Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Starting To Write About Teaching

The main reason why I want to write about teaching music in Montana is to improve as a teacher. By putting my thoughts down on paper (hyperspace?), I'll be forced to clearly think about what I do each day at my job, and why I do it that way. Aside from wanting to keep a journal about teaching, I'm doing this because Dr. Robert Duke suggests it in his book "Intelligent Music Teaching".

I started teaching in April of 2011 in Circle, Montana, as a long-term substitute band and JH General Music teacher. My experience there was absolutely wonderful because the students and community were glad to have me, and the students thought I knew a whole lot about music (more than their last teacher, anyway). I only worked there for two months - I had already accepted a job in Hinsdale, MT, to start in the August of 2011. Hinsdale was a much different experience for two reasons: (1) the classroom management issues and student behavior/attitude, and (2) the wide range of responsibilities that come with being a K-12 teacher.

If Circle was an experience to ascertain my interest in being a music teacher and build my confidence, then Hinsdale was a chance to feel humbled and get an idea of how much I really needed to know in order to teach K-12 Music. I learned a lot about trying to maintain order in the classroom, and I got a thick skin. Both of these are very important to good teachers. Classroom management is the ability to design rules and procedures, and then think on your feet when problems arise. Being able to remain emotionally detatched in the high seas of high school and junior high drama is also very important.

More importantly, I learned that you have to know a lot to teach Band, Choir, and General Music to students from Kindergarten to seniors in high school. There is a certain large amount of content that is covered in those 13-14 years (preschool adds an extra year). This includes a general idea of music education pedagogy as well as a wide variety of songs to include in your bag of tricks. I spent the first few months trying to figure out what to teach all on my own, and it wasn't until the end of my first year that I discovered the Golden Triangle Curriculum Cooperative - a group that publishes the exact information that I was trying to figure out on my own. Knowing the curriculum would have been a great place to start, rather than finish, my first year! While I tried my best to buckle down and stick with it, I was not rehired for a third year at Hinsdale, and instead I moved to my current position in Dutton, Montana.

As a beginning teacher, it is a lot easier to work at a school where the last music teacher wasn't very good at teaching music. In Circle and Dutton, I was given the benefit of the doubt whenever I made mistakes because the community was just glad to have me there and didn't have great expectations because of the previous teacher. In Hinsdale, the lady who I replaced had a very good handle on being a music teacher - the program was very strong and I was not given any grace for making mistakes that the old teacher surely would not have made. This is just a thought for music teachers who haven't yet found their first job.


Good music teachers have a good repertoire of songs (and activities) that they can use in the classroom. As a K-12 Music Teacher, you are expected to know (1) folk songs, games, and dances to use with elementary students; (2) beginning, intermediate, and various songs to use with the band; and (3) beginning, intermediate, and various songs to use with the choir. Rather than memorize everything, a system needs to be developed to (a) keep track of songs and (b) find new music on a regular basis.

Good music teachers invest time, effort, and money into their own music library. First, there are many free resources for finding music in all three categories on the internet. J. W. Pepper has a large selection of songs that can be seen and heard, for example. A Google search will provide information on folk songs, games, and dances for elementary students. Of course, if the resources are available, the best place to look is the school's music library. Find specific songs that appeal to you, purchase or duplicate them, and learn them. The first goal is to have enough music to occupy the students for the year, and then to have a wide enough variety of music so that you can choose music that best fits each individual group every year (a lifelong goal, perhaps?). 

Finally, good music teachers are industrious and organized. As good musicians, we should be able to learn new songs easily. One song each week should be the bare minimum (if our life depended on it, we could probably learn 52 songs in a week, if we were allowed to use notation). Remember that there are different categories: instrumental solos, folk songs, choir music, etc. Because there are so many categories, sometimes it is helpful to focus on a single category for a while (instrumental solos, for example), and then move on to try and keep a balanced repertoire. Finding recordings and videos help a lot, and don't forget to learn about the accompaniment, if there is one. I can't say much about being organized, but I know that I keep a folder for some things, books for others, and the rest is shelved or filed in the music library. I think that the important thing here is to be able to look through a book, folder, or cabinet of music and recognize certain titles and whether or not they will be useful in the classroom. This is currently one of my highest priorities.

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