School is out!

I am no longer a first year teacher! However, I plan to continue blogging here for sure.  The others? I don't know. I hope so too. ;)

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 am looking forward to having the time to sit down and thoroughly prepare for next year.  But the question that haunts me whenever I think about this is "where do I begin?"  There is so much I'm going to need to get ready now that I will be teaching two new classes and three times as many kids in 5/6 band.  I have to prepare to teach some 120 5/6th grade band students, 20-30 jr. high choir students, and 50-60 high school choir students.  Oh yeah, and I have to pick and plan a musical.  *gulp*   (I'm really looking forward to all of this though - seriously!)

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.

All in all though... it was a very fun and successful first year.  I hope I had a good impact on my students.  This year had its difficult moments for sure, but I feel very blessed to have experienced my first year in such a wonderful district and with such wonderful students and colleagues. (I'm talking about YOU, first year teachers!)

Congratulations on finishing up your first year of teaching!!

Something to consider

Something to consider. I like how he calls music a foreign language and said "the kids just interpreted it for you."

End of the year & hardest things

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. :)

Articulation Ideas

Sorry it's been such a while since we've had an update, folks!  I wanted to share some ideas I have been trying out with my 5th graders to help them understand various types of articulation.

I got the idea from a teacher's inservice we just had a few weeks ago.  A speaker was presenting on student motivation and on increasing teacher effectiveness.  Well, I always go into those inservices aware that most of it might not apply to teaching music, but I try to take everything they say and see if it can relate to teaching band.  Fortunately, this time, it actually worked!

The speaker would say words relating to his presentation and use motions to go along with those words. Then he had us repeat the words and motions back to him to help us remember and understand the words. I thought this might work great for teaching music vocabulary.

So one day I decided to try it with articulations with my 5th grade bands.  We started off with just a few basic ones at first: accent, slur, and staccato.   For accent, I said "ACCENT" (with an emphasis) and used a punching motion to get them to realize it gets more "umph," more emphasis.  They say it and repeat it back to me.   Then I said "staccato!" very short and made a quick flipping of the wrist motion (as I would in conducting staccato).  Then they said it and repeated the motion back as well.  For slur, I simply said "slluuuuuur" and made a rainbow type motion to demonstrate what a slur looks like in the music and to demonstrate how smooth and connected a slur makes the music sound.    Then they repeated it back.  After I would name and motion each articulation, I would tell them the definition as well.  "Staccato!  Short and detached."    "ACCENT!  With EMPHASIS!"    "Slurrrrr.  Tongue only the first note and not the rest.  Smooth."

After a week or so, we ran into some new articulations in one of our concert songs, "Imperium" by Michael Sweeney (great piece for beginning band).   We ran into tenuto and marcato.  I simply went with my own instinct and decide to show tenuto by putting my hands close together and then moving them outward and away from each other as if lengthening something.  This hopefully gives them the impression of filling up or lengthening something a little bit to get them to realize tenuto means giving the note full value.  For marcato, I simply made the gesture of what it looks like on paper.  An upside down peace sign.  (They really like this one).   We give the "upside down peace sign" or marcato gesture very quickly and with emphasis so they realize it's another type of accent.

They LOVED it!  They really like to respond and repeat what I say and do. After a number of days of repeating the name and gesture, I would just do the motion and ask them "what's this?" and they would immediately respond with the correct word and sometimes the definition, too.

(I should also add, however, that I model for them the SOUND of the articulation as well when I am first introducing a new type of articulation.  This is an important part of teaching them how to play it.  It's not all about recognition of the articulation symbol or the definition - they need to be able to hear how it should sound and do it on their own instruments as well.)

Here are some great benefits of teaching articulation this way:

• Kinesthetic learners can benefit from the gestures and hands on activity.
• Students are saying the articulation aloud so they learn how to speak in Italian musical terms
• The gestures relate to my conducting gestures so when I am conducting a song and they watch me make a certain "articulation gesture," they instantly recognize which one it is and hopefully respond correctly on their instruments with that articulation.
• Saying & repeating the gestures and names is easy enough that every kid can feel successful in the activity.
• It takes only seconds to teach an articulation without a long definition.  It takes only seconds to reinforce each day.
• The kids think it's fun!
• Some of the gestures model what the symbol looks like on paper too (slur, marcato, tenuto) so maybe they can recognize the meaning of the symbol on paper more quickly.

