A new post!! And 1640 miles away from Minnesota!!

WOW....what happened??  I will tell you...SO.MUCH.  My last post was rather therapeutic!  Well, at least to me it was.  Last year was crazy emotional. I had such a great group of 8th and 7th graders and I just could not connect with my 6th graders.  It still drives me crazy and it is now July.  I will never know what happened and who knows that when/if I return will I be able to connect with them as 8th graders.  Which leads me to....

NOW.  Where the heck am I?!  I am finishing my first six weeks as a doctoral student at Arizona State University!!  Talk about a switch of pace, eh?  No kidding!  I finished school June 6th and flew down here June 8th and started class June 9th!!  12 credits later....I'm surviving!  I haven't had much time to reflect on the past month until this week.  I was rocking three classes a day until last week, so now I have a bit more free time.

Back to the school year.  Telling my 7th graders that I was not going to be their 8th grade band teacher was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.  I had been thinking about it for months.  I was SO nervous telling them-I was shaking.  They were amazing....my kids were just awesome.  I love them so much for being so mature!!  After I told them (and I was crying), they started applauding for me....they are proud of me.  "Mrs. Minette, this is an opportunity you can't pass up".  WOW.  Speechless.  I was floored by their compassion and their understanding.  I still tear up every time I think about it.  Lots of hugs, lots of tears, lots of personal emails....this was one special group of kids.  They are all special, but you know when you get that one class.....yeah, that was this class.

They have a great sub for this upcoming year.  I was fortunate to be a part of the hiring committee and the candidates got to work with the kids.  The kids asked amazing questions that were a reflection of what we do in class; "how are you going to challenge us to be better musicians"...their questions, not mine.  I'm going to miss this kids a ton, but I feel really good about their sub and they (the kiddos) were VERY excited when they found out who their teacher will be for next year.  But that still doesn't mean I am not going to miss being with them.  They were demanding...they loved to be challenged, they thrived on being challenged.  And it was probably the BEST percussion section I have ever had.  And every.single. clarinet player was cranking out D's above the staff....they just wanted to do it.  Nobody ever told them that it was hard.  They just did it.

So here I am!!  ASU.  This blog (I'm really going to try to maintain it) is going to still be about education and learning, but possibly with a more academic twist.  I'm not sure.  I'm not sure that I am ready to be done teaching at the middle level yet, but I know I need to be here doing this.  Like I told my kids, sometimes we don't have a direct path to our goal, so we take the scenic routes.  I love scenic routes.  They are the source of new adventures, so I am taking this adventure head on!!

Cheers!

Happy New Year....and a much needed blog post!

So it's been a while.  I haven't forgotten you at all.  You have been on my mind for the past three months, but a lot has been going on.  Many good things, but many struggles as well.  Too often the past few months I have found myself doubting everything that I do as a professional and this has been beyond frustrating.  I am not one to make New Year's Resolutions, but today-with the assistance of my amazingly patient husband, I have decided that I must take control of how I feel, that only I am in charge of my emotions and that I cannot let others take that away from me.  I apologize for my ambiguity on this but out of professionalism I must truly keep much of this to myself.  If you are dying to know, please ask via email. 

At any rate, our job is hard.  So many times I feel that I am being pulled in 1,000 directions that at the end of the day I am not concerned about my own mental health but rather whatif I would have taught something a different way, would more students have done better on a particular assignment.  My husband has been working with me to really incorporate "me" time.  Even if that means watching an episode of whatever series we are working through on Netflix and just lounging for 43 minutes, or if it is going to the gym, I must remove myself from my thoughts that overflow my brain of "whatifs".  I seem to be plagued by the same minions that plagued one of my favorite poets, Shel Silverstein: 

Last night, while I lay thinking here,
some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
and pranced and partied all night long
and sang their same old Whatif song:
Whatif I'm dumb ins school?
Whatif they've closed the swimming pool?
Whatif I get beat up?
Whatif there's poison in my cup?
Whatif I start to cry?
Whatif I get sick and die?
Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?
Whatif I don't grow talle?
Whatif my head starts getting smaller?
Whatif the fish won't bite?
Whatif the wind tears up my kite?
Whatif they start a war?
Whatif my parents get divorced?
Whatif the bus is late?
Whatif my teeth don't grow in straight?
Whatif I tear my pants?
Whatif I never learn to dance?
Everything seems well, and then
the nighttime Whatifs strike again!

