Thoughts on Lesson Planning

I find that my introduction to writing lesson plans in EHS 600 will be very useful to me. I am going to use them a lot during my first year of teaching because as a new teacher, I will be nervous and will tend to be disorganized and distracted in front of all my students. I would like to get better at writing lesson plans, especially when it comes to accommodations and assessment. I have struggled to get my objectives, learning activities and assessment to coordinate with one another. I hope that gets better with experience. I plan on making a lesson plan for four of every five days per week in my first year of teaching even if it isn't required. I feel that I can plan for four and not five because I am certain that there will be days where we won't cover as much material as we should have and we fall behind, like most classroom teachers always do.

I also feel that my introduction to the Bloom's Taxonomy Verbs has made writing objectives far easier for me. I feel like I can look at the list of verbs and find a much more specific, measurable way to focus my instruction. One thing I am still finding very difficult is to estimate how long the learning activities will last. I am caught between scheduling far too much than the students can get through in one day, so the class falls behind, or the kids are able to blow through my activities and then have nothing to do. I need practice to make my time estimates accurate, but until then, I would rather not get through everything on a rich list of activities than to have my students waste valuable learning time in class because they have “nothing to do.” These are things I will focus my attention on improving in the future.

June 2011 Teaching Philosophy

The new vision for schools is to better prepare the students for a changing world. The schools have not changed much since the days when they were designed for white males. But with globalization, environmental, financial, and political problems, the pressure is put on schools to adapt in order to produce American citizens who can solve these problems.

Students need an effective and efficient teacher to give them the tools they need. To be effective and efficient, the teacher needs to be prepared yet flexible. It is my philosophy that good teaching requires a constant cycle of self-evaluation followed by actively seeking solutions. Good teachers constantly ask themselves, “How am I doing? Is this working?” and can adjust when their current strategy doesn't work. It is my philosophy that a teacher needs to build an arsenal of strategies that deliver content so that every child in the room has the chance to learn in the style in which they are most comfortable. When things aren't working, it is time to try a new teaching strategy. Instead of working against the skittish attention spans of kids (and adults!) of today, work with them. When kids won't stop talking to each other in class, perhaps it is time to have them work on that project in groups. After all, humans are social animals, and they might even come up with more innovative ideas that way. When they won't put their tech-y devices down, have them “google” the day's focus of the lesson in a Webquest.

Sure, these things are easier said than done. New teachers are the only professionals who are expected to perform on their first day the same duties that an experienced teacher performs. In the business world, people are trained extensively and gradually work up to the responsibilities that the senior level employees have. An electrician or plumber is an apprentice first. A teacher, however, needs to learn his duties and perform them at the same time. The job of a teacher is difficult and there is nothing a single college or university class can do to prepare us completely for our first year of teaching. But as teachers, we need to take the initiative to educate ourselves and seek ways to improve the delivery of our content to better suit our students.

It is my philosophy that teachers must be able to improve and change to adapt to our students. When a teacher finds that he or she doesn't have an alternative strategy to try in order to reach a particular student, it is his or her job to be able to adapt the classroom to the students and the surrounding world. In order to successfully prepare our students for a changing world, mustn't we teachers must learn how to adapt, too?

Extended Reflection on 4Mat

While I was enrolled in the University of Alabama at Birmingham's EHS 600 class, I began to think less like a student and feel what it was like to think more like a teacher. Part of this process of maturation is to realize that not everyone in the world is going to learn the same way you learned. I saw this in the training I received in Bernice McCarthy's 4Mat system. A teacher planning units in the 4Mat system includes differentiation by default. It breaks the unit planning up into a straightforward order that when followed, the unit systematically takes the learner through each layer of Bloom's taxonomy. Not only is it excellent for the student, but it gives back a lot of the wasted time spent making decisions about in what order the lessons should take place. Had I started my student teaching stint without 4Mat training, my instruction would mirror exactly the style most of my graduate classes have been: a reading assignment and then a lecture the next day. I would have made my curriculum this way not because it is excellently effective for high and middle school students, but because when you are in your fourth year of graduate school, that is the only kind of classroom instruction you've experienced day after day. Thankfully, I feel that I have a better tool in my arsenal. Even in my ensemble classes, 4Mat training will be useful. There are lots of opportunities to get the kids engaged with learning the nuts and bolts of music without their instruments in their faces. With 4Mat, I get a wonderful spot to plug in some critical listening, some music theory, and some ear training. It is important that kids in a music class can do more than just play a clarinet once they've graduated: I want them to get a well rounded music education so they can listen to music intuitively and have a heightened awareness of its magnificence, ultimately ending with them having a more pleasurable experience and heightened quality of life. The 4Mat unit planning system can be a tremendous resource for achieving this level of musical cognition in my students.

