transitfan's blog
why might students be less excited in the class with better teaching?
Today I was in Mr. Takeler's Looking At Wind Instruments 4th/5th grade classes, in which a professional flutist and a professional trumpeter (both have played in the Opera Company of Philadelphia among other ensembles) gave students their first lesson in flute and trumpet. Students split and half and either stayed in the Band room with Ms. Rock to play trumpet or went upstairs with Mr. Terrible to play flute, then switched. I saw two sections of each.
trying to apply elementary school music pedagogy to college-student intro music reading teaching
3/24: Music-reading class
Today only three students showed up, but there were notable improvements over my previous class. In advance, I planned a skeleton lesson plan, which helped me stay on track. I can continue to work on clarity, but my instructions were generally quicker and I never apologized.
We started writing our “names in music” (assigning the letters A-G in our names to the letters in the alphabet.) Then I meant to play our “name piece” on the piano at the end but I just remember now that I forgot. I asked the two students who are more confident to treble clef to write in bass clef; it slowed them down but I hope it was good practice.
Next I showed what rests look like on the chalkboard; I did this in a simple, traditional-education way.
But next we did a new activity; rhythmic dictation the way the students do it at Boatley (but here with more complicated rhythms.) The first rhythm students did easily. The second was much trickier, especially because I messed up the Kodaly syllables a little. A student took initiative in asking me to break it down beat by beat. This is lucky; I doubt an elementary school student would have asked me to do this and they would have missed out on a good strategy for me to help them to complete the rhythm. The third rhythm is a little easier.
A "bad apple" story
Before class, Ms. Presley said “we have a special friend in this class.” Michael's home-life is terrible (she didn't get more detailed then that) and he is new this year. He is the only one in the school not allowed to leave the classroom to use the bathroom, and he has been known to leave and not come back. (I wonder when he uses the bathroom.) He will say he is sick, but he isn't really sick. At the beginning of the year, the faculty tried being really nice to him, but didn't make any progress in his behavior. Now they are trying being really tough on him, and Ms. Presley wanted to give me a heads-up that I might see “tough love.”
During a lot of the class, Michael is being silly but the other students call him out on it, telling him to stop doing something every couple minutes. At one point, a student says to another “stop being the teacher” which is good advice, but Michael does in fact seem to be on a different, lower, level of power than the rest of the class somehow. Eventually he crawls over to the corner of the room. Ms. Presley directs him to come back to the circle with everyone else. He says something like “I'm trying to live an isolated existence from society” using similarly philosophical words. He comes back to the circle for a minute and repeats his dedication to isolation from society to another student.
“That's nice,” the other student says. He crawls away again and is called back.
coming in late at a disadvantage
12:40-1:25 Fifth Grade
...
Ms. Presley warns me before that this particular fifth grade class can be challenging. Like with all of her classes, she likes doing lots of quick 5-7 minute activities each class; it keeps students attentive and allows her to cover lots of ground.
There are about 15 students; about an equal number male-appearing and female-appearing. Two appear to be Black; the rest appear to be white but a couple others could be people of color. One girl, who is black, looks high-school aged. I will refer to her here as Sydney. Ms. Presley introduces me as Mr. Safran and asks if anyone wants to tell me anything about themselves or Shipley. “It's a school,” says one person. No one else adds any detail.
field notes: first impressions and thoughts on dialogue between teachers in my placement
I finally started by placement today at a private school not far from the college campus of this course, to be called The Boatley School. I will be with the lower school's music teacher to known as Ms. Presley, who is in her first year teaching here after some work at public schools. (She says that Boatley students are uniquely comfortable speaking up and asking questions compared to her past teaching experience, which she says can be good and bad. I hypothesize may be a socio-economic class issue.) I feel grateful that a new teacher was willing to take on a student to do fieldwork in her class, although she seems to prefer I mainly observe at first. She will also try to arrange for me to visit the band director and the middle/upper school music teacher a couple times each for a period or two. Because the school runs on a rotating schedule, I will see different students every week, which will make it a challenge for me to get to know them. That said, I think it will be interesting as a contrast to past field placements in music.
field notes-ish post for 2/12
My field placement is still not finalized so here are some thoughts for this week on educational experiences.
I listened to most of the npr show on upcoming Philadelphia school closings. I was struck how the director of student services of the school district does not give off an appearance of having much concern for anyone beyond the district's image. But then again, my understanding of the need for school closings is increased knowing that such a low percentage of students near Germantown High are students at that school and that the school is so under-capacity. It seems to refute the idea that competition from charters and vouchers can improve community schools (not that that idea needed much refuting in my opinion). Is it too late to save community schools like Germantown? Are they worth saving? As someone with economic privilege who went to a private high school when my community school system wasn't working for me, I do understand the appeal of school-choice. Clearly access to safe, good-quality community schools and access to other schools for particular types of learners shouldn't be a one-or-the-other. I wonder what the average quality of the charter, private, and magnet schools is that the majority of Germantown students attend.
field notes from climate justice teach-in
1/25/13: Part I: Before (written at 11:10AM)
Last night Students for a Livable Future had an almost-two-hour planning meeting over dinner for a 1.5 hour teach-in today during lunch at the dining center. (Wouldn't it be amazing if teachers could do that? Though on second thought, that degree of planning would probably prove tiresome and unnecessary for experienced educators.) We are calling our event a climate justice teach-in but really it is all about our campaign for Haverford to divest its endowment from fossil-fuel companies. (Is that misleading? Will people be upset? Or will no one come at all? We advertised quite heavily with posters hanging from trees, tons of Facebook posting, etc. I'm pretty nervous about it all right now.)
