A Teacher on Teaching

For the Choir Teachers out there

2012-02-15T21:02:00.000-05:00

Hi fellow choir teachers - this post is specifically about how to help your non-music reading singers look at their music for something other than the words. When I get my students in 7th grade they have already spent several years learning songs by rote and it is very challenging to get them to read the music in front of them. I often reference musical terms and symbols when I am teaching my music. I incorporate musicianship skills in my warm-ups (the subject of a future post) but I often find that studying words and symbols out of context (i.e. not as part of our current repertoire) creates a sepearation in the students' minds that does not allow them to access and apply their knowledge when singing. It is like they have tunnel vision when looking at their music. They only see the words unless I take steps to expand their view. Maybe you have had a similar experience when transitioning from singer to conductor. Before I started conducting I saw only my part when I looked at a choral score. As I began to develop as a director I began to see the page as a whole, to recognize shapes and contours and to process more information simultaneously. I feel like I need to guide my students through a similar process.

Activity - Musical Scavenger Hunt
Objective - to get students to find and define musical symbols in their current repertoire
Task: Using a symbol list that I provide students will work in groups to define each symbol and then locate it in one of their current songs. They will provide the song title, page number and measure number for each symbol.

Process: I tell the students that they will be working in groups of their choosing between 1 and 4 people. (Some students prefer to work alone and I have found that if the group is larger than 4 there is not enough work to go around). Their goal is to find and define as many music symbols as possible. I provide a symbol list, reporting grid, and music dictionary for each group. I typically require a certain number of symbols be found (the number varies depending on the class time allotted for the activity) and I offer a "fabulous candy prize" to the group that finds the most items.

As students begin to work on this task I typically observe the following behaviors:

Students are teaching each other in a variety of ways. Examples: how to look things up in a dictionary, how to count measures, meanings of music vocabulary
Students discover that they know more than they thought they did. If they are stuck I ask them to find the symbols that they know first and they often are able to find many of them before needing help
Students look at the piano part as well as other vocal parts in their score.
Students spend a concentrated amount of time looking at their choral scores without looking at the text of the songs.

I have used this activity successfully with 7th and 8th graders, but I think it would work well for 9th and 10th graders also. I cater the music symbol list to the current repertoire so that this is an activity that can be used several times throughout the school year. After I have done this activity with students they can more easily find and identify music symbols and will often ask me about unfamiliar symbols in their music. This activity has been both fun and very beneficial for my students. Maybe it is something that will work for you to.

Summer Work

2011-07-21T10:29:00.000-04:00

I sometimes hear about how lucky I am that I don't have to work in the summer. I am lucky that I didn't have to get up at 5:30 this morning. I certainly am grateful for the summer. But, I wouldn't say that I don't work in the summer. Granted, it's not 7-4:30 and the clothes are certainly different, but my summer work is a vital part of what happens during the school year.
Here is some of what I do in a typical summer:

Year Plans - I do an overview plan for the whole school year for each of the classes (5) and extra curricular activities (4) that I am responsible for. This entails a rough plan by week of content that will be covered, things that need to be planned for or completed, mostly big picture things. I use these year plans to then plan units (concerts) and daily lesson plans.

Repertoire Selection - I direct 6 different choirs (some classes, some extra curricular) and I select the repertoire over the summer because I do not have the time to do it once the school year has started. Selecting the right songs for the right concert for each group is vital to the success of that group. Each group does between 3-5 concerts per year, each concert has 3-5 songs on it for each group, so I am selecting around 72 pieces of music. To find the right pieces you will usually look at twice the number of songs that you need, although I have found that I am getting better every year at finding what I need quickly. I also am typically either going through musicals to help pick right one for the upcoming year or doing the score prep if one is already selected.

Finding and Evaluating New Resources - Summer is the time when I critically examine what has come across my path over the last year to determine if I can use it or not. This could include books, magazine articles, blog posts, webpages, tech tools, apps - anything that I threw in a file or bookmarked (thank you diigo) that could be useful later. I have found some things that have had profound affects on my students - summer is the time when I can sort these through and decide where to best spend my time and financial resources.

