Winging It

In my college days, the importance of lesson planning was hammered home in teaching methods classes. So much so that I recall my first lesson plan was extraordinarily detailed:

Step 1: Walk in door
Step 2: Breathe
Step 3: Say, “Hello, I am Mr. Maestro…”
Step 3: …

Of course, I’m exaggerating here, but the level of detail was a little laughable and made for a pretty lengthy document. Even funnier still is that this overly detailed document only lasted me about 20 minutes through a 30 minute elementary music class!

When I started my first job as a middle school band director, my planning was considerably more brief, but detailed enough to get me through a given rehearsal. It would likely include concepts that I wanted to teach and the specific measure numbers I planned on rehearsing and perhaps a description of some sort of drill activity I had devised.

In over ten years as a middle school band director, my lesson plans became more and more brief. Most of the lesson planning was done when I picked out the literature for the concert we were working on. As I studied scores, I would identify concepts that needed to be taught and, especially if it was a piece I had taught before would know what bars would need to be worked on and what sorts of drills I would need to hammer home some of the key concepts.

By the time I had been at it for a few years, I was “winging-it” at many of my daily rehearsals. My planning was essentially done when I studied the scores. I could post the agenda on the board before we began and I had a picture in my head of what had to happen.

All of the rehearsals and classes of course went much better than the ridiculously over planned lesson from college.

This year I feel in some ways like a first year teacher teaching elementary music for the first time since my college days and my lesson plans are considerably more detailed than in my most recent years as a band director. Although I find that as the year draws to an end my plans are becoming more and more brief. When I was evaluated by the principal recently she asked for a lesson plan. I had about a dozen words scribbled in my plan book for that lesson, and expanded it to a more respectable page and a half to give to the principal, but all of that planning that I gave to the principal had already been in my head when I devised those dozen words in my plan book.

I don’t know if I should ever expect to “wing-it” in my elementary class room the way I was able to as a band director. As I get more familiar with the pedagogy necessary to teach some of the activities that I do and my personal repertoire of songs and activities grows, perhaps I’ll be able to once and I while.

In middle school band I could wing it because I had the big picture planned first. I knew where I was going and what I intended to teach on the way there. As a first year teacher I’m still working on what the big picture looks like. Sure, I know the state standards, but that may be too large of a picture. As I gain experience I expect I’ll be able to see the big picture and what order to teach that huge list of concepts in. For now, can a little extra planning hurt?

The Power of Positive Speaking

It’s a funny thing that I know so many teachers who like to sit around and complain. (Not funny: ha ha). When the staff room door is shut I know many who would sit around and whine about this and that. Would we put up with that from our students? I hope not.

I try very hard to always be positive in my interactions with and I think it is to their benefit (and if a teacher can’t do things that are to the benefit of his students, then what is the point?). Last year my beginning band had a dress rehearsal before our final concert of the year. My colleague and I each taught several different sections of beginning band and we had one shot at getting the whole group together. We had arranged in advance who would conduct which numbers, I let her pick as long as I got to conduct the one I composed.

Beginning bands sometimes have the bad habit of sounding like giant kazoos (although not so much at the end of the year we hope). I usually refrain from telling this to my students. I would prefer I tell them how they can improve than tell them all the things that are wrong. When I took the podium for my numbers at the rehearsal I had the band run through the first number, complimented them on a few spots that were great, and then went on to have them repeat a few select parts which needed improvement.

My colleague then took the podium and conducted her first number. She didn’t get half way through before she stopped the group to yell at them about how awful the transition was. After she told them how NOT to do it, she told them to play it again with somewhat better results. There were several other errors that she encountered with the same fix. When she handed the group back over to me for my second number, the band still had not had a complete run through (good or bad) of the song.

I made sure I took an even more positive tack with my next number. I want my students to take the stage feeling like they are on going to have a successful performance. Again the full run-through was followed by more praise and more positive fixes to problem parts.
What message did the students take from my colleague’s treatment of her rehearsal time? By then end of those tunes did they feel well prepared to play those tunes in front of an audience? I think that with the short time I have to talk to a group before a concert my time (and that of my students) is better spent talking about the things we should do, rather than the things we shouldn’t do.

