Parents, Money, and Music

When I was in High School the parents of the "music kids" were incredibly involved in helping us put together our performances. There were parent organizations such as "Choral Parents" that ran fundraising and organized buying the choir gowns and tuxedoes. They were in charge of selling roses and refreshments at concerts. For marching band, parents were in charge of handing out uniforms, helping to organize events, and moved equipment to the different competitions. Parents ran the fundraising programs that helped to pay for competitions, music, instruments, and scholarships. We were incredibly fortunate to have so many parents who valued our work enough to dedicate their time to helping us. Their help and dedication gave our directors time to focus on helping us improve our music, instead of focusing on the many logistics that go into operating a thriving music program.

Unfortunately, this is not a reality for many schools. The question that we face is, should we have to rely on parents and fundraising to run a modern BOJC program?

If a teacher is fortunate enough that they have parents that want to be involved they should utilize that incredible resource. It is important for students to see that their parents support what they're doing. One of the amazing things about music is that it has the ability to bring people together, to form communities. Parents were always an important part of my high school music community. By making parents a part of your musical community, students feel supported. They know that their music is important because their parents show that they believe it is important also. It's easy for a student to believe music is not serious if that's the message they receive at home. 
However, although parent support is wonderful, a program must be able to survive without it. It is not always feasible for parents to be as involved. If a program does not have parent support it is up to the teacher to make up the difference. I believe that fundraising is important because music is expensive. Fundraising takes some of the financial burden off the students and their parents. Parents should be encouraged to help, but teachers should be prepared to create a successful program without them. 

Technology in the Music Classroom

The first time I substitute taught in an elementary school after I was dumbfounded by the amount of technology these students have access. It had only been about three years since I had been in an elementary school, but  technology in the school had completely changed. Every classroom had a Smartboard and many students had Ipod touches and Ipads. I was able to see how teachers utilize this technology to enhance their teaching and engage their students. How has this technology changed in the Music classrooms?

Students now expect technology to be a part of their education. And why not? Technology provides so many resources that can be utilized in the classroom. Students may no longer be interested in or be engaged by writing on paper or the chalkboard, or even listening to you talk.

Youtube is an excellent resource for any music classroom. There are so many ways you can utilize it in your classroom. People often post videos of their performances on Youtube. Before starting a new piece with your ensemble you can find an example of an ensemble who did an EXCELLENT performance of that piece to inspire your group.With parent permission you may even be able to share videos of your ensembles performances. Students get very excited when they are able to share their work with the world.

Youtube is also a wonderful source for video tutorials. If you have a class of beginning trumpeters, you can find a tutorial on Youtube to recommend to them for practice at home with. This means that they don't need to waste time at home practicing incorrectly or getting discouraged because they can't remember what was done in class. You could even make a Youtube video yourself!

Musictheory.net is one of my favorite resources for practicing musical skills. The website provides practice for concepts as basic as staffs and note reading, to advanced analysis. This is an excellent source for students to practice concepts learned in the classroom. They can even make a game out of it! The website also has lessons for students to review the concepts. 

Teachers also use the internet to post their own lesson ideas. Through technology we can build an even larger community of music educators. In his blog post, What Does it Take, Chris Johnson writes that music educators must be thieves. We make music education better by learning from other teachers, and in turn we can share our own ideas. A music teacher in Plattsburgh, NY created a website with links to different music lessons that utilize the Smartboard. By using the Smartboard for these lessons students can visualize and engage in music in a new way.

Choral Warm-up

In addition to the clarinet lesson, I had to lead my class in a choral warm-up yesterday. This experience was very intimidating, but also a lot of fun. There were three main lessons that I learned from this exercise:

I consider myself to be a very positive person, so it seemed natural for me to say "good" or "excellent" at the end of a particular warm-up. It turns out too much positive reinforcement is a bad thing. Particularly when the students didn't do anything to reinforce, or you're really just reinforcing bad happens. It would have been much more effective for me to be specific, to really listen to who's doing something right and draw their attention to that. This reinforces the good work, and provides a positive teachable for the other students who may not be doing it right. This gives them information about how to correct themselves without you saying "Johnny don't sing like that!"

I also definitely should have listened more. Instead of listening I sang with the students. It hadn't really occurred to me that this could be a bad idea. I sang with them out of habit, but also because of my lack of piano ability. I felt that if I couldn't play the warm-up with them I should sing it with them to keep them on track. This was not necessary the students knew what they were doing. Also, by singing with them I wasn't able to really hear the students well enough to make corrections. If corrections and reinforcements are not given during warm-ups it tells the students its ok to be lazy at warm-ups and creates bad habits for future warm-ups and repertoire.

Warm-ups are about more than simply warming up the individual voices. Warm-ups should also prepare the choir for the rehearsal. Warm-ups using harmonies help get readjusted to the sound of the choir. It helps them focus on tuning and blending with the other choir members.

Clarinet "Lesson"

Yesterday I had the exciting task of teaching my very first clarinet lesson. My job was to pretend my professor was a fifth grader who was there for his first clarinet lesson (we were both new to the instrument). The lesson was to be taught in front of the other students in my secondary methods class.

My goal for this first lesson was to teach the student proper posture and breathing techniques. I believed by doing this we would create a solid foundation that could be built upon. I think a lot of what I had to say may have gone over the student's head. In my own musical training I have learned to breathe using very technical terms. I knew these would be too complicated for the student, especially in 5 minutes, so I tried to explain it in ways he would understand. I don't think he needed to understand it as fully as I wanted to teach him. The foundation could have been simpler.

If I were to do it again, I would teach him posture and begin to get him thinking about breath. It is unreasonable for me to expect him to find the low connection to breath (which took me years to learn) in five minutes. This goal overwhelmed both of us and the lesson was not as productive as it could have been. I would then begin to teach the student some basics of the actual instrument. In real life, the student would have been very bored and frustrated by this lesson and likely would not have returned for a second one.