Feeling slightly less nervous about the concert was we get closer. One of my main concerns was programming for it; I'm following the previous director's footsteps and doing some whole band pieces, each section will do a song, each school will do one, and there will be solos/duets, too. Now that I'm getting the students' requests for what they'd like to do for solos I can more definitively make up the program over break. So far I have 11 students who are doing their compositions on the concert, and quite a few more doing solos/duets. One group even wants to make their own composition for a trio.
In the meantime, rehearsal today will just be woodwinds. Part of this is so that I can focus on them and nitpick things in a smaller group setting. Part is so that it won't be as distracting having a some of the chatty kids there. Another is just for my sanity. After break will be just brass and percussion for these same reasons, then two full rehearsals before our dress rehearsal, then the concert! Ahhh! I'm nervous but also excited; the kids have been working hard and they're going to be great.
Above all, vacation is coming. :). Not that things have been too strenuous here, but it'll be nice to have a week to veg.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Friday, December 14, 2012
Getting There
So the issues with the winter concert have been worked out, and I'm in the process of working out the adjustments for the spring concert. Disaster avoided.
In the meantime, lessons have been going well and rehearsals are getting better and better. We're still working on maintaining focus and less talking from the students during the rehearsals, but each time we make it longer into the rehearsal before they start going crazy, so I'll take that as a good sign. I'm doing my best to keep the pacing up and asking them lots of questions/vs. lecturing, and playing much more instead of me talking talking talking.
Some of the kids have blown my mind in lessons, too: a couple of them actually seem to want to learn more scales. I have a group of saxophones who can play their G major scale one octave and their D major two octaves, and they asked if we're going to learn more, too. After I teach the kids their first scale (no matter what instrument they're playing), I teach them the theory behind it and it seems to be helping and making it more interesting for them rather than "we're going to learn another scale, here it is...". I teach them about whole steps/half steps, enharmonics, and the whole/half pattern that makes a major scale sound like a major scale. I show them their first scale they learned on the board with the pattern underneath written out (WWHWWWH), then I write out just the letters for their next scale with the pattern (no accidentals). I then have them go through each pair of notes validating whether it is truly a whole or half step, and if not what do we need to do to change it? (I initially make it clear that we can only have one of each letter name in a scale, and cannot skip letters, so if this is the case what note do we need to change?).
I've also had kids who are playing their instruments outside of school for fun like in parks, for neighbors, and for caroling, which has been really great to hear about :). The concert's starting to come together more convincingly now that I have more definitively figured out what we're playing as a group, who will be playing what for sections/schools, and I have a rather large amount of students who actually want to do solos/duets. I have convinced many of the students to play their compositions on the concert!
In the meantime, lessons have been going well and rehearsals are getting better and better. We're still working on maintaining focus and less talking from the students during the rehearsals, but each time we make it longer into the rehearsal before they start going crazy, so I'll take that as a good sign. I'm doing my best to keep the pacing up and asking them lots of questions/vs. lecturing, and playing much more instead of me talking talking talking.
Some of the kids have blown my mind in lessons, too: a couple of them actually seem to want to learn more scales. I have a group of saxophones who can play their G major scale one octave and their D major two octaves, and they asked if we're going to learn more, too. After I teach the kids their first scale (no matter what instrument they're playing), I teach them the theory behind it and it seems to be helping and making it more interesting for them rather than "we're going to learn another scale, here it is...". I teach them about whole steps/half steps, enharmonics, and the whole/half pattern that makes a major scale sound like a major scale. I show them their first scale they learned on the board with the pattern underneath written out (WWHWWWH), then I write out just the letters for their next scale with the pattern (no accidentals). I then have them go through each pair of notes validating whether it is truly a whole or half step, and if not what do we need to do to change it? (I initially make it clear that we can only have one of each letter name in a scale, and cannot skip letters, so if this is the case what note do we need to change?).
I've also had kids who are playing their instruments outside of school for fun like in parks, for neighbors, and for caroling, which has been really great to hear about :). The concert's starting to come together more convincingly now that I have more definitively figured out what we're playing as a group, who will be playing what for sections/schools, and I have a rather large amount of students who actually want to do solos/duets. I have convinced many of the students to play their compositions on the concert!
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Compositions and Concerts
Things have been going pretty well over here. Lessons are progressing smoothly overall, and most of my kids still seem to like playing their instruments, so I'll take that as a good sign. I've incorporated my first of four composition assignments this year, and got the first one back today (the due dates for them are officially next week). Although I thought I was pretty clear about what I'm looking for in them on the assignment sheet, several that I've seen are missing some of the rhythms I've asked for, so I'll need to adjust the way I presented it on the page in the future to hopefully make it clearer, even though I explained it in person, as well. I'm excited to see how they turn out, though. Some of the kids seem to be having a really fun time with it. I'm even thinking about letting some of them play their compositions for the concert in January if they feel like it (I had one student request to, and honestly I think it's a great thing for them to be able to showcase their own work, especially at the elementary level). The compositions are being incorporated as part of my SMART Goals, but I like the idea of doing it anyway and will hopefully continue doing them in coming years. In addition, the students are required to play their compositions in front of their lesson groups.
Another goal I'll be trying to fulfill is having the students do a peer performance assessment twice during the year; it's pretty straightforward but I'm having them fill out a "rubric" (how was your peer's tone? articulation? rhythm? etc.... on a scale of 1-5) and a short open-response section where they have to explain two things they liked, one thing that could use improvement, and how they could improve it. This will hopefully tie into strengthening students' open-response writing skills, as it seems to be a weaker area in the MCAS scores for at least one of the schools at which I work.
Stress, however, has come in the form of concert date chaos. I got my original dates approved by the principals at the beginning of the year. However, I realized an oopsie I made when I scheduled the dress rehearsals for the same evenings as the concerts, which would simply tire the kids out before the concert. So in trying to see if I can change it, I was informed that it would be best to change the day off of a Wednesday because of school committee meetings, so now I'm trying to figure this out without causing more conflicts for families since I had already told them the original date. Oh well, learning for next year I guess.
Fourth band rehearsal tomorrow, too, we'll see how it goes. Some behavioral issues (excessive talking and playing when we should be listening) has been a bit of a problem, so I'm trying to work out how to keep the rehearsal enthralling enough that I can cut some of this out. I tried changing the seating around, too, it helped a little but not entirely. I'll also be handing out our first full piece (sheet music instead of method book songs), so maybe that'll be some motivation to keep them occupied.
Another goal I'll be trying to fulfill is having the students do a peer performance assessment twice during the year; it's pretty straightforward but I'm having them fill out a "rubric" (how was your peer's tone? articulation? rhythm? etc.... on a scale of 1-5) and a short open-response section where they have to explain two things they liked, one thing that could use improvement, and how they could improve it. This will hopefully tie into strengthening students' open-response writing skills, as it seems to be a weaker area in the MCAS scores for at least one of the schools at which I work.
Stress, however, has come in the form of concert date chaos. I got my original dates approved by the principals at the beginning of the year. However, I realized an oopsie I made when I scheduled the dress rehearsals for the same evenings as the concerts, which would simply tire the kids out before the concert. So in trying to see if I can change it, I was informed that it would be best to change the day off of a Wednesday because of school committee meetings, so now I'm trying to figure this out without causing more conflicts for families since I had already told them the original date. Oh well, learning for next year I guess.
Fourth band rehearsal tomorrow, too, we'll see how it goes. Some behavioral issues (excessive talking and playing when we should be listening) has been a bit of a problem, so I'm trying to work out how to keep the rehearsal enthralling enough that I can cut some of this out. I tried changing the seating around, too, it helped a little but not entirely. I'll also be handing out our first full piece (sheet music instead of method book songs), so maybe that'll be some motivation to keep them occupied.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
First Full Band Rehearsal
Yesterday afternoon was my first rehearsal with all (well, most) of my students together in the same place. Up until now I've only been working with no more than five students at a time (other than the rare day where a conflict arises and I need to combine some groups), so having about 70 5th grade students at a time was an experience to say the least.