I have found that this can be even more important in elementary school. I remember taking a philosophy class in college in which the professor told the class, “‘Ought’ implies ‘can.’” I thought about this for a while and decided that if “ought” implies “can” then “Ought not” implies “can” too! For why would anyone tell you NOT to do something unless it was possible TO do it.

This is illustrated by my especially by my younger students when I make the mistake of phrasing an instruction or request in the negative. “Sally, DON’T use that silly voice,” will invariably result in 5 other students using a silly voice. “Bobby, DON’T peel the Velcro off the floor,”results in several other students also tugging at the Velcro strips I use to mark seating arrangements on the floor. When I catch myself making these mistakes I have to remind myself that the students need to know what TO do and not what NOT to do. “Sally, use your best singing voice.” OR “Joey (who is sitting near Sally) I like that you are using such a nice voice.” “Bobby, keep your hands in your lap” or “Sarah, I like how you are keeping your hands in your lap.”

I could say to my former colleague at HHOTRMS “DON’T BE SO NEGATIVE.” Or perhaps I could set an example by telling her in a more positive way.

You can't take the "Band" out of the "Band Geek" but you can take the German and French out of Zimbabwe

I've found a way to continue shepherding along the next generation of band geeks. I should mention here that it was now my own idea, nor is it particularly unique as I know there are many elementary schools that do this. My school has a marimba band (I guess that makes me the marimba band director!). I inherited the ensemble from my predecessor who inherited it from her predecessor, but I am just now starting up our regular rehearsal for the year. Now that I'm into it, next year we'll probably start sooner!

The trouble with the label "marimba band" is that most of the instruments we play are technically xylophones. Orff xylophones to be exact. Stranger yet, our Orff (who was German) xylophones are actually made in France! We play music that is in the style of Zimbabwean marimba music. It gets more twisted, all of our "Zimbabwean" music is written by a guy from Seattle. That's right: we play Zimbabwean music by a guy from Seattle on German instruments made in France. How's that for a "multi-cultural" lesson plan?

Our school is actually lucky enough to own one home-made marimba that was made by last year's HXB elementary students with the help of a local dude who does that sort of thing. It is indeed the nicest sounding instrument in the room. I say, "Great idea! what could be more band-geeky that building your own instrument?" I think back to my college days while the double reed players (and lets face-it, they are some of the geekiest in the band, are they not?) spent hours in and out of rehearsal hunched over their mandrills, plaques, hollow ground reed knifes and the like making reeds for every situation that they might encounter in a performance. My students instead will be hunched over chunks of African hardwood with safety glasses, mallets, and chisels to tune the marimba bars.

I made a small marimba at home for practice a couple of weeks ago. It actually looks an awful lot like an Orff soprano xylophone, but has a bit of a rounder tone with longer sustain (I presume it is because the bars on this instrument are much longer than the bars on my classroom xylophones that produce a similar pitch. My students were impressed, although some seemed more impressed with the marimba's resonator box which was made of scrap plywood I had sitting around the basement rather than the fact that it took a fair amount of patience to tune the 13 bars to the correct pitches!



The next step is to build the real deal with the students help. About half of my current students were in the group last year and assisted in the first build. I'm going to be a bit more ambitious than my predecessor as I am doing it all without the help of her expert (I'll save a load of $$ that way) AND my plan is to build 2 instruments instead of just one. If I can build a couple of instruments each year it will only take me a a couple of years until we can all play on our hand made marimbas and save the Orff instruments for class (which is good, because they take a bit of a beating with the enthusiastic playing of the marimba band).

We'll still be playing Zimbabwean style music from Seattle on instruments made locally, but at least the design is authentic and the wood if from Africa.

My life in exile

This summer I attended a band director clinic that I had wanted to go to for years. The clinic was great, but it was a bit of downer exerepiece. The whole time I was there, all I could think about was how I am not a band director anymore, and that I didn't really fit in. Of course, that's a little silly, of course I fit in just fine, I was surrouned by 100 of the biggest band geeks in the state, just like me.