I have seen a lot of success in this so far.  I will be interested to see if they have become aware enough of all of the articulation symbols and their meanings to start applying them without my reminders.  But even if they're not quite aware of it all yet or able to do it without me- it is so easy to reinforce an articulation by stopping the band and silently making the gesture.  They get it and they play it that way and we move on.   

Let me know if you've found any success with this method or with your own ways of teaching articulation!

I get paid to this! and other musings

I almost am NOT a first year teacher. This is really exciting. Previously I've talked about how I felt like school days in general and teaching in particular were starting to slow down, and it really has all gotten better. Yes, the challenges are still enormous and usually come from out of the blue, but I really love what I do. As usual I'm going to tackle some of these different challenges and the attempted solutions in a near-Faulknerian stream of consciousness scattergun style.

Ok, so some kids just aren't into band. I understand that. I naively thought that I would be enthusiastic and excited and good enough that I would never have a problem with kids quitting. Wrong! So stinkin' wrong. You'll recall that I had a few stubborn 8th graders quit in the beginning of the year because my too eager, too tough, too soon grading policies and their complete reluctance and/or laziness to put forth any sort of effort.

That's all over, and we've moved into a new, more insidious version of quitting. I had the coolest 5th grader in school quit trombone back in November. He was the first kid to stick with it for a while and then decide it wasn't for him, and I felt like someone broke up with me. It's really hard not to take it personally! Just today I had a 5th grader who switched from trumpet to baritone (he couldn't play a stinkin' D on trumpet, so we moved him down and he did a lot better) quit after ditching the concert. I called home to check and see what happened at the concert, and after his parents talked with him, they returned his instrument the next morning. He and his mom said that he likes band and likes me, but that he just didn't want to do it anymore.

I would pay big bucks to get inside those 5th grade minds to see exactly what they are thinking. Are they bored? Terrified of performance? Lazy? It feels just plum impossible to actually get out a genuine, sincere answer from a 5th-8th grader, though. The baritone player just said "I don't want to do it anymore." The cool kid trombone player told me "I don't really like it." What's the real reason? Can I ever found that out so I can preemptively address those issues so that those students can enjoy and flourish in band? Do you have any experiences with this, or any success stories?

Probably the one that was most out of the blue happened just a few days ago. I have a 7th grader trumpet player who plays sports, has filled out his practice report every week, and although he dropped a few chairs at our last playing test, won an audition to play a solo in a number at our last concert. Yesterday he told me that he wasn't going to be in band next year. When I asked about why, he said he just didn't like it, and never really liked it. He's all but gone.

I know that this is all part of the game, but I want to have effective answers for these problems. I know that some kids can be bored if they aren't 100% engaged 100% of the time, so I make a point to have kids doing SOMETHING at all times, even if it's listening for mistakes in other students. I'm also usually off the wall energetic and often a little goofy at times to keep their attention and have an enjoyable atmosphere. I also try to find the balance between tough love, high expectations and a little bit of fun-time silliness.

Part of the reason that quitting is so anxiety-written right now is that I am picking up a program that is teetering near the edge of rock bottom. Every kid counts, even if they can't play. It counts for my administration's perception of the health of the program. It also count's for the student's perception of band. When kids quit, other kids talk about it, and I fear it just might get them thinking that "hey this is something I can just quit when I don't feel like working anymore." How do you reverse that mindset to get to the point where kids are clamoring to get into band? Where quitting is atypical? Can I build that with time? Am I laying the proper foundation to get to that point?

So that was a little dark. There are lots of awesome points too, and despite anxiety about some kids quitting, things are really on the up and up. We just had a concert where all groups performed quite well. The Jazz Band is playing several gigs in the upcoming months, and the band in general is sounding.......decent!

