Well, I think it's pretty evident from our lack of blog posts that the end of the year is BUSY for music teachers. Final spring concerts, musicals, grades, turning in registration forms for fall events, planning next year's calendar, preparing for or actually doing beginning band recruitment, organizing rosters and lesson schedules for the summer and fall, picking music for marching band, cleaning out your room/desk, and all of the little administrative things all teachers have to do at the end of the year etc...the list goes on! And it gets hectic!
It's all fun though, in my opinion, because the things you have to do to prepare for next year, well, that's exciting because you're thinking about your new year - your second year of teaching! It sounds promising! And the things you're doing to wrap up this year....while it's hectic, it's all coming to a close and it becomes quite a relief when you look at the calendar and you see that you have some free time during school because private lessons have ended for the year. Or when you see "band party" on the calendar. That doesn't sound too stressful!
For me, our district-wide concert is over and I only have one individual school concert left (tomorrow) and then I'm done. 4 regular days left of school and 7 "work" days (including our annual 6th grade band trip). I love how things wrap up around here. Summer is just around the corner!
I wanted to write about one more thing while it's on my mind. I think that one of the hardest things I've dealt with this year is recruitment. Numbers. I think there is a lot of pressure for a first year teacher to have at least the same number of kids in band or choir as the year before, if not more! It's almost a way to judge your success. If you have less students in band than they did last year, then you failed somehow. At least, it's easy to fall into that mindset. While I know that is not necessarily true - numbers fluctuate every year - it is the hardest thing to deal with when you have kids coming up to you saying "I don't think I'm gonna do _____(band/choir/anything) anymore."
I haven't had too many come up to me during the year, but today I just had a BUNCH of 6th graders that are moving into jr. high tell me that they changed their minds and are not going to be in jr. high chorus anymore next year. It was a big hit; they are some of my best musicians and I had counted on them to be there next year for my first year of teaching jr. high chorus. And so I had a really hard time figuring out how to react to them when they kept coming up to tell me they changed their minds about chorus.
(Side note: the main reason they changed their minds, I think, is because yesterday they were allowed to sign up for classes and saw all of the other electives. With this being their first opportunity to choose classes, they were excited and wanted to choose as many different and new ones as possible. I understand why they would want to! But still, it's hard to hear that they didn't want to be in my class.)
You know, it's just very hard not to take it personally. Also, professionally, how are you supposed to have an excellent ensemble when you only have like 10 kids? Numbers don't necessarily guarantee musical greatness, but they do help a lot, I think.
Anyway, those are just my thoughts on losing kids in your program. I have no advice on how to deal with it other than to realize it's probably not a personal thing - kids have all sorts of silly or sometimes good reasons for not joining band or chorus. I wish I could say I've won the battle, but it's only beginning for me. I have to figure out how I am going to turn my future high school chorus with 52 girls and 4 boys into something more balanced. Recruitment suggestions welcome!
Happy end of the year, everyone. :)
And so... summer has arrived. Now begins the best part of being a teacher. haha! Summer vacation is a time to reflect, relax, finally see family and friends, and, of course, prepare to do this teaching thing all over again in 2 months!
I think I'm going to start preparing for next year by reading through "First Days of School" by Harry Wong again (and then making a TON of lists.) It covers so much and will help me focus in on what needs to be done right away. Also, I think it will be a good way for me to reflect on how I did this past year in terms of discipline, classroom management, organization, motivation/inspiration, etc.