Kinda dark, isn't it?  I know that I am not the only person that suffers from the Whatifs.  The only difference between me and Mr. Silverstein is that my Whatifs happen ALL DAY.  Non-stop....and it's more like "Whatif my students don't like me", "Whatif another student drops band". "What if I can't find a decent sub for next year"(more on that later)....just non.stop.whatifs.

So...what to do?  I'm not sure.  Just be kinder to myself and have confidence in my decisions and my 11 years of teaching, plus a master's degree (which means only so much) that what I am doing is right and good.  

Onward....I will be posting in the next few weeks about a cool project that I am working on that will be coinciding with the winter Olympics.  I'm positive that I am not the only band director out there that will be doing some sort of band Olympics, so if you have some ideas, shoot them my way!!

Cheers!

Sarah

Collaboration and Letting Go

One of my goals this year was to find ways to work technology into my classroom as a tool to help students learn.  I often wonder what the real reasons are behind encouraging the use of technology in the classroom.  I believe that technology can be a great tool to assist the learning process but it is not the end all.  I don't think that technology should be used just to use it.  We need to ask ourselves how are the students benefiting from this technology and is it helping our students become better thinkers and innovators.  For some students, technology will definitely assist them in the the learning process.  For others, technology may be a distraction. For this particular project, I suspect that it will be great tool in collaboration between myself and my students.

This idea came to me the other day when I was taking a shower.  Most of my ideas come to me when I am taking a shower or driving to school-when I actually have a clear mind and time to think.  I am always trying to make my rehearsals as student centered as possible, which can be difficult to do in the traditional band setting.  Traditionally band directors stand at the front of the room and make the decisions about the music.  Traditionally students have not had much, if any, input.  I typically try to ask my students for the input as much as possible, but it often comes and goes without a ton of impact and with just a few students contributing their ideas.  I wanted to figure out a way for all the students to collaborate on rehearsals so that they could take ownership of the rehearsal.

I decided I would record the students playing straight through their pieces.  We have only been in school for a month, so the pieces are still quite rough, but I thought this would be a great starting point.  I recorded the pieces and shared the recordings through Google Drive.  I instructed the students in class that I would be doing this and that they are to listen to the recordings over the weekend and on a shared Google Doc for each piece, comment on things that are going well and things that need work.  I enforced using positive and constructive criticism.  I told the students that what they share and collaborate on the documents will ultimately guide our rehearsals for the next week-that this is becoming their ensemble and that their opinions do matter.  At our next rehearsal I will put their responses up on the overhead so that they can see what everyone wrote.  Additionally, I shared that this is what I do on a daily basis.  I reflect on the nature of the piece, what needs to be worked on-what we need to do to make things better.

So, the recordings and documents have been shared and within an hour of sharing, the responses have been pouring in!!  It's amazing!  Because this is a shared document it is "live" so I can see who is typing.  There have been some fantastic observations by this group and I am looking forward to using their thoughts to guide their rehearsals.  I will just be facilitating and guiding them through the process, but ultimately they will be making the decisions on what needs to happen.  How cool is that?!

The only downside of this project is that my recording equipment is pretty sub-par.  I told the students that the balance of the group will be pretty off since I had to place the microphone at the front of the band.  The recording quality isn't as bad as I expected; however, it would be nice to be able to give the students a higher quality recording to work off of.

The students were pretty excited about this and asked if we would do this more than once.  Absolutely we are going to do this more than once.  It is a great way for students to think about their ensemble and how do they really sound versus how they think they sound.  It is also a great way for everyone to have a voice and an opinion and be able to be heard.  I am looking forward to seeing how this develops for the rest of my ensembles.

Illumination Project

Where did this week go?  How did I get two blog posts done in one week?!  Count yourselves lucky!