Evaluating my Past Practice - Now that I have had several nights of high quality sleep and I have the quiet of my empty house I can reflect on what I have done. I can determine what works, what doesn't, and what I'm going to do about it. This sometimes leads to tweaking an activity or rewriting and entire unit.

Collaborating with Colleagues - Not only have I gotten some sleep and can think again, but my colleagues have as well. I have meetings with them, formal or informal, and we bounce ideas off each other, discuss issues, plan, dream, and strive to do better for our students. Some of the greatest ideas happen in these sessions. Just think of what education would look like if we had the time and the brain power to do this during the year.

"Housekeeping" - Summer, especially the end of the summer involves a lot of "housekeeping" things that will make my life easier if I do them in the summer - filling out the calendar with all the school year dates and information, prepping folders and classroom materials, creating signs, organizing the classroom, ordering materials, cleaning out files (both computer and paper), web page maintenance, and a thousand other little tasks to get everything ready for my students.

I am not alone in my summer work activities - some teachers may do more or less than I do, but every teacher I know does some sort of work in the summer. We also do the immensely important work of recharging our bodies, minds and hearts so that we can bring the best to kids.

So - am I lucky to have the summer off? You bet, but the work doesn't stop, although it is really nice not to have to get up at 5:30am.

Reflections while I'm home with a cold

2011-01-21T13:43:00.001-05:00

Hello out there. It's been over six months since I've posted on this blog. The end of the school year was crazy. Once summer vacation came along I found myself needing some space from anything that had to do with school (I'm sure those of you teachers out there can understand that).

The new school year began in September, and this year has been a very hard one for me. Many teachers can attest to having "one of those years". I'm working very hard to get through it and not let the things that are out of my control affect what I am doing for my students.

I am collecting the little victories, the little rays of light that happen in a classroom and holding those times tightly to get me through the hard moments (or days, or weeks). Earlier this month I was in a rehearsal with one of my groups and they were running through a song. They were loving it, totally into the music, dancing around, and completely caught up in the music making. I just sat there, listening and feeling the complete joy in the room. I taught them that song, I enabled that moment to happen. That three minutes of music makes all the struggle worth it.

We are teachers. What we do makes a difference, even if we don't see the fruits of our labors.

Why teach?

2010-04-23T16:14:00.000-04:00

Why does anyone become a teacher? Some people may say that the answer to that question is easy - summer vacation. I can't argue that summers off are nice, but according to a statistic I heard on the radio yesterday 50% of people leave the teaching profession within 5 years. So, the promise of the lazy, hazy days of summer might be enough to attract people to teaching but it is not enough to keep them there.
I can't answer for every teacher out there, but I can tell you why I became a teacher and why I stay teaching. Nothing lasts as long as learning - true learning, not just memorizing facts from a book or answering multiple choice questions. It doesn't last just a moment - everything we truly learn defines us as people. Learning shapes us, our thoughts, and by extension our choices in life. Obviously not every moment of my teaching day brings life-changing epiphanies for my students, but I live for those moments of human connection. You know when a student in your class has experienced something that he or she will carry with them for the rest of their life. And when those moments happen I feel my place in the chain of teachers and students that stretches backwards and forwards throughout human history. When those moments do happen it makes the other parts of my job - the parts that drove out those 50% of teachers within 5 years - worth the trouble.

2010-04-21T10:57:00.000-04:00

I started this blog as a place to discuss and reflect upon teaching. Teaching is a passion. I love working with children, and any teacher you meet will tell you that they love the moment when a student "gets it". I want to help teach everyone about teaching, what it is, how it works and its important place in society. We've all heard people complain about teacher's easy schedules, summer's off, cushy benefits, and full year's pay for 10 months work. Any teacher will tell you about the long days, constant activity, swamps of paperwork, complicated interpersonal relationships, classroom management, and the constant feeling of being overwhelmed. Can we understand teaching and what makes a good teacher? Can we teach people about teaching? We all know that education is important, but why is there such a negative relationship between the education system and the society it serves?

Let's start the discussion....