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.

Technology

I think that advances in Internet and technology are mostly beneficial. It has become easier to share video and audio clips in the classroom which provide additional ways of learning besides lecturing. Email has become useful because it is a quick way of communicating with both students and parents. Grade reports can easily be sent to parents with email so that they can get updates and can express concerns with a teacher. Internet also allows students access to a lot of information that they would have to search pretty extensively for in a library. I especially enjoyed online articles for my Paideia research project because it made information available to me in my own room.
Despite the many advantages there are some problems with Internet and technology. It is sometimes difficult for students to sort the vast amount of information on the Internet and because anyone can make a website it is hard to know what is a reliable source. Certain Internet aspects such as myspace and facebook have also made it easier for students to be subject to stalking. Unfortunately some safety settings are unable to protect our youth from Internet prowlers. Finally, it can sometimes be discriminating to require students to use computers and Internet because there may be students that do not have access to this in their home and are not provided with transportation to places that they may be able to use it.
Overall I think that these advances in technology have benefited the classroom but there are some things that we must be careful of in using it.

Ethnic Arts Festival

I had no idea that we had international students from such a variety of places in the world! I thought it was amazing to be able to go to one place (the CFL) and be able to experience the culture firsthand from say 30 different countries. I was especially surprised to hear students speak about the group dynamics in their countries. A student from South Africa explained to me that there are three religions that are predominant in her country, Islam, Christianity and Traditional. I was astonished to hear that they have a black Muslim as President and a white Christian as vice president. The student said that there is a great deal of religious tolerance in her country and that national holidays are observed for all three religions without much conflict. The importance of tolerance became clear to me when I visited the Somalia booth. The student explained that Islam accounted for 99% of religion but there is still great conflict in her country. She said that there is much fighting between different tribes even though they are united by a common religion. I think this experience of learning about varying levels of tolerance and conflict was quite interesting and it increased my breadth of knowledge of the actual situations of the world. I hope that as an educator I can share this knowledge of diversity to help people better understand differences and their implications.

Leahy

First, I REALLY enjoyed this concert! I thought this was an amazing opportunity to hear music from several different genres. I especially liked hearing about the different heritages that the family had because their grandfather came from Ireland, and their mother from Nova Scotia. It is difficult to categorize the music of Leahy because it has such broad roots. I think that this concert helped to teach me that as a teacher it is important to incorporate music from many different areas so that my students can appreciate and even grow fond of music they may not have considered before. Also I believe that this was a good exhibition of the benefits of teaching music in the home environment. Because these brothers and sisters were exposed to a variety of instruments and music types they were able to further explore and develop their musical talents. I think that support and practice in the home is essential to growing as a musician. This was quite obvious in this concert!

What is a sport anyway?

A very controversial topic at my highschool was what constituted a sport worthy of earning a varsity letter. Although this is quite debatable I feel that showchoir is as much a sport as bowling or cheerleading or even football. At my school varsity letters could be earned in bowling, marching band, cheerleading, dance team and I tried to discern what exactly the school was defining as a sport.
Here is what I have come up with so far. I think a sport is something that involves physical activity and a certain level of competition. I understand that many things can be included under that very basic definition but Im okay with that. Is cheerleading a sport? Most definitely, they have competitions just like football and I can safely say that the work involved is very strenuous. I hurt more from a week of cheerleading tryouts then I did in a full season of soccer.
Is showchoir a sport? This is really what I am driving at. I truly believe that showchoir is a sport because it is very demanding physically and the entire season is devoted to bettering the group in preparation for competitions. If you think football training is hard, I welcome you to come to one of our "Andy Weeks" in the summer. An hour of "warmup" aerobic workout, hours of intense dancing, lifting, and singing is a light day. 10 hour a day rehearsals in blistering weather is not what I would call easy. Although I never earned a Varsity Letter for this "extracirruclar activity" I am assured that I worked just as hard as any "jock" in any other "sport" if not harder. PS. we all had to lift weights as part of our preparation for the season. WOO ROCK ON SHOW CHOIR!