So needless to say I had some anxiety about going back to work this September, particularly not knowing what was waiting for me at my new job.

Now that the year has be going for a month I can almost say I'm glad my last employer let me go. I enjoy the work with the young kids. There are different sorts of things to worry about than the middle school, but overal teaching music is teaching music whether your medium is singing or playing an instrument, its a matter of good pedagogy and knowing your content.

Its more that just what I do, though. The entire culture of HXB elementary is so different from HHOTRMS its shocking. The staff here actually get along and talk to each other. The general feeling of the school is laid back. Sometimes HHOTRMS just felt so up-tight it was shocking.

With the help of a book or two I think I have a pretty good handle on the what to teach now, and I'm enjoying learning along with the kids. Every now and then I have a lesson that bombs and I learn a lesson from it!

By the seat of our collective pants

Have you ever stopped to consider how much different the job of a music teacher is from the job of any other? I'm not trying to say that one job is easier or harder, they are just very different.

Imagine that you were hired to teach 7th grade math. Chances are, you would find in your classroom a nice fat text book that was officially adopted by the district's or state's school board. Open the book to page one, and there is the first lesson. What do you do when you finish lesson one? Turn the page and you move on to lesson two.

Now let's take a look at the music teacher. Unless you are teaching beginning band, chances are there isn't such a curriculum for you to rely on. Yes, there are method books that are used at levels above beginner, but you certainly couldn't rely on such a book as your soul curricular resource.

I'm now off to begin my career as an elementary music teacher, and I realized, that while I had no trouble as a band director with this void of curriculum that I had to make up as I went (a band class can easily be defined by its performances) Music is a very broad subject. My state has some very vague standards that need to be met by certain benchmarks, but leaves all of the intermediate steps up to the educator. For example, the first rhythmic concept found in our standards in at grade 3 in which students are supposed to be able to read patterns of quarter notes, pairs of eighth notes, and quarter rests. It is left to the teacher to figure out when and how these concepts should be introduced so they are mastered by third grade. I am excited to start this new career, but a bit nervous that my job is so vaguely defined.

P.S. I, in no way, mean to imply that the jobs of other class room teachers are easy. Just that they are better defined than the job of the music teacher. Also, I realize that the experienced math teacher (or any other subject teacher) is not likely to just go from page to page blindly following the lesson plans in the book. After all, we are all experts at teacher and our respective subjects and can tell when supplemental instruction, beyond what is found in the book, is needed.

I'm Running for President!

Teacher's Union Ramblings

I wrote a post a while back that ranted and rambled about why I dislike my union, which seems to have gotten a good number of visits from people out there. So I googled "I hate the teacher's union" just to see what else would pop up.

Amongst other things I found this blog post about Steve Jobs (of apple computer fame) criticizing teacher's unions for the woes of our educational system. As you will read if you care to click through, many teachers were afronted that Steven Jobs would criticize the union for these problems, because, afterall, these commenters are members of the union and they care a great deal about education.

The problem that Mr. Jobs was getting at had nothing to do with these teachers who care so much about education they are reading blogs about it on their spare time, it was the politics of the union and union leadership that bothered Mr. Jobs. I used to have the same problem when I'd see a piece criticizing the theachers union on the web or in the newspapper.

It seems to me that the union protects the wrong people. A teacher that is doing poorly and is transfered or put on probation is relentlessly defended by the union, but a teacher such as myself who has moved mountains to get through to his students (and succeeded) is let go with a "gee we're really sorry there's nothing we can do."

One of the commenters defended tenure as a way to preserve "due proccess." And I think they're right. It would hardly be fair to a school board who has little or no formal training or certification in education to let a teacher go on a whim. The problem is that the evaluation system that is in place is so poor, that it is next to impossible to fire a teacher who is performing poorly through due proccess, because that teacher has always been labled "Satisfactory." The bar is set so low, it's hard not to clear that mark!

I've been told that the only way to fire a teacher based on their evaluation is to get them on a technicaillity that has nothing to do with their teacher ability, such as a violation of district policy, or procedure.