I must admit I don't see any way that Wind Ped. could have prepared me for it in college. The class has a lot of theoretical topics and discussion that are of course very helpful; they give us great resources, excellent ideas to use, and much more, but the mini mock rehearsals they have us do are nothing like real life, at least not in comparison to what I had yesterday.
First, our peers, although playing on secondaries, still understand musical concepts like tuning, balance, etc... so in the rehearsals at school it still sounded fairly decent. Here, however, I was overwhelmed when I had everyone play the first exercise in our method book as a warm-up, and what was supposed to be a unison note came out as something that I honestly couldn't tell was unison or not. Granted, I know that quite a few students were getting the wrong notes (particularly in the brass, playing on the wrong partials), and I anticipated that, but the sheer mass of noise that came at me just made it almost impossible to tell. So I did what they recommend we do when there's too much to address and we don't know where to start: I broke it down by section. I had each section say what note they were playing and then play it, and that gave me a better idea of which sections were having trouble (again, mostly brass as some of the students are still working on playing the correct partials in lessons). They don't know balance yet, or tuning, or any of these things that will help tame the sound (though I plan on addressing these in the near future).
Second, our peers respect us and know what it's like to be in front of a group, so when we're rehearsing them they keep quiet and follow directions. In my rehearsal, this was not the case, and I don't blame them for chatting; it's the first time they've all been together, and sitting with so many other students in such a cramped space lends itself to socialization. Granted I'm not saying this will be okay constantly in the future, but I anticipated it for the first rehearsal. The classroom management part of this rehearsal was perhaps the most difficult part of the whole experience. They're with friends, they have instruments that are still fairly new to them (we've only had four lessons, some groups only three), and trumpets sit so far back that they feel like they're off in their own little world.
Most students were actually really good about listening and paying attention, it was just a handful that I had to keep speaking to. I followed Dana's lead for what she did rule-wise and had my students give me what they thought would be good rules for rehearsal. I didn't really even make any myself directly, but I did prompt responses to do with respect for each other and each others' property, for people who are speaking, etc... I wrote down their ideas, and I will be writing them on a big poster that I will bring to the rehearsals for everyone to see.
I did my best to have them playing a lot in rehearsal, and I tried to stress that every time we talk or play between exercises and when I'm trying to deliver instructions, the less we get to play. This stuck for most students but again, there were a few that may be difficult to reach with this concept (especially in the back rows). I may shuffle around the seating arrangement, as well. I made it so that as many students as possible were sitting in mixed schools so that they're next to new people, and I do think this helped for the most part. I also tried to mix boys and girls as much as possible, too, as well as mixed abilities so that the stronger players were spread throughout their sections.
We didn't get through many new topics in rehearsal, but that was okay since my main goal for the rehearsal was to have them simply get a feel for what it's like to play together as a big group and establish some ground guidelines for future rehearsals. We played through about five or six exercises, and I introduced conducting to them. Matt had a great idea for this and I had them all put their instruments in a safe place and taught them to conduct with me. One difficult aspect is that I don't have a podium, and since I'm on the shorter side in the first place it makes it difficult to reach the students all the way in back. Especially when I had students stand I had to stand on a chair myself to make sure everyone could see the conducting I was demonstrating. I had them all beat down for 1 several times in a row, then I added beat two so they were just doing 1, 2, 1, 2, then asked them where they thought three would be, and finally four. This seemed to be pretty successful.
Every time there was a disciplinary issue in the group I tried to stress that it means we won't have enough time to play much, rather than just saying stop talking; I also tried not to single people out in general, but there were a few students who I simply had to keep talking to. I had to hold up my hand between exercises a lot with the "shh" finger to my lips, and I have taught them all the cut-off gesture, though if they're not looking at me it's obviously ineffective. Sometimes I resorted to "clap once if you can hear me, clap twice if you can hear me...". I'm hoping as we have more and more rehearsals they will start to understand how we behave in rehearsals, and I will keep enforcing the guidelines we created. I'm working on finding a line between being too strict and too lenient.
Musically, the exercises weren't too bad for the first time as a group. One major thing that I see that we'll have to work on are cut-offs: we played an exercise that has "half note half note half note half rest", but many students would hold into beat 3 or even beat 4. To show them how it should sound and when the noise would stop, I had them conduct and count the beats out loud while I played the exercise on trumpet. It helped a little, but they were still having some trouble stopping when they should, so I made really dramatic cut off gestures at the end of each offending half note, and that helped even more; by the last time we did it, most of the students were cutting off when they were supposed to. I can see that it will be hard for me to decide when we're at an acceptable level to move on, or whether I can continue to be picky and fix things; I didn't want to beat the exercise into the ground but I felt it was an important concept and if we don't fix it now they'll have a poor understanding of it in the future which will affect us down the road. I'm reviewing it in lessons today as well and that's been a good way to clear things up so far.
I had wanted to do some call and response at the beginning of the rehearsal, but in all the craziness of students and parents coming up and asking questions and trying to find their seats, we started about fifteen minutes late, so I jumped right into our long tone warm up instead. I'd like to incorporate more call and response in my lessons and rehearsals in the future, though. I've been doing some with the brasses on their mouthpieces, but I'd like to do it on instruments as well.
My goals for the next couple of weeks of lessons/rehearsals is to introduce tuning and transposition. Tuning I'm not worried about teaching, but I'm actually a little worried about transposition, as I was never taught how to teach it, and I barely understand it myself. I understand how it works, of course, and all the technical aspects, but no one has ever been able to give me a satisfactory answer as to why we have transposing instruments; all I know is that I believe it has something to do with how the instruments have evolved over time? Pretty much I'm nervous to try to explain it to the kids; I can totally tell them "this is what it is, this is how it works for your instrument, etc..." but if they ask why...eek! I'm also a little worried about how to introduce transposition. Is it better in our lesson groups with like instruments, or better in full rehearsals? I thought it might be better in full rehearsals as then I can show them how even though they're playing "different" notes, they all sound the same, but smaller groups will allow for more time for questions and such.
Thoughts on how to teach it? Suggestions? Tips that'll make it not confusing for students being introduced to it for the first time?
I must admit I don't see any way that Wind Ped. could have prepared me for it in college. The class has a lot of theoretical topics and discussion that are of course very helpful; they give us great resources, excellent ideas to use, and much more, but the mini mock rehearsals they have us do are nothing like real life, at least not in comparison to what I had yesterday.
First, our peers, although playing on secondaries, still understand musical concepts like tuning, balance, etc... so in the rehearsals at school it still sounded fairly decent. Here, however, I was overwhelmed when I had everyone play the first exercise in our method book as a warm-up, and what was supposed to be a unison note came out as something that I honestly couldn't tell was unison or not. Granted, I know that quite a few students were getting the wrong notes (particularly in the brass, playing on the wrong partials), and I anticipated that, but the sheer mass of noise that came at me just made it almost impossible to tell. So I did what they recommend we do when there's too much to address and we don't know where to start: I broke it down by section. I had each section say what note they were playing and then play it, and that gave me a better idea of which sections were having trouble (again, mostly brass as some of the students are still working on playing the correct partials in lessons). They don't know balance yet, or tuning, or any of these things that will help tame the sound (though I plan on addressing these in the near future).
Second, our peers respect us and know what it's like to be in front of a group, so when we're rehearsing them they keep quiet and follow directions. In my rehearsal, this was not the case, and I don't blame them for chatting; it's the first time they've all been together, and sitting with so many other students in such a cramped space lends itself to socialization. Granted I'm not saying this will be okay constantly in the future, but I anticipated it for the first rehearsal. The classroom management part of this rehearsal was perhaps the most difficult part of the whole experience. They're with friends, they have instruments that are still fairly new to them (we've only had four lessons, some groups only three), and trumpets sit so far back that they feel like they're off in their own little world.
