double trouble

Tonight I am blogging about two separate things... so, I guess the long title of this post should be "Things I should have figured out a long time ago and freaky fridays"

A continual gripe through my collegiate and now professional life has been the inability of most people to read music. By the time people came to me, wanting to join my church choir at the U of I, they had forgotten (or never learned) basic notes and rhythms. My usual complaint is " ALL KIDS TAKE AT LEAST 5 YEARS OF MUSIC. WHY CAN THEY NOT READ EGBDF and FACE????? HOW CAN A QUARTER NOTE BE SO HARD?????!!!!" With this in mind, I figured that one of the main things I would work on in my music classes was music literacy. Basics. Whole notes, quarter notes, half notes, eighth notes. one octave treble and bass. Student teaching helped me become more patient with this quasi quest of mine... usually music teachers only see kids once/twice a week.. Imagine teaching a child to read english only once a week. It would take FOREVER. So, I understand that it would take time... however, It took my 5th graders this week to help me understand that it takes a lot MORE than just a long time... I figured i was starting basic. steady beat vs. rhythm. Ta and ti ti .. stuff that my 2nd graders last year could do quite nicely... My 5th graders were so confused. They just didn't get it. I tried several different ways and they still didn't get it... so I did some thinking, and then it hit me... teaching kids to read music really IS like teaching a kid to read english (and most of my 5th graders only learned how to do that 4 years ago!). I completely take reading music for granted (I learned when I was about 7), but most of my students have close to zero prior knowledge with notation. They really DO need to experience it first. A kid couldn't READ the word "book" if he had never SAID the word "book". Do you get my drift? I was totally trying to jump into it too fast! (and I should have known that... I did know that...) Of course, that doesn't mean that I should stop trying get them to learn how to read music.. It's totally possible by 5th grade, and I really think that most 3rd graders could do it by May, but when teaching kids to read, you really really really really have to go slow. They need to DO music, and then the teacher needs to guide them, step by painfully slow step, until they understand the relationship between when they already know how to do and how it looks.

So, I'm back to the drawing board with 5th grade. I'm basically scrapping the stuff I started with them and am starting over a bit. I'm not sure how to get them to literacy yet. I think that's one of the hardest things about teaching music... but I really do think it is one of the most important. I'm excited for the new directions. I'm still going to work with them on reading music and soon, but I need to balance it and start with experience. Duh. (it took ME an experience before I finally got what people had been telling me... what do you know?)


In other news, my friday was the most eventful day of my student teaching or teaching this year. The whole day was absolutely insane. The morning was filled with everything from having to keep a 5th grade student after class to discuss respect (or his lack there of...) to a picture PERFECT second grade class. For my afternoon, those of you who teach elementary general music will not need much more of an explanation than "friday afternoon... recess duty for preschool and kindergarten on the blacktop only because of rain followed by two kindergarten classes and two preschool classes to end the day. And it was "beach day" for on of the K classes.. they spent all day outside playing." For the rest of you, a few highlights include: a recess crier who wouldn't let go of my hand, a skinned up knee, a cut and bleeding finger after a kindergartener found glass in the parking lot, a COMPLETELY out of control Kindergarten class (beach day.. I tried everything I had ever learned), cutting a kindergartener's lei and name tag off from around her neck because they had gotten tangled too close to her neck...just as the principal walks in with a perspective parent, another kid wetting his pants on my new rug, and about 20 MILLION unrelated comments from 4 year olds. At several points in the afternoon, i just stopped and laughed while I was teaching, because it was just one of those days....


whew, this was long. sorry.