I am currently teaching a class called "Beat Goes On".  This is a result of some curriculum changes that occurred several years ago.....lonnnnggggg story that just does not need any resurfacing.  At any rate, this class has gone through several curriculum and name changes over the past few years including: "Bebop, Do-Wop and Hip-Hop", "Musical Mosaic" and the current "Beat Goes On".  This class is basically a music history class starting in Medieval Times and we work our way to current music.  I like to put the "popular" music spin on the class with the idea that every thing that we were studying at the time was popular.  The music appealed to the masses.  We have had great conversations regarding our responsibilities as consumers when buying/listening to music in this class.  I really enjoy teaching this class and I think, for the most part, students enjoy it as well.

While this class is a trimester long class, it just does not seem like enough time to cover all that we want to cover.  I spend about two weeks, not nearly enough, teaching about Medieval and Renaissance Music. I also throw in a video that I found on the Discovery Education website.  This is a fabulous website that many schools have subscriptions to!  The final "project" for this unit is an Illumination project. I have some fine colleagues that came up with this idea and I spun it into a three level differentiated project.  Illuminations are the fancy lettering that you find in early texts-often found in religious materials and the earliest forms of written music.  Students receive this for their project:

Students choose one of the levels to complete.  As you can see, the levels become a bit more involved.  I would say that over half of the students (38 in this class) are doing Level 2.  I'm not sure that any are doing Level 3, which is fine....that's a big project for 20 points!  Many of the projects are REALLY good and I will post some pictures when they are completed.

You will notice the second and third levels utilize Google Translate.  What a cool tool!!  I told students they could use their phones to look up the lyrics.  For example:



There was lots of giggling as students tried to pronounce some of these words, but we had a good time with it.

This project is fun.  Students can express themselves through art and they are learning a bit about how early text was written.  Additionally, we are using technology to assist our learning and make our projects more in depth.  I believe this project could be easily replicated and adjusted for elementary and high school groups.  This particular class is 7th graders and a mix of students who are in performing music classes and students who are not in performing music classes.

S.M.A.R.T.E.R Band Goals

We are well underway into the school year!  Lots of great things have been going on in my classroom.  My 7th grade band is to die for!  65 students and perfectly balanced with a low brass section that is huge!  I have four tubas in my 6th grade bands (2 tubas per band) and the 8th graders are adapting well to our funky split class schedule-22 minutes, lunch, 22 minutes.  Not ideal, but we will manage.

I have started working on my first goal per my last post which is to implement e-folios.  I am using our district Google account and Google Drive to accomplish this.  I created a mailing list with my students' emails and sent them a "practice email" requesting them to respond to me to make sure they got the email.  Later this week, we will head up to the learning center (aka media center) and our learning center specialist will work with the students to make sure they understand how use Drive-downloading assignments, uploading assignments and making sure the students share with only me.

Google Drive is pretty slick.  I have created folders for each band, and within those folders subfolders for each students which will contain their online assignments that I will share with them, so it will be more organized than just a bunch of emails coming at me from my students.

The 7th and 8th graders have an assignment that they will complete and send me in the next week.  Typically I do this during class, but we will test this out to see how it works.  I am hoping that there won't be too many complications.

SMARTER goals are an extension of SMART goals. Specific, Measurable, Actions, Realistic, Time frame, Enjoyable, Resources.  By no means am I taking credit for any of this!  I believe many schools are implementing SMART goals, but we wanted to add on to this.  Many students, and adults, find goal making to be tedious and often associated to something that is not enjoyable.  So, we decided to put a spin onto it so that students realize that goal setting is important and the process as well as the product can be enjoyable.

This is what my students will be completing, sharing with me and storing in their Google Drive folder.

So, we will see how this goes. I am hoping that this will be beneficial to the students, as well as myself.  A side benefit will be less paperwork and passing back.  Just a few clicks of the button and away we go!

2013-2014 Goals

Woohooo!!!  Another school year is upon us!!  I am so excited to meet all my new students and see my 7th and 8th graders.  This past week was super intense with workshop and curriculum night butI think I am ready!  The room looks great and I have every thing that I need to get through the first few days ready to go.  There are a few loose ends, but nothing that will prevent me from getting the year started out right.