Most students were actually really good about listening and paying attention, it was just a handful that I had to keep speaking to. I followed Dana's lead for what she did rule-wise and had my students give me what they thought would be good rules for rehearsal. I didn't really even make any myself directly, but I did prompt responses to do with respect for each other and each others' property, for people who are speaking, etc... I wrote down their ideas, and I will be writing them on a big poster that I will bring to the rehearsals for everyone to see.
I did my best to have them playing a lot in rehearsal, and I tried to stress that every time we talk or play between exercises and when I'm trying to deliver instructions, the less we get to play. This stuck for most students but again, there were a few that may be difficult to reach with this concept (especially in the back rows). I may shuffle around the seating arrangement, as well. I made it so that as many students as possible were sitting in mixed schools so that they're next to new people, and I do think this helped for the most part. I also tried to mix boys and girls as much as possible, too, as well as mixed abilities so that the stronger players were spread throughout their sections.
We didn't get through many new topics in rehearsal, but that was okay since my main goal for the rehearsal was to have them simply get a feel for what it's like to play together as a big group and establish some ground guidelines for future rehearsals. We played through about five or six exercises, and I introduced conducting to them. Matt had a great idea for this and I had them all put their instruments in a safe place and taught them to conduct with me. One difficult aspect is that I don't have a podium, and since I'm on the shorter side in the first place it makes it difficult to reach the students all the way in back. Especially when I had students stand I had to stand on a chair myself to make sure everyone could see the conducting I was demonstrating. I had them all beat down for 1 several times in a row, then I added beat two so they were just doing 1, 2, 1, 2, then asked them where they thought three would be, and finally four. This seemed to be pretty successful.
Every time there was a disciplinary issue in the group I tried to stress that it means we won't have enough time to play much, rather than just saying stop talking; I also tried not to single people out in general, but there were a few students who I simply had to keep talking to. I had to hold up my hand between exercises a lot with the "shh" finger to my lips, and I have taught them all the cut-off gesture, though if they're not looking at me it's obviously ineffective. Sometimes I resorted to "clap once if you can hear me, clap twice if you can hear me...". I'm hoping as we have more and more rehearsals they will start to understand how we behave in rehearsals, and I will keep enforcing the guidelines we created. I'm working on finding a line between being too strict and too lenient.
Musically, the exercises weren't too bad for the first time as a group. One major thing that I see that we'll have to work on are cut-offs: we played an exercise that has "half note half note half note half rest", but many students would hold into beat 3 or even beat 4. To show them how it should sound and when the noise would stop, I had them conduct and count the beats out loud while I played the exercise on trumpet. It helped a little, but they were still having some trouble stopping when they should, so I made really dramatic cut off gestures at the end of each offending half note, and that helped even more; by the last time we did it, most of the students were cutting off when they were supposed to. I can see that it will be hard for me to decide when we're at an acceptable level to move on, or whether I can continue to be picky and fix things; I didn't want to beat the exercise into the ground but I felt it was an important concept and if we don't fix it now they'll have a poor understanding of it in the future which will affect us down the road. I'm reviewing it in lessons today as well and that's been a good way to clear things up so far.
I had wanted to do some call and response at the beginning of the rehearsal, but in all the craziness of students and parents coming up and asking questions and trying to find their seats, we started about fifteen minutes late, so I jumped right into our long tone warm up instead. I'd like to incorporate more call and response in my lessons and rehearsals in the future, though. I've been doing some with the brasses on their mouthpieces, but I'd like to do it on instruments as well.
My goals for the next couple of weeks of lessons/rehearsals is to introduce tuning and transposition. Tuning I'm not worried about teaching, but I'm actually a little worried about transposition, as I was never taught how to teach it, and I barely understand it myself. I understand how it works, of course, and all the technical aspects, but no one has ever been able to give me a satisfactory answer as to why we have transposing instruments; all I know is that I believe it has something to do with how the instruments have evolved over time? Pretty much I'm nervous to try to explain it to the kids; I can totally tell them "this is what it is, this is how it works for your instrument, etc..." but if they ask why...eek! I'm also a little worried about how to introduce transposition. Is it better in our lesson groups with like instruments, or better in full rehearsals? I thought it might be better in full rehearsals as then I can show them how even though they're playing "different" notes, they all sound the same, but smaller groups will allow for more time for questions and such.
Thoughts on how to teach it? Suggestions? Tips that'll make it not confusing for students being introduced to it for the first time?
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Reading Music and Other Hurdles
So another good week lesson-wise. We're starting to vary lesson to lesson/group to group where we're ending up though for homework, so I'm hoping to try to maintain some sort of semblance of similarity so that instrument groups don't end up totally far apart from one another in the coming weeks (for example, I'm trying to keep everyone around the same page so that we're all learning the same concepts at the same times, rather than having one saxophone group fly ahead and then another stuck on the same page for two or three weeks in a row). Obviously I am doing my best to take the time to make sure everyone understands the concepts, but what I'm discovering is that I will need to figure out when to stay or move on because someone doesn't understand or if they just haven't been practicing. I want to ensure that everyone knows what's going on, but if they're not practicing at home there's only so much I can do.
One struggle that has surprised me is teaching students how to read music. I had thought this would be something pretty straightforward to teach, but I feel like sometimes I over complicate it and I don't want the students getting confused. For the most part they seem to get it, but then sometimes there are some who are just totally confused and I try to work out another way to explain it. What I've been doing that seems to work is to write out the staff on the board by hand, and explain things one symbol at a time, starting with the staff itself, then the clef (pointing out that the clefs are also G and F clefs and showing why seems to help), etc... We then go over how every line and space gets its own letter/note, and then I go over the Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge (which most of them have heard and recognize) and FACE concepts. I also teach them Ernie Gives Bert Dead Fish (these are all Treble Clef, of course). With one of my trombone players, we came up with Great Big Dolphins Fly Away and Arkansas Can Eat Grapes for the bass clef lines and spaces. Though they don't totally make sense, they're silly and people seem to remember them so far. Further, kids have fun trying to make up their own based on these. The more I teach reading music the more I am able to simplify it and make it clearer. Writing out the alphabet (only up to G, of course) under or over the staff and showing how lines and spaces skip letters among each other helps some students, too, and then I can show them how alternating lines and spaces make the alphabet go in order.
Teaching breath marks/snatch breaths has been a little tricky too; students are inclined to either take a full beat of breath (no matter how much I describe/model good snatch breaths) or take the snatch breath then jump to the next note way too early. I had one group count 1 2 3 4 while I played some snatch breath exercises on whole notes so that they understand I'm playing through beat four and not to beat four. This helped this group. I do my best to always have the students tapping their heels and stress that they should count in their heads as they play.
Another major issue of mine is that I speak super fast. Though most kids follow me, I am trying really hard to make sure I slow down, especially when giving instructions/homework. This has been one of the biggest comments I've gotten for many of my junior and senior student teaching remarks.
On the more successful side of things, my students in general seem to be warming up to me, especially the ones where there are more students per group. We're all opening up a little more which is making things run more smoothly, and I think they're getting to understand the quirkier parts of my personality. I've also been working on incorporating more call and response and pitch matching in my brass groups; I want to keep doing this, as well as some call and response by ear on all the instruments.
On a final note, I kept a group of clarinets a couple minutes late for their lesson on Tuesday on accident and apologized that I made them late for lunch/recess. One of the students told me "It's ok, this is better than recess". Awesome.