Learner Type Table

Future Letter to my Students

Dear Students:

This message is addressed to you- the most important part of the music program. It represents my commitment to you. I want to make the promise that when you enter my classroom, this is what you can expect from me:

You will be met with clear objectives for the day. At the beginning of each class, I will always tell you what we will be doing and what I hope you will be able to do after mastering it.

I will treat everyone fairly, but no one the same. If you are unable to participate in an activity due to a disability, injury, religious reasons, or you have not brought your instrument, I will provide an alternative to make sure that you will not be cheated out of a quality learning experience.

I will come prepared for class each day with a detailed map of what our class is going to accomplish and how, thorough enough that if for any reason I will not be able to see you in class, the substitute will be able to provide you leadership in the planned activity just like I would. I shall expect you to come prepared as well, with your instrument and all your music ready to play.

I will teach you according to the national standards provided by the Music Educator's National Conference and will state in the Daily Objective what skill you will gain from the day's rehearsal of the chosen music.

As part of this band you are serving as ambassadors as the model students of Cityville High School. You must make a commitment to me and your peers that you will put effort in to being the best musician and citizen you possibly can, and impress love of music into every rehearsal and performance you present.

Sincerely,
Mrs. H.

New vision and music pedagogy

The latest and greatest idea that is being packaged and fed to prospective teachers is the idea of the "new vision." This new vision is based on the idea that the lecture that historically has taken place in most classrooms is not just inefficient but harmful to kids. The new vision involves changing the delivery system of your chosen content (science, math, art, basket-weaving 101, whatever) to fit the kids that are in your classroom. This always means, based on studies I haven't yet gotten a glimpse of yet, differentiated, cooperative learning. This means allowing your students to learn by themselves with a teacher being a guide. The students actively seek answers to problems in small groups, mediated by a teacher. The idea makes the shifts the paradigm from a teacher-centered classroom (a lecture) to a student-centered classroom (an interactive breeding ground for the development and exchange of ideas).
In a way, a band is already similar to the new vision, because band does not usually involve a lecture. Music class is more like a lab: students are actively participating in music. That is the way it should be. There are times when a lecture on music history would be appropriate, but no musician thrives on music history and theory alone. The act of making music is what is approached first and foremost. Even musicologists, who make their living primarily as music critics, music columnists, or researchers, play an instrument, because music can't be understood by lecture alone. Thankfully, this is understood by the members of the school administration. They understand that they cannot expect a music teacher to have a band that can successfully play in the stands at a game with a music lecture on music theory, history or even applied music. When people think of a music class, they already expect to see a rehearsal where kids are involved, each equipped with an instrument of some kind, or their voice.
The aspect that does not work is splitting the class up into small groups. In the music world, we would refer to the small groups as chamber ensembles. However, splitting the kids up into groups is more involved than splitting a science class into groups. There are two factors that govern which the students have to grouped together. The first consideration is their instrument. They must be put into trios or quartets according to what music already exists for that combination of instruments. Western classical music already has a long tradition of which combinations of musical instruments work in a trio or quartet. For example, there is little repertoire for a clarinet, a trombone, and a drum set. This is an ineffective ensemble to compose music for because the combination of sounds is not pleasing. So, if your second period band has six trumpets, two flutes, a tuba, and a saxophone, you probably won't find quality literature for these groups to play. If you were to settle for less quality literature, the kids don't get an enriched musical experience. The second factor to consider is musical ability. Generally, mixing levels of ability is not acceptable like it is in a math class. For example, four members of the woodwind quintet: the horn player, the oboe player, the bassoon player, and the flute player have all had previous piano training and private lessons on their individual instruments. The clarinet player, on the other hand, has not. She has only been playing for three years and her sense of pitch is less than perfect. When you select literature for the group, you can't expect that the more experienced players will "help" the less experienced clarinet player along. It doesn't work that way. It takes years of experience to improve. So, the whole ensemble is frustrated: the four players are frustrated with the clarinet player who plays out of tune and can't stop slowing down the tempo, and the clarinet player struggles with music that is too hard for her to feel like she can be successful at it. It is just a messy scenario.
It is also easier for students in an academic classroom to divide into small groups in the same room. With music, band kids are noisy. They play loud and noisy instruments, and when you put them together in groups, they can only hear their own group if they are isolated into their own practice space. All the chamber ensembles rehearsing in the band room does not work very well.
In light of the new vision, I think that kids can make musical progress when they are playing as a whole unit, instead of being split into chamber groups. Chamber music is a wonderful for the development of fine musical skills thanks to its intimate and soloistic nature. But choosing chamber music as the way or executing the new vision is not practical or possible in most cases. Even schools that have all the players needed for a full wind ensemble can't evenly divide the scoring and instrument numbers into standard Western trios and quartets for which repertoire exists. The best way the new vision can be implemented in a music classroom is to keep the large ensemble as a whole and run weekly sectionals, where all the same instruments (trumpets in one group, saxophones in another, etc.) rehearse their parts together.