Goals are important for us as educators to have.  They give us direction and allow us to reflect on our successes and failures as teachers.  It is not possible, in my mind, to succeed at every single thing that we do. If we are, then we aren't taking enough risks and trying to improve ourselves as educators.  When we set goals for ourselves we are also modeling goal setting for our students-something that is so important.  We need tangible goals, just like our students.  We need to set a process for how these goals are going to be met and we need to be able to adjust these goals through constant reflection.  The journey of the achieving the goal should be just as rewarding as reaching the goal.  Through this journey we will be faced with unexpected challenges that may put us back a few steps, but we adjust and carry on.  Because this is what we do as teachers.  We work through things so that everyone, including ourselves, experiences some sort of success, no matter how big or small.

My personal "work-related" goals for the 2013-2014 year:

• E-folios.  This is a biggie for me.  If you read my last entry I reflected on a somewhat failed attempt to record all of my students and start e-folios that would track their performance progress.  I am still committed to this goal, but after some reflection and some investigation I think I have a better solution.  Students are going to be using Google Drive to create their e-folios.  All of our students have gmail accounts through our district, so I think that this will be workable.  Our amazing learning center specialist (aka-media center) is going to help me and the students with this by showing the students how to access their accounts, working in Drive and how to share recordings with me.  The students first assignment is going to be very simple.  They need to pick their favorite song out of their current method book, record it (computer, ipad, phone....) and share it with me.  I am anticipating issues such as students who do not have access to these types of technology and they can do this at school during band.  But I want a foundation that we can build on.  I am hopeful for this goal and I do believe that the rewards of having students record themselves, reflect on their growth as musicians will be worth the bumps in the road that may occur.  This will also serve as a large part of the assessment that takes place in my room.  I will have solid evidence of whether or not a student is reaching a specific performance learning target or not and from that, we can make adjustments.
• Increase opportunities for students to play outside of band class.  I have some stellar musicians in my ensembles and I want to provide them more opportunities to get together and play with their friends.  I have some of the best percussionists that I have ever had and I really want to form a percussion ensemble.  I have a number of female percussionists and I would love to get them together, mentor each other and form a female percussion ensemble.  I have a ridiculous amount of low brass members this year, well, it seems that way to me: 6 tubas and 15 euphoniums?!  Hello, Tuba-Euph Christmas!  This is already in the planning stages with the other middle school teachers and high school teachers. I have some talented saxophonists who I think would make a great saxophone quartet.  Oh, and my 7th grade clarinets who gigged last year.  Some of them are already asking about clarinet group this year.  I love the fact that the possibilities are endless with groups and that students are eager to participate.
• Focus on the Positive.  Many times we get bogged down by the negative stuff going on in our lives and it can really affect how we approach life.  I need to remember that I have a pretty awesome job.  I get to share my love of learning and my love of music with middle school students.  Yes, middle school students.  Some of the most emotional, irritable and fun loving kids that I have the ability to connect with five days a week.  Yep, days can be rough but in the long run, I would not want to be doing anything different.

With all of these work related goals my personal goals remain the same: focus on being healthy-mind, body and spirit.  If those three get out of wack then I am not an effective teacher.  I have developed a passion for working out and being fit and I like to use analogies of working out in my classroom.  I want to be a role model to my students that being healthy is a good thing.  

Additionally, my own musicianship is very important to me.  I am fortunate to be able to play in several groups that challenge me as a musician but also remind me of how important music is to me and our society. While I love teaching middle school band, my musical oasis is playing with Encore and Caprice Saxophone Quartet and I use what I learn in those groups with my own students.

Finally, being a good human being.  My students are at a very impressionable age.  They are constantly being bombarded my social media, good and bad.  They are soaking up information at such a fast pace that I'm not sure they have time to process it all.  I want to impress upon my students to take a step back, analyze the situation and reflect on the nature of it.  Nobody wants to be remembered as a bully or mean and it starts with our students learning from the people that lead them.  

So, there it is.  Out there for whomever to read.  I will check back in with you and let you know how these are going.  Have a great year! 

What are we grading?

This topic has been in the back of my mind since last September and now it is rearing it's ugly head in my main thought process as I start to think about the upcoming school year.  I am not a fan of grades.  I find it hard to put a grade on music, something that is such a personal thing.  But we live in an age where everything must have a label and a grade so I must accept this as part of what I do.