One struggle that has surprised me is teaching students how to read music. I had thought this would be something pretty straightforward to teach, but I feel like sometimes I over complicate it and I don't want the students getting confused. For the most part they seem to get it, but then sometimes there are some who are just totally confused and I try to work out another way to explain it. What I've been doing that seems to work is to write out the staff on the board by hand, and explain things one symbol at a time, starting with the staff itself, then the clef (pointing out that the clefs are also G and F clefs and showing why seems to help), etc... We then go over how every line and space gets its own letter/note, and then I go over the Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge (which most of them have heard and recognize) and FACE concepts. I also teach them Ernie Gives Bert Dead Fish (these are all Treble Clef, of course). With one of my trombone players, we came up with Great Big Dolphins Fly Away and Arkansas Can Eat Grapes for the bass clef lines and spaces. Though they don't totally make sense, they're silly and people seem to remember them so far. Further, kids have fun trying to make up their own based on these. The more I teach reading music the more I am able to simplify it and make it clearer. Writing out the alphabet (only up to G, of course) under or over the staff and showing how lines and spaces skip letters among each other helps some students, too, and then I can show them how alternating lines and spaces make the alphabet go in order.
Teaching breath marks/snatch breaths has been a little tricky too; students are inclined to either take a full beat of breath (no matter how much I describe/model good snatch breaths) or take the snatch breath then jump to the next note way too early. I had one group count 1 2 3 4 while I played some snatch breath exercises on whole notes so that they understand I'm playing through beat four and not to beat four. This helped this group. I do my best to always have the students tapping their heels and stress that they should count in their heads as they play.
Another major issue of mine is that I speak super fast. Though most kids follow me, I am trying really hard to make sure I slow down, especially when giving instructions/homework. This has been one of the biggest comments I've gotten for many of my junior and senior student teaching remarks.
On the more successful side of things, my students in general seem to be warming up to me, especially the ones where there are more students per group. We're all opening up a little more which is making things run more smoothly, and I think they're getting to understand the quirkier parts of my personality. I've also been working on incorporating more call and response and pitch matching in my brass groups; I want to keep doing this, as well as some call and response by ear on all the instruments.
On a final note, I kept a group of clarinets a couple minutes late for their lesson on Tuesday on accident and apologized that I made them late for lunch/recess. One of the students told me "It's ok, this is better than recess". Awesome.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Weekend Away
Had a fun weekend at the Alma Mater :) It was weird to be back, but really nice, and so much fun to run into old friends and catch up with some professors, too. The main point of the weekend was to spend time with my other half, and I got some other bonus things from the weekend, too. For example, I bought a saxophone from Doc so now I actually have something to model on for the kiddos! I was also amazed at how many people were there that had graduated, I hadn't expected to see that many! Granted it was only five or six but still, it was more than I anticipated. It's so neat to see what everyone's up to and how they're doing. Lots of fun to catch up with Dana, too, I loved talking through how things are going and what's been working, what hasn't, and what things about our jobs are similar and different.
On top of this, I got to see two great recitals. One was a joint trombone and trumpet recital, the other a trombone/mandolin recital. It was refreshing to have a reminder of what excellent playing sounds like. Plus, the trombone/mandolin recital was so funny I was nearly on the floor in tears I was laughing so hard. It was a mixture of "tunes and tales from Old New England", and has to be one of the best recitals I've been to.
All said, fun weekend, and now to a new week of lessons. Thankfully there's not a lot going on this week, and no marching this weekend, so I can decompress a little (this weekend helped a lot with that but it was just too short, not enough time out there :( ) and hope that the fixing up in my apartment gets finished.
On top of this, I got to see two great recitals. One was a joint trombone and trumpet recital, the other a trombone/mandolin recital. It was refreshing to have a reminder of what excellent playing sounds like. Plus, the trombone/mandolin recital was so funny I was nearly on the floor in tears I was laughing so hard. It was a mixture of "tunes and tales from Old New England", and has to be one of the best recitals I've been to.
All said, fun weekend, and now to a new week of lessons. Thankfully there's not a lot going on this week, and no marching this weekend, so I can decompress a little (this weekend helped a lot with that but it was just too short, not enough time out there :( ) and hope that the fixing up in my apartment gets finished.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
The Little Things
It has amazed me so far to find out how happy I get when things get
fixed that used to seem like small matters. For example, I had a group
of flute players last week who, for the life of me, I could not get a
decent, consistent sound out of (if any). This week, they came in and
they're all nailing the low octaves of the notes we've learned. I almost
jumped for joy.
Then in marching rehearsal, there's one student who seems unable march in time. Several people have told me that he just can't. However, I've been standing next to this section drilling "left, right, left, right" as they march during many of our rehearsals when I see people out of step, and last rehearsal he was actually marching in time 90% or so of the time (even times when I wasn't saying it). Granted, it's not always the correct foot, but I'll take what I can get so far. This time I literally did jump for joy.
Another time that I wanted to yell "yippee!" was my first time pulling a mouthpiece out with a mouthpiece puller all on my own. So far, I've had three trumpet players get their mouthpieces stuck. The first one I pulled out myself no problem (he said he loosened it for me; that made me smile, considering he had previously been pulling with all his might. Hey, you never know). The second one I couldn't figure out the puller so I had to have the string teacher help me. But the third one I did all on my own! Wahoo!
That's also something else I've found that I didn't expect: I knew I'd occasionally get things like stuck mouthpieces and similar occurrences; I just didn't realize how frequently. Within two weeks three mouthpieces have gotten stuck, one trombone bell got stuck on the slide (the bell moved side to side but I couldn't unscrew it), I saw a trumpet player at the middle school drop his horn and dent the bell then try to fix it himself, and two saxophone players at the high school were playing catch with their saxophone bells and a coin. Fun learning experiences abound :) I'm lucky my kids are so great, they're awesome sports and even when things don't go as planned and I have difficulties fixing their instruments the bear with me and we make it through until I can solve the problem (or have someone help me solve it).
Then in marching rehearsal, there's one student who seems unable march in time. Several people have told me that he just can't. However, I've been standing next to this section drilling "left, right, left, right" as they march during many of our rehearsals when I see people out of step, and last rehearsal he was actually marching in time 90% or so of the time (even times when I wasn't saying it). Granted, it's not always the correct foot, but I'll take what I can get so far. This time I literally did jump for joy.
Another time that I wanted to yell "yippee!" was my first time pulling a mouthpiece out with a mouthpiece puller all on my own. So far, I've had three trumpet players get their mouthpieces stuck. The first one I pulled out myself no problem (he said he loosened it for me; that made me smile, considering he had previously been pulling with all his might. Hey, you never know). The second one I couldn't figure out the puller so I had to have the string teacher help me. But the third one I did all on my own! Wahoo!
That's also something else I've found that I didn't expect: I knew I'd occasionally get things like stuck mouthpieces and similar occurrences; I just didn't realize how frequently. Within two weeks three mouthpieces have gotten stuck, one trombone bell got stuck on the slide (the bell moved side to side but I couldn't unscrew it), I saw a trumpet player at the middle school drop his horn and dent the bell then try to fix it himself, and two saxophone players at the high school were playing catch with their saxophone bells and a coin. Fun learning experiences abound :) I'm lucky my kids are so great, they're awesome sports and even when things don't go as planned and I have difficulties fixing their instruments the bear with me and we make it through until I can solve the problem (or have someone help me solve it).
Thursday, September 27, 2012
The Goods and Bads (So Far)
I figured it was about time that I have a post about what's gone well and what hasn't so far, teaching-wise. I'm at the end of my second week pretty much, and I've gotten all of the lesson groups so that they are more or less in the same place. Most of the groups have learned how to properly hold their instruments, proper embouchure, and how to play three notes. Flutes and saxophones have learned B, A, and G, clarinets and most trumpets have learned C, D, and E (one or two trumpets have learned G, F, and E), french horn is working on G and F, and trombones are working on F and Eb (though one of them is working on on Bb and C). We haven't gotten to the book yet (we use Standard of Excellence), but I'm hoping in a week or two we'll be ready to jump in. I've assigned most groups "Hot Cross Buns" and/or "Mary Had A Little Lamb" (by ear, no music). Some groups haven't gotten a handle on the notes strongly enough, but most have so we'll see how the tunes go next week.