I got a very public shoutout from my principal today at a staff meeting as she read a gushing letter from an anonymous band parent's e-mail. The parent was lauding the students' performance at the concert and commending me for my enthusiasm, hard work, etc. That was really uplifting and encouraging.

In the meantime, I am looking ahead towards finishing up the year strong, making sure my 5th grade clarinets are feeling confident over the break, helping 5th grade brass players get down the Eb scale, and in general laying down the groundwork for success next year.

Sorry that this post ambled about and sidetracked - any comments and feedback, especially about quitting and retention, would be appreciated. If you haven't had it yet, enjoy your spring break, and keep motoring on toward summer!

...And Down the Stretch They Come!

Wow. I'm sitting here at the beginning of the 4th quarter of my first year. Reflection is due. It'll come after our concert coming up on this Thursday, I promise! It's been way too long since I've updated.

"The Bartman" and Other Cornerstones of the Wind Band Repertoire

Now that I have settled into second semester and concert band season is in full swing, I feel like I am pushing just ever so slightly beyond survival mode as a first year teacher. After the initial shock, I am starting to figure out some changes and initiatives I want to pursue in my position. I have a new procedure for distributing music and handouts, I held a "Maintenance Monday" and "Equipment Check," and my fifth graders have started to work with their high school band buddies (that's a separate post entirely, I'm really excited about this!). The biggest project I have right now though is organizing the music library.

I worked in the band library in college, and I learned a ton. Unfortunately, I also gained an understanding of how music ought to be kept and organized. As such, I am cursed with a feeling of moral culpability for my current band library, which is a shambles. I am reminded of my zany library boss, LL, and what she might say if she saw my band room.

Imaginary LL: Emma, you can rebuild it! Better, stronger than before!

Emma: But it will take freakin' forever, and I have other stuff to do! Plus, nobody's gonna care except me. Can't the next guy just do it?

Imaginary LL: You can't leave it like this, the horror!!! Do the job, do the job!

Emma: Well, it would make it easier to select and purchase literature...

Imaginary LL: That's the spirit... ::LL cackle::

So it begins, the process of organizing my library. Of course, the first step is convincing myself that this is a worthy use of my time. Let me first explain the problems. There is no computerized inventory of the library, so I have no quick way of knowing what we have. All of the music for the high school, middle school, and beginning bands are all stored together alphabetically(ish), which is fine until you run out of space in the "A" drawer. My literature selection this year has consisted of me wading through file cabinets and praying that I come out with something remotely A. appropriate and B. halfway decent sounding. I remember being elated when I discovered the cache of Christmas music the day after marching band season ended (otherwise I would've been hosed). This is a problem.

So, I devised a catalogue. I set up a system of call numbers to be grouped separately: B=Beginning, JH=Junior High, H=High School, C=Christmas, and P=Patriotic. I decided to separate out these latter categories because the Veteran's Day Program and Christmas Program are big events in the community and I wanted those pieces together for easy browsing. I am using Excel (with a list/sort feature) for the catalogue. I know that there are a lot of fancy database programs out there, but the previous director had started putting some pieces on the computer, and I didn't want to totally start over. My spreadsheet has all the usual suspects, check out the sample here.

The sick thing is, I actually enjoy the orderliness and busywork of this project at times. It can get overwhelming, but it's funny too! It's like looking at old photo albums. I loving seeing what the bands used to play at my school as far back as the 60s and 70s. For example, I have unearthed over 20 Swearingen titles, no exaggeration. The range of music includes orchestral transcriptions, standard school band fare, Sousa marches, a variety of Curnow pieces, the theme from "Cheers," "Ebony and Ivory for Concert Band," and my personal favorite, "The Bartman." Yup, as in the Simpsons circa 1990. Arranged... for... band.

Has anyone else organized a library before? What pitfalls did you encounter? Most importantly, is it worth it?? I'd love to hear about it in the comments. And of course, for your listening pleasure... check out the video below!

Bart Simpson - Do The Bartman by ernsthemingway