Let me begin by stating that I don't recall ever really discussing grading as an undergrad music education student.  Maybe we spent some time on it, but we were so focused on making it through that it may have not been a top priority.  I find this a bit amusing because it seems that achieving grades is what is often central to students' experience at school.  Our students always write goals at the beginning of the school year.  Rarely do I read a goal that talks about a student wanting to LEARN about something.  Rather the goal is about their grades (and usually straight A's).  What does this say about our society and culture of learning?  We have put so much emphasis on good grades that we seem to have lost sight of why students are receiving those grades.  And of course achieving good grades usually ties in with testing, and that is a topic I really don't want to dive into!

What do we grade?  No, seriously....what are we grading?  Are we grading what students have learned and the path they took to truly comprehend a topic?  Are we grading their responsibility to turn in an assignment?  Are we grading how well they followed instructions, even though they may have no idea of what the final outcome really was, but they still followed the instructions?  Are we grading improvement?  Are we grading effort? These are all thoughts and questions that have been bothering me the past year and I am not sure what the answer is.

There has been a lot of discussion in my district, specifically at the middle school level, of grading for learning.  We assign students grades, or they EARN their grades, based on what they learned.  For example....Susie Q turns in an assignment a week late.  Traditionally, in many classrooms, she probably would have received no more than half credit.  She turned it in late, so there is no reason that she should receive full credit.  However, the assignment is done correctly, she understands and can demonstrate knowledge of the material.  So F for responsibility and A for knowledge.  I am no math person (seriously....HORRIBLE), but that averages out to a C.  While technically a C is considered "average", it is a death sentence for most students.  At any rate....what was graded in this instance?  What is important here?  Her ability to demonstrate knowledge or the responsibility to turn something in?  Both are important, but how do we assess this and determine how to grade this? 

As a music teacher I really struggle with grading.  We have students with so many varied abilities.  Some of my students are just stellar musicians...they just get it. I have students who have to work hard to get their music down, but they eventually get it.  Then I have the few that just struggle to no end.  An 'A' to the stellar musicians will be a lot different to the 'A' to the students who play their instrument and there is barely a recognizable sound that comes out of it.  Let's look at the last group.  How do I grade a kiddo that cannot produce even something remotely similar to "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on his instrument?  When speaking to him, he understands the ideas behind music, and he has a grasp on the fingerings (sorta), but his actually demonstration is just not there.

I firmly believe that as teachers we must be able to back up our grades and be able to provide reason as to why a student received the grade they did.  There are two instances in my personal student career where I received a grade lower than I anticipated and I was unsure as to why I received that grade.  The first time this happened, during my undergraduate days, I emailed the professor.  (The class was part of our educational seminar and I received a B+ in my teaching assisting assignment-which I loved and I actually continued going to beyond my assignment date.)  His response was that my grade reflected the work that I had done for the class.  I was really confused as I turned in assignments, never received any sort of suggestions for improvement or concerns.  I went above and beyond my responsibilities in my teaching assisting assignment (not student teaching) and received glowing reviews from my cooperating teacher.  But somehow this didn't jive with my professor's assessment of my written work.  At any rate, I was really upset and determined that this would not be something that I do to my students.

But here I am, trying to figure out how to grade my students' learning.  This is a topic that really has no end and has many detours.  One of which being grading participation.  What are we grading when we take off points for not having a pencil.  Is that affecting their learning?  Maybe?  They might have to go to their locker to get a pencil, thus missing part of the lesson.  I don't know.  I still really struggle with participation points.  Participation points are the same gray area as responsibility points to me.  I'm not sure exactly what the benefit is.  If a student is acting up, lowering their participation grade might allow them to realize that their misbehavior is not tolerated, and in all honesty, is probably preventing them from learning.  At the very least, it is most likely preventing others from learning.  But perhaps a better way to deal with this, rather than lowering a grade, is to have a talk with the student.  Lowering the grade due to a potential personality conflict could have even a more adverse affect.  The student may start thinking that you don't like him/her and that is why you are lowering their grade.  Talking with the student shows you actually care.  Again, just my thoughts.

What are your grading policies?  If you see that a students is a borderline B+/A- do you give them the benefit of the doubt?  Have your grading policies ever been challenged?