So here's a general list of the good and the bad so far:
Struggles
So here's a general list of the good and the bad so far:
Struggles
- I've found that starting my clarinets on C has been somewhat problematic as it has been difficult for many of them to make sure they've covering all three of the front keys on their left hand for this, so they're not quite as successful with their first notes. However, starting some of them on E has been much more successful, and it is easier from there to add a finger for D and then another for C.
- Similar situation for flutes, I started some on G but they're not all as successful as some that I've had start on B. The advantage to my position is that if I find something is not working in the first day or two of lessons during the week, I can adjust as the week goes on and the later lessons are more successful, and then I can help the early lessons fix things the following week.
- Teaching tonguing has been hit or miss with many of the groups. I've demonstrated and am really stressing no space between the notes so that the air is continuous. I have them start by saying "ta ta ta", and noticing how their tongues feel against the roof of their mouth and how quickly it just flicks against the roof (particularly for brass, though a similar concept obviously applies for the woodwinds, just against the reed for the saxes and clarinets instead of their teeth/gum line). I then have them take a deep breath and blow it out with the "too" articulation so that they see what it sounds and feels like with no space in between. I then have them apply it to their mouthpieces. I'd say about half of them get it no problem, while the other half I have to work with a bit (which I expect; I would be amazed if more of them got it immediately with no problem). It's mostly trying to make sure they keep the air going and are not letting their tongues suction to the roof of their mouths when they tongue. I've been using the whole "your air is like a stream of water" analogy, and luckily every room I've taught in so far has had a sink so I've been able to literally show them. That seems to help some students.
- Four of my flute players are just having the hardest time getting a sound out. I've done the watermelon seed spitting analogy, blowing over a bottle top, asked them to practice in the mirror, telling and showing them how much air they need to make a sound, adjust the flute on their mouth for them and help them experiment with rolling them in and out, etc... No matter what I do these students simply will not change what they're doing and I don't know what to do from here. One of them absolutely cannot get her flute in the middle of her mouth when she plays, another blows way to hard and can't make a small enough hole with her aperture, and the others don't use enough air. I'm hoping with the more specific information we went over in our lessons this week and another week of practice that they'll be more successful next week.
- To the contrary of my last bullet in the struggles category, the majority of my flutes are getting excellent sounds in their first lessons, and some can even play two octaves of the three notes we've learned! Yay! The analogies listed above have worked really well for these girls.
- Most of my trumpet players are getting C out as their first note but I do have a couple getting G out first. Although I know this is normal and perfectly fine to start, I was hoping since it's only two or three that are getting G I could possibly get them to play C to start instead so that everyone's learning the same notes together. One of them simply has not been able to play the C yet, but I've gotten the rest to play G with little struggle simply by demonstrating what happens to my chin when I buzz from a high note to a low note on the mouthpiece. It seems to be more effective than saying "you need to make the whole in your mouth bigger for low notes and think "ah" and warmer air, etc...".
- Being a little goofy/dramatic with some concepts. For example, for the trumpets I have them make a "claw" with their right hand to really exaggerate how curved their fingers should be when they play. Whenever I see them starting towards flat fingers I have them all give me a claw high in the air and then drop it onto their valves. I tell them right out that some of the things I teach I will purposely make goofy because things like that tend to stick better. I must admit, a high percentage of my trumpet players have come back with excellent hand position this week.
- Teaching trombones proper hand position by saying their left hand is like a squirt gun and their right hand is like a "spock" hand. Granted for the students who don't know the reference it's ok because most of them recognize the hand when I demonstrate it, and it's a great way to teach proper slide hand. Yay for a generation of trombone players who hold their slide correctly :)
- Percussion! After my college experience (or lack thereof) with percussion I thought for sure I'd be in major trouble for teaching percussion, but my senior student teaching set me up so well for this. Our percussionists here learn bells and snare, and I have some solid concepts that set them up well (or at least I think they will) to be successful, well-rounded percussionists. I'm trying to start them off with good habits and so far they've all caught on quite well (such as making sure their rebounds are small, posture is good, etc...). I just need to make sure I stay consistent with them.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
First Month
So it's been a bit of a crazy month, hence the lack of posts. Since the band program isn't part of the school curriculum here, at least for the elementary schools, I have been in charge of getting everything organized and worked out, so it's been a lot of adminstrative/logistical stuff so far.
The first thing I took on doing that has been an ongoing process even through today is working out the registrations and instrument numbers. The students get a packet in the summer that has information about the instrumental programs in the district (strings and band for the elementary schools, 3-5 grade for strings and 5th grade for band), which includes information about rental night as well as a registration form and paperwork for applying for financial aid (there is a fee for taking part in the instrumental programs). If students and families decide to take part, then they are supposed to send the information to the Business Office at our main building, where it is processed and then I receive photocopies of the registration forms and information about who has paid or not (this is important for later in this post).
Then next thing I decided to do was to re-inventory my instruments. I work at five schools, but I have an "office" at my home base school which has all of the instruments, music, etc... I'm glad I decided to redo the inventory, because although the previous director gave me all of his paperwork and information, I couldn't open the file for his most recent inventory, so it gave me a better idea of what was in the office. I also needed to do this because students who apply and qualify for financial aid are eligible for a loaner instrument from the school on a first come first serve basis. I ended up having a ton of saxophone player register, five or so of which requested loaners, but I only have two functional loaners to give out so I either had to give them their second choice or they had to find a way to obtain one some other way. Some of the instruments in general are in quite good shape, but others (like most of my trombones), are loanable but not in very promising condition, unfortunately. Others are so badly off that they're on the "Bad Instrument, Need Repair" shelf (but fortunately that's not many of them). For example, I don't have a saxophone to model on right now, so I took one off of the repair shelf to at least bring in and be able to put together for the students and show them how to hold it, etc... I got a mouthpiece too so I could make a note with them on that alone before sticking it on the instrument. For ****s and giggles I decided to try to play it anyway (it's missing a key entirely near the bottom of the instrument), and I got some, well, interesting sounds out of it...
Rental night was another undertaking, but luckily it didn't involve to much logistical organization. We do this night through a fairly local music company, who our district has had close relations to for several years (from my understanding). What happens is I call them and give them my rough numbers (this was back in the first week of September), and they come down (on a prearranged night) and bring a certain number of each instrument, the method books, music stands, and accessories (reeds, etc...), and parents and students come, sign a rental form, and pick up the instrument they want. This company has been fantastic, they've been so welcoming, supportive, and friendly so far, and they made everything go very smoothly. All I really did was give a short three minute spiel at the beginning about the program, turned it over to the head of the company to talk a bit about the rentals, and then I hung around and answered any questions the parents had (quite a few of which I directed to the previous director, who was there helping me out, since I had no idea what to tell them).
Anyway, another task I needed to take care of (and perhaps the biggest one) was scheduling. Again, because the program is not part of the curriculum, and therefore not a part of the master schedule for the school day, I have to work out the schedule myself (which is fine, but quite a large undertaking). I waited until early this week to really work on this because I wanted to make sure I had most of the registrations in. I then divided them up by school, then by instrument, and then assigned no more than five students from each instrument group to a lesson group. I have each school on a rotating schedule, so for example flutes at one school may be group A and go at 8:15 on their assigned day, and then the next week they would drop to the bottom and be at 1:00. I was lucky and have it worked out that I go to one school per day for lessons and have no overflow (so I don't need to go back to any schools as of yet on a different day to teach extra lessons). Four of the five schools here have a day where there are no specials (so art, PE, music, etc...), so my goal was to go to those schools on the day they don't have specials so that 1) I don't conflict with them and 2) I can use either the music or art room for lessons. Fortunately, this worked out, and each school has no specials on a different day so it works nicely. The last school, the one that has specials everyday, I was thankfully able to go to on the leftover day.
