Learning Experience at high school Part 2

By the end of the week the teachers were letting me take small ensemble groups to other rooms to teach them their music. I thought this was AMAZING! There is no better learning than hands on learning. I realized how horrible I am at standing and playing the piano. Teachers at Luther had never even talked about this as a technique. I found myself stuck behind the piano seated and I could not see what the students were doing. I also realized that is super important to be able to play more than one part on the piano. Especially for the freshman groups. I learned that it takes a lot of practice to know how quickly to move and I need to improve in this area. It was so difficult to tell if they were getting the material and I also struggled when a couple were able to read it easily and I didnt want to leave the others in the dust. I think this will be a challenge for me that will just take some practice and getting used to.
I really enjoyed that the part time teacher was spending time teaching his freshman boys sightreading. They were expected to bring their sightreading packets to each class and singing through some melodies had become part of the everyday warmup procedure. I really hope that I can make time to incorporate this in my classroom, I think it is a step that is so often overlooked and skipped in order to save time to prepare for concerts. Teachers sometimes forget that students learn music faster if they have practiced sightreading. I really enjoyed the second half of the week, especially because I became more comfortable with the students and vice versa.

Learning Experience in High school

Over Spring Break I had the opportunity to spend time observing and helping the students at my high school. I contacted my old teacher and I was able to spend Monday through Friday there. It was so helpful because it really taught me some valuable things. I realized that it is super important to be able to adapt to the environment given. On Tuesday a bird had managed to find its way into the choir room but could not find its way out for hours! Every class period was the same with the students looking up and ducking when it would swoop. I thought my teacher had done a wonderful job of addressing the situation. He was able to tell the kids that if they were willing to get over it then he would too and they could move on. The students responded to his stern manner and were able to accomplish quite a bit considering the circumstances. I also learned that if you give students an inch they will take a mile. Some of the students were preparing for solo ensemble contest and while these students were working with the teacher, the other students were allowed to study quietly. The part time teacher let the boys get away with running around and yelling and such and they walked all over him. They took advantage of the small amount of freedom and by the end of the class two boys had to be sent to the office for play fighting when the associate principal happened to be walking through. I think this taught me that it is important to always maintain control in the classroom and also it stressed the importance of withitness.

Freedom Writers

I thought this movie was an amazing example of some of the difficulties that teachers face. One key difficulty for this classroom environment was a wide varety of types of people due to the voluntary integration program implemented by the board of education. I thought that Hillary Swank did an especially good job of helping the students unite and understand their differences. One tactic that was useful was the magic tape line where she asked students to step to the line if the statement said applied to them. This made the students understand that though they were very different from one another, they were also similar in that they had lost friends to gang violence and had been to prison or even a refugee camp.
I was amazed to find that the administration gave little support to the teachers in regards to actual teaching. There was a problem similar to what we discussed in class about sticking to a particular system simply due to the fact that it had been around for a while. The teachers reported to department heads who discussed things with the principal who in turn talked with the school board... they would not deviate from this system even though it was clearly not working. I could go on for days about this movie, though I should stop here. It is just a fantastic example of how to bring people together and motivate them to help themselves.