have offended anyone in any of my blogs or my views in class discussion, I apologize. This course was a place for me to explore and shape my own views and opinions, both as a person and a teacher.

Thank you all for this experience. I believe that if we all follow our hearts, we will be the wave of change that the education field needs.

Thank you!

I would also like to thank everyone for helping me think through so many issues. Every Monday night, I drive home feeling really great about teaching music. I will miss our dialogues. But especially, thank you for listening to me complain about my teaching situation and for offering advice and cheering me on.

Breakthrough

At the end of every 30-day cycle of 7th grade music class, the students must complete a group project on one of the genres of 20th century music we have studied: jazz, classical, rock, rhythm and blues, rap/hip hop, or reggae. I split the class into 6 groups and randomly assign a genre to each group. The group members choose an artist/group/composer from the genre and plan a persuasive presentation to get their artist/group/composer voted into the "Music Hall of Fame." I created a system to make the assignments completely random. In two instances so far, the group who got assigned "classical" got very upset. This time, I think because I am growing in my thought process as a teacher, I think I did a better job dealing with the resistance.

I have a student who is constantly talking out in class and drawing attention to himself. This particular student, I'll call him "J," hated everything we did in music class because it wasn't rap. And then when we got to the rap unit, he also didn't like the music I chose. So when his group got assigned "classical," I really panicked. I heard him say, "I don't care if I fail. I'm not doing a project on classical." I wondered if I made a mistake by not rigging my system to guarantee that his group got rap. Luckily, I had the weekend to think it over. On Monday, I had a talk with him about how I really wanted him to challenge himself on the project. As we talked, he said (in what I swear could have been out of a critical pedagogy book) "Why do I have to learn about classical? Nobody cares about classical. I don't care about classical. It means nothing to me." After an initial internal angry and frustrated feeling, I answered, "Well, let's start from there." So, realizing that he ONLY likes rap music, I suggested that part of their presentation be a rap about Philip Glass. I suggested that he state at the beginning of the rap that he doesn't like classical music, but Philip Glass is not like all those other boring composers. We began composing the lyrics together, and the beginning went something like this:

I don't like classical music, I think it's whack, yo
But Glass is cool--he wrote the music to "The Truman Show."

(I think part of the reason J is so engaged is to laugh at me when I come up with lyrics like "whack, yo.")

The best part came at the end of the period when one of the group members asked J to see the rap, and J showed him and said "I'm not done with it yet." The other student read it and said, "hey, that's really good!" And I could see the proud look on J's face.

That's what it's all about.

Experience Before Student Teaching

As I’ve discussed before, I had a really bad experience with my original student teaching co-op. I’ve realized, since my last visit with him, that one of his main problems with me was my lack of experience in choral conducting. I have always been interested in choral conducting; however, my only experience is in my two semesters of conducting I took at school. I do not believe that this lack of experience is necessarily my fault. Both my elementary and secondary practicum experiences were heavily general music based. Many of my classmates had heavily choir based experiences. I wanted a heavy choral student teaching placement because I haven’t had that experience. However, my original co-op felt that my lack of experience was a detriment to his program. I believe that the purpose of student teaching is to learn. I do not understand why I was denied a placement because of my lack of experience. Isn’t student teaching is where I should gain the experience?

Performing as a Skill

I have been thinking a lot about the David Elliot article and his critique of the aesthetic concept of music education. I believe that it is extremely important for students to be able to listen to music and understand what they are listening to. However, a student will gain a greater understanding of a piece if they perform it themselves. I recently performed my senior recital, and in the process of doing so, I learned a great deal about the composers I sang, their compositional techniques, and the time periods they composed. Without a performing aspect of music education, students will never truly understand music. It is our job as teachers to create musicians, not patrons of music.