Not only did I try to work around these, more specifically the lessons had to not conflict with other things like Literacy block, science specials (a new addition to the schools this year), lunch/recess, and other things like ELL. Some teachers/schools are more flexible about this, but some of them are adamant about not taking students out. For these, I had to do my best to just simply avoid the times (and somehow miraculously managed to do so. Thankfully, the teachers at all the schools have been extremely helpful and understand so they helped me find ways to make it work). Then, there are some individual students who can't miss certain things, so I keep their lesson time stationary week to week so that they don't rotate with the others and end up having to be taken out of certain subjects. I don't know how, but so far (knock on wood) the schedule is working out. I pushed it enough that I was able to start lessons this week.
As I mentioned earlier, parental/guardian correspondence has been a big part of this process. I've truly enjoyed getting to know some of the band parents through our email and phone conversations. The only confusing part has been with making sure students are officially registered. Earlier in the year, when I did my demos, I sent home a letter with students detailing some things about the program, rental night, and registering. I had mentioned in the letter that if they are interested, please shoot me an email with some information (name, school, instrument, etc...), and I put it all in a database. What I realize I need to do for next year is clarify that in the email they should tell me whether they're interested in the program, and whether or not they are planning on coming to the rental night. Now, I have people who told me they're interested but still no forms or payment, so I have been chasing them through email to see whether they're still interested, or whether they have simply not sent the form in (or in some cases, they've sent the information but it's gotten lost in the mail or they send it to the school when it's supposed to be sent to a different building). Since this week has been the week where I've gotten a chance to look at my more solid numbers, I had only realized about early/mid week that about 18 had only told me they're interested but I didn't have forms and/or payment for. This meant that I was sending emails/calling on Thursday informing them that their student couldn't participate in lessons until this was taken care of. Fortunately, many parents were very understanding and good about it and apologized and said they'd get it right in, and they did. Some were a little trickier to work out but so far it's going okay.
Finally, I got to start my lessons yesterday. I only had flute, clarinet, trumpet, saxophone, and trombone so far (full ensemble rehearsals will start in a few weeks; that's something I still have yet to set up). Students get half hour lessons, and they are in groups from 1-5 students each. My first saxophone lesson was a bit of a disaster, seeing as one of the students came in about 20 minutes late because he had to stop at the nurse's for something, and so by the time he came in I had just gotten through posture, breathing, and instrument set-up with the other two girls and then had to quickly run him through set-up to catch up. We ended on a fairly unsuccessful note where I was frantically trying to get them to make sounds on the mouthpiece then put it on the horn, so I will have to clean up my mess with that next week. The rest of the lessons have gone fairly smoothly though with nothing totally unexpected going wrong yet which is nice. I had a percussion lesson today as well, I've got a good feeling about this one, I think he'll be quite good (we have percussionists here get a "drum kit" so that they learn both mallets and snare). I'm lucky that I had such great percussion experience in my senior student teaching, too, otherwise I would have been at a loss for this. The whole experience is really neat so far, since this is my first time teaching group lessons, and in addition, it's the first time I've had an experience like this without another teacher in the room supervising me and to jump in if I start to mess up. Don't get me wrong, it's neat, it's just a little scary when it hits me in the middle of my lesson that I am truly on my own for this and need to be the best model possible so I can give the students the best lessons that I can.
Other than that it's been some little stuff to do, like working on the band website. The previous director established a 5th grade band website, and I've been editing it a bit and adding a bunch of my own stuff. I really hope that families will end up utilizing it as I'll be putting homework, schedules, concert information, and a lot more on it, so it will be much better than continuously sending paper notices home. We'll see how that goes. I am also trying to put instrument assembly/disassembly info on it, proper posture, how to hold the instrument, proper embouchure, etc... but I haven't quite made it through all of the topics yet.
The first thing I took on doing that has been an ongoing process even through today is working out the registrations and instrument numbers. The students get a packet in the summer that has information about the instrumental programs in the district (strings and band for the elementary schools, 3-5 grade for strings and 5th grade for band), which includes information about rental night as well as a registration form and paperwork for applying for financial aid (there is a fee for taking part in the instrumental programs). If students and families decide to take part, then they are supposed to send the information to the Business Office at our main building, where it is processed and then I receive photocopies of the registration forms and information about who has paid or not (this is important for later in this post).
Then next thing I decided to do was to re-inventory my instruments. I work at five schools, but I have an "office" at my home base school which has all of the instruments, music, etc... I'm glad I decided to redo the inventory, because although the previous director gave me all of his paperwork and information, I couldn't open the file for his most recent inventory, so it gave me a better idea of what was in the office. I also needed to do this because students who apply and qualify for financial aid are eligible for a loaner instrument from the school on a first come first serve basis. I ended up having a ton of saxophone player register, five or so of which requested loaners, but I only have two functional loaners to give out so I either had to give them their second choice or they had to find a way to obtain one some other way. Some of the instruments in general are in quite good shape, but others (like most of my trombones), are loanable but not in very promising condition, unfortunately. Others are so badly off that they're on the "Bad Instrument, Need Repair" shelf (but fortunately that's not many of them). For example, I don't have a saxophone to model on right now, so I took one off of the repair shelf to at least bring in and be able to put together for the students and show them how to hold it, etc... I got a mouthpiece too so I could make a note with them on that alone before sticking it on the instrument. For ****s and giggles I decided to try to play it anyway (it's missing a key entirely near the bottom of the instrument), and I got some, well, interesting sounds out of it...
Rental night was another undertaking, but luckily it didn't involve to much logistical organization. We do this night through a fairly local music company, who our district has had close relations to for several years (from my understanding). What happens is I call them and give them my rough numbers (this was back in the first week of September), and they come down (on a prearranged night) and bring a certain number of each instrument, the method books, music stands, and accessories (reeds, etc...), and parents and students come, sign a rental form, and pick up the instrument they want. This company has been fantastic, they've been so welcoming, supportive, and friendly so far, and they made everything go very smoothly. All I really did was give a short three minute spiel at the beginning about the program, turned it over to the head of the company to talk a bit about the rentals, and then I hung around and answered any questions the parents had (quite a few of which I directed to the previous director, who was there helping me out, since I had no idea what to tell them).
Anyway, another task I needed to take care of (and perhaps the biggest one) was scheduling. Again, because the program is not part of the curriculum, and therefore not a part of the master schedule for the school day, I have to work out the schedule myself (which is fine, but quite a large undertaking). I waited until early this week to really work on this because I wanted to make sure I had most of the registrations in. I then divided them up by school, then by instrument, and then assigned no more than five students from each instrument group to a lesson group. I have each school on a rotating schedule, so for example flutes at one school may be group A and go at 8:15 on their assigned day, and then the next week they would drop to the bottom and be at 1:00. I was lucky and have it worked out that I go to one school per day for lessons and have no overflow (so I don't need to go back to any schools as of yet on a different day to teach extra lessons). Four of the five schools here have a day where there are no specials (so art, PE, music, etc...), so my goal was to go to those schools on the day they don't have specials so that 1) I don't conflict with them and 2) I can use either the music or art room for lessons. Fortunately, this worked out, and each school has no specials on a different day so it works nicely. The last school, the one that has specials everyday, I was thankfully able to go to on the leftover day.
Not only did I try to work around these, more specifically the lessons had to not conflict with other things like Literacy block, science specials (a new addition to the schools this year), lunch/recess, and other things like ELL. Some teachers/schools are more flexible about this, but some of them are adamant about not taking students out. For these, I had to do my best to just simply avoid the times (and somehow miraculously managed to do so. Thankfully, the teachers at all the schools have been extremely helpful and understand so they helped me find ways to make it work). Then, there are some individual students who can't miss certain things, so I keep their lesson time stationary week to week so that they don't rotate with the others and end up having to be taken out of certain subjects. I don't know how, but so far (knock on wood) the schedule is working out. I pushed it enough that I was able to start lessons this week.
