Snow Days

I am writing to you all today after two days at home.  Snow days.  My children many years ago wrote a song, "It's gonna be a snow day tomorrow, there's big sky, big flakes.." I can't remember the whole thing, but now every time I prepare for a snow day I think of those days.  Long days, playing in the snow, shoveling the walkway, watching as the driveway was plowed.  We would play games, watch movies, bake..read, relax, nap..

Now I am all alone with these snow days, and I still do the same things!  I read, I relax, I nap in front of the fire, I wait for the snowplow to clean up the snow, I always have a baking project.  