This textbook and handbook was quite helpful in many areas of managing a classroom, but I think it could have been more beneficial had we gone through it a little bit slower and actually had time to comprehend what we were reading and writing about. To me, it seemed as though I was always just scrambling to get the assignment done on time, and I never had time to think about what I was reading, and now looking back on it, I struggle to remember what was discussed early on in the book.
I feel as though I learned the most in the last two sections of the handbook; the section relating to starting school off on the right foot and the section about cooperating with other teachers to manage students were particularly interesting. I’ve always thought that having a good, strong relationship with students is the basis for creating a positive classroom environment, and makes students more likely to respect the teacher. In my experience, students are a lot more likely to listen to a teacher whom they like and enjoy being around, possibly because they do not want to lose that personal relationship with the teacher. It is also important for teachers to do our part to build and maintain these relationships with students. I never understood how much work teachers have to put into these, nor did I realize all the different ways to go about building the relationships, from standing in front of class and introducing myself to everyone, to calling the students and parents before the school year starts to introduce myself and welcoming them to class, it is necessary that all students feel welcomed and appreciated in class. I also think it is very important to learn students’ names as quickly as possible. If there is a way to learn them even before school starts, that would be the best way to approach it; by studying faces and names of previous yearbooks and asking former teachers about student interests, I could bet “ahead of the game” in terms of gathering information about students and start building relationships almost immediately.
It also surprised me to see how much work and planning has to go in to creating school-wide or district-wide plans for student management and how necessary these plans are, even for smaller schools. In high school, I never paid much attention to what kinds of school-wide rules and procedures we had (aside from the usual fire and tornado drills), mainly because I never got into trouble and had to worry much about rules and consequences, but having these expectations in place is definitely important so students know exactly what to expect and the consequences are uniform throughout the school. School-wide planning is also important for safety reasons. Even though students sometimes think the tornado drills or fire drills are a waste of time, they are necessary to understand how students might react during an emergency.
Another interesting section of this book was the section dealing with ‘withitness’ and avoiding teacher burnout. The first thing I noticed was how many of the burnout signals mentioned are similar to what students feel currently, and it seems that we have no time to ‘escape’ from it and take time for ourselves. I feel like we’re often too busy to try to prevent or recover from ‘music student burnout’ and it becomes emotionally and physically wearing. I can’t decide if it’s comforting to know adults often feel this way too, or if it’s scary to think that I may never escape the feeling of being burnt out.
The section on responsibility was an easy one to carry over into music teaching, since band students will generally have different levels of responsibility in the ensemble based on age or talent. Students might be asked, or they may just assume, the role of being a section leader in band or choir, and during sectionals, will need to be in control of their counterparts. Each individual member of the ensemble has his or her own share of responsibility to the group, as well. All members are responsible for knowing their parts and being a positive addition to the ensemble. Each student must understand his or her importance to the group, as well. It would be important for me as a band teacher to express to each member, individually, how much I appreciate having them in class to keep them motivated to do their best.
I thought the ideas for getting student attention at the beginning of class periods was important, as well. Especially in ensemble courses, students have the tendency to be talkative and get distracted easily by playing their instruments or talking to their neighbor. Though I thought some of the methods mentioned in the book maybe wouldn’t work as well in ensemble courses, it made me think of some ideas that could potentially work in a band room. One of my favorites was the idea of playing a famous piece of music (either classical or more contemporary), and asking a question based on the listening. A short activity like this would make students enter the room quietly and get them interested in classical music, especially classical music that they’ve possibly heard in movies or on television. Music that they recognize often excites them, and makes them eager to learn more about it.
Although many of the ideas discussed in this book were interesting, some were a little difficult to transfer to an ensemble course because they seemed more directed towards lecture-type classes. Also, it was difficult to remember what all the sections were about without rereading them completely, which I honestly do not have time to do. Like I mentioned before, I think the material in this handbook would be better retained had we studied it a little slower and taken more time to learn it.
No comments:
Post a Comment