As I mentioned earlier, parental/guardian correspondence has been a big part of this process. I've truly enjoyed getting to know some of the band parents through our email and phone conversations. The only confusing part has been with making sure students are officially registered. Earlier in the year, when I did my demos, I sent home a letter with students detailing some things about the program, rental night, and registering. I had mentioned in the letter that if they are interested, please shoot me an email with some information (name, school, instrument, etc...), and I put it all in a database. What I realize I need to do for next year is clarify that in the email they should tell me whether they're interested in the program, and whether or not they are planning on coming to the rental night. Now, I have people who told me they're interested but still no forms or payment, so I have been chasing them through email to see whether they're still interested, or whether they have simply not sent the form in (or in some cases, they've sent the information but it's gotten lost in the mail or they send it to the school when it's supposed to be sent to a different building). Since this week has been the week where I've gotten a chance to look at my more solid numbers, I had only realized about early/mid week that about 18 had only told me they're interested but I didn't have forms and/or payment for. This meant that I was sending emails/calling on Thursday informing them that their student couldn't participate in lessons until this was taken care of. Fortunately, many parents were very understanding and good about it and apologized and said they'd get it right in, and they did. Some were a little trickier to work out but so far it's going okay.
Finally, I got to start my lessons yesterday. I only had flute, clarinet, trumpet, saxophone, and trombone so far (full ensemble rehearsals will start in a few weeks; that's something I still have yet to set up). Students get half hour lessons, and they are in groups from 1-5 students each. My first saxophone lesson was a bit of a disaster, seeing as one of the students came in about 20 minutes late because he had to stop at the nurse's for something, and so by the time he came in I had just gotten through posture, breathing, and instrument set-up with the other two girls and then had to quickly run him through set-up to catch up. We ended on a fairly unsuccessful note where I was frantically trying to get them to make sounds on the mouthpiece then put it on the horn, so I will have to clean up my mess with that next week. The rest of the lessons have gone fairly smoothly though with nothing totally unexpected going wrong yet which is nice. I had a percussion lesson today as well, I've got a good feeling about this one, I think he'll be quite good (we have percussionists here get a "drum kit" so that they learn both mallets and snare). I'm lucky that I had such great percussion experience in my senior student teaching, too, otherwise I would have been at a loss for this. The whole experience is really neat so far, since this is my first time teaching group lessons, and in addition, it's the first time I've had an experience like this without another teacher in the room supervising me and to jump in if I start to mess up. Don't get me wrong, it's neat, it's just a little scary when it hits me in the middle of my lesson that I am truly on my own for this and need to be the best model possible so I can give the students the best lessons that I can.
Other than that it's been some little stuff to do, like working on the band website. The previous director established a 5th grade band website, and I've been editing it a bit and adding a bunch of my own stuff. I really hope that families will end up utilizing it as I'll be putting homework, schedules, concert information, and a lot more on it, so it will be much better than continuously sending paper notices home. We'll see how that goes. I am also trying to put instrument assembly/disassembly info on it, proper posture, how to hold the instrument, proper embouchure, etc... but I haven't quite made it through all of the topics yet.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Getting Settled
The first night of the high school band camp was Monday night and it was a lot of fun! We started off with introductions and then moved out to the turf field so that the students could get a review of/introduction to the basic marching techniques and commands, such as at the ready, falling in, dressing right/left/down, marching forward/8x5s, etc... It was a whopping slice of déjà vu for me and made me miss my high school marching band. Once dusk came along we moved into the field house to have the students find their spots for the opening and second setups, and worked moving between those two until the end of the rehearsal so that they'd at least have a start on the drills. Then last night we reviewed the first two sets of the drill and added one more, and ran the music at the end of the rehearsal. Tonight we're combining instruments with the drill :)
I had my first instrument repair issues, too! Unfortunately, I was not able to fix them in the few minutes I had to meddle with them. A trumpet player's valve got stuck down and would not come back up. I took the bottom cap off the valve and pushed it out that way, but then the valve was difficult to put back into the casing without forcing it. We put some valve oil on it which helped minimally, but I really think the student just needs to clean it and try again. The amount of green gunk on the inside was a bit concerning. Then last night, the baritone player could not make a noise on her instrument. I tried to make sure the valves were aligned correctly, but it looks like the first and second valves spin within their casings, so we gave it to the high school band director to take a look at.
We had our first sectionals last night too, and I got to work with the sousaphones, baritones, trombones, and tenor saxophones. We had a half hour to work on the opener music, and it didn't go too badly. This was when the baritone incident occurred, so I was lucky that one of the drum majors was in my group to help out. He conducted the piece for me throughout the rehearsal, and while I was working with the baritone he led the sectional, then we sort of co-ran it for the rest of the time. The students were pretty great to work with overall, though I did have a few chatty members of the section. I tried to reign in their focus without being too overbearing, especially since I have only had a couple of hours total with the students so far, so I am still working on finding that balance of being the teacher and friendly but not a friend. I also understand that this may be the first time some of these students have seen each other since June, so as the week goes on I expect things to settle a bit.
In the meantime, I have emailed all of the fifth grade teachers to set up times and days for instrument demos for their students come August 29th and 30th. I am extremely lucky to have the previous elementary band teacher still in the district, he has been an absolutely essential and tremendous help to me in starting to organize everything. Once the teachers confirm everything, I will be trying to get in touch with the principals to double check that the times we have chosen are okay, and settling on a space to perform the demos in. Both of the band directors and every teacher I have met so far have been unequivocally supportive and welcoming; I am so lucky to be working with such amazing colleagues.
I had my first instrument repair issues, too! Unfortunately, I was not able to fix them in the few minutes I had to meddle with them. A trumpet player's valve got stuck down and would not come back up. I took the bottom cap off the valve and pushed it out that way, but then the valve was difficult to put back into the casing without forcing it. We put some valve oil on it which helped minimally, but I really think the student just needs to clean it and try again. The amount of green gunk on the inside was a bit concerning. Then last night, the baritone player could not make a noise on her instrument. I tried to make sure the valves were aligned correctly, but it looks like the first and second valves spin within their casings, so we gave it to the high school band director to take a look at.
We had our first sectionals last night too, and I got to work with the sousaphones, baritones, trombones, and tenor saxophones. We had a half hour to work on the opener music, and it didn't go too badly. This was when the baritone incident occurred, so I was lucky that one of the drum majors was in my group to help out. He conducted the piece for me throughout the rehearsal, and while I was working with the baritone he led the sectional, then we sort of co-ran it for the rest of the time. The students were pretty great to work with overall, though I did have a few chatty members of the section. I tried to reign in their focus without being too overbearing, especially since I have only had a couple of hours total with the students so far, so I am still working on finding that balance of being the teacher and friendly but not a friend. I also understand that this may be the first time some of these students have seen each other since June, so as the week goes on I expect things to settle a bit.
In the meantime, I have emailed all of the fifth grade teachers to set up times and days for instrument demos for their students come August 29th and 30th. I am extremely lucky to have the previous elementary band teacher still in the district, he has been an absolutely essential and tremendous help to me in starting to organize everything. Once the teachers confirm everything, I will be trying to get in touch with the principals to double check that the times we have chosen are okay, and settling on a space to perform the demos in. Both of the band directors and every teacher I have met so far have been unequivocally supportive and welcoming; I am so lucky to be working with such amazing colleagues.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Pre-Job Shenanigans
My position as a fifth grade band teacher at five elementary schools in a district in Massachusetts is now official! I have signed my contract and started apartment hunting, and the apartment hunt is now starting to feel like the job search: sending lots of requests for viewing appointments, only a handful of calls back. We'll see how that goes. My hope is to be moved down there and settled early in August, I'd very
much like to help with the high school band camp, which is the week of
August 13th, so if I can move the week before that I should be in good
shape for prepping and getting comfortable with the area.
In the meantime, I have had my first "task" as the new teacher. The assistant superintendent emailed me, the previous elementary band director (who is now the middle school band director), and the string teacher the registration forms for the instrumental program and the introductory letter that get sent to the parents at the beginning of the year, asking us to look them over and confirm the necessary dates for the informational nights, rental nights, etc... I am very lucky to have the previous director still in the district; he has taken care of so much for me already, and had the date for the rental night all set for her in advance. My first task came in on the registration form. In addition to the typical instruments you'd offer elementary students (flute, clarinet, trumpet, etc...), oboe, tenor sax, and french horn were listed as well. He had said that in the past he hasn't offered these three in the past few years, but I got to decide which ones, if any, I would like to reinstate this coming year. I decided to bring back the french horn but leave out the oboe and tenor saxophone. Tenor sax doesn't make much sense to me to teach to fifth graders unless the student is generally larger for their age since the instrument itself is rather hefty, and I wouldn't want to start a beginner instrumentalist on the oboe, rather waiting until they can establish a decent sense of pitch on another instrument first.
Come the beginning of school I am going to have to take care of all of the demos for the fifth grade classes to recruit more students for the spring. I'm looking forward to it but I expect it will be rather chaotic and a little intimidating to start. I need to make sure I find a way to make it fun and interesting for the students. Again, I'm so lucky to have the previous band director still working in the district, he and the high school director have already been extremely welcoming, friendly, helpful, and supportive of me so far. I am meeting with them both next Wednesday to go over things, get necessary files, get shown around, etc... I can't wait!
Alexis
In the meantime, I have had my first "task" as the new teacher. The assistant superintendent emailed me, the previous elementary band director (who is now the middle school band director), and the string teacher the registration forms for the instrumental program and the introductory letter that get sent to the parents at the beginning of the year, asking us to look them over and confirm the necessary dates for the informational nights, rental nights, etc... I am very lucky to have the previous director still in the district; he has taken care of so much for me already, and had the date for the rental night all set for her in advance. My first task came in on the registration form. In addition to the typical instruments you'd offer elementary students (flute, clarinet, trumpet, etc...), oboe, tenor sax, and french horn were listed as well. He had said that in the past he hasn't offered these three in the past few years, but I got to decide which ones, if any, I would like to reinstate this coming year. I decided to bring back the french horn but leave out the oboe and tenor saxophone. Tenor sax doesn't make much sense to me to teach to fifth graders unless the student is generally larger for their age since the instrument itself is rather hefty, and I wouldn't want to start a beginner instrumentalist on the oboe, rather waiting until they can establish a decent sense of pitch on another instrument first.
Come the beginning of school I am going to have to take care of all of the demos for the fifth grade classes to recruit more students for the spring. I'm looking forward to it but I expect it will be rather chaotic and a little intimidating to start. I need to make sure I find a way to make it fun and interesting for the students. Again, I'm so lucky to have the previous band director still working in the district, he and the high school director have already been extremely welcoming, friendly, helpful, and supportive of me so far. I am meeting with them both next Wednesday to go over things, get necessary files, get shown around, etc... I can't wait!
Alexis
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Interviews and More
I've decided to start this blog with the encouragement of my good friend Dana, who is getting ready to start her first week of her school year of teaching in just a few days! (Check out her blog!: Chronicles of a First Year Music Teacher).
74 applications later I am happy to say that I have been offered a position teaching fifth grade band and assisting with the middle school jazz band and high school marching band in the district this fall. I go in soon to work out the paperwork, I cannot wait until it is official, I am thrilled to be able to start working with the staff and students.
The interview process has been fun, I must admit. My first and last interview were the most successful. Tip for future job hunters: be yourself in the interviews, and do your research and prep work about the district and sort of program you're interviewing for. The most successful interviews I had were the ones where I let my personality show a bit more. Be prepared for a wide variety of questions. Some examples of questions I had were (they were more or less worded as below):
-Tell us a little about yourself and why you are interested in this position
-Tell us about your student teaching experience
-What is your background/experience with teaching instruments/choral music/general music classes? (depending on what the interview was for)
-Questions about incorporating the National Standards into my curriculum
-What would I do to prepare my students for band at the middle school level?
-Scenario questions (you have a flute player with such and such a problem, etc...)
-The position is between two schools. How would you organize yourself for this?
-How would you structure a general music class that meets once a week for sixty minutes?
-You would have the students from k-8 in the general music classes. What is your philosophy on this/what would you do to keep them learning/interested?
-What sort of discipline do you use in your classrooms and what are some examples of some rules you would implement?
-You would have the combined students for full band rehearsals once a week after school. What would you do to control/avoid discipline/behavioral issues when you have over eighty fifth graders for an hour?
One of my interviews was like being at school all over again and I felt so comfortable; Ithaca did a great job to prep me for it. In addition to the typical round of questions, I had scenario questions ("you have a flute player who gets a great sound on the head joint, but not when the whole instrument is together. What do you do?" I'll tell you that woodwind repair material made its way into my answer for this one!) and had to be prepared to play a melody and scale on "a variety of band instruments" (I hoarded all of the instruments I could at home and practiced scales and the final exam pieces for my secondary classes). I thoroughly enjoyed this interview and the staff I met with, and this is the one that I was offered.
Once the position is official I will be meeting with the other band directors to get started and start prepping, and I get to start apartment hunting! I have also registered for some of the MTELs I will need to take, so here come another round of tests.
I hope to develop this blog into a tool that will help describe and explain my successes, failures, and experiences and share them with other musicians, educators, and friends in the future :) More to come once my position is official!
74 applications later I am happy to say that I have been offered a position teaching fifth grade band and assisting with the middle school jazz band and high school marching band in the district this fall. I go in soon to work out the paperwork, I cannot wait until it is official, I am thrilled to be able to start working with the staff and students.
The interview process has been fun, I must admit. My first and last interview were the most successful. Tip for future job hunters: be yourself in the interviews, and do your research and prep work about the district and sort of program you're interviewing for. The most successful interviews I had were the ones where I let my personality show a bit more. Be prepared for a wide variety of questions. Some examples of questions I had were (they were more or less worded as below):
-Tell us a little about yourself and why you are interested in this position
-Tell us about your student teaching experience
-What is your background/experience with teaching instruments/choral music/general music classes? (depending on what the interview was for)
-Questions about incorporating the National Standards into my curriculum
-What would I do to prepare my students for band at the middle school level?
-Scenario questions (you have a flute player with such and such a problem, etc...)
-The position is between two schools. How would you organize yourself for this?
-How would you structure a general music class that meets once a week for sixty minutes?
-You would have the students from k-8 in the general music classes. What is your philosophy on this/what would you do to keep them learning/interested?
-What sort of discipline do you use in your classrooms and what are some examples of some rules you would implement?
-You would have the combined students for full band rehearsals once a week after school. What would you do to control/avoid discipline/behavioral issues when you have over eighty fifth graders for an hour?
One of my interviews was like being at school all over again and I felt so comfortable; Ithaca did a great job to prep me for it. In addition to the typical round of questions, I had scenario questions ("you have a flute player who gets a great sound on the head joint, but not when the whole instrument is together. What do you do?" I'll tell you that woodwind repair material made its way into my answer for this one!) and had to be prepared to play a melody and scale on "a variety of band instruments" (I hoarded all of the instruments I could at home and practiced scales and the final exam pieces for my secondary classes). I thoroughly enjoyed this interview and the staff I met with, and this is the one that I was offered.
Once the position is official I will be meeting with the other band directors to get started and start prepping, and I get to start apartment hunting! I have also registered for some of the MTELs I will need to take, so here come another round of tests.
I hope to develop this blog into a tool that will help describe and explain my successes, failures, and experiences and share them with other musicians, educators, and friends in the future :) More to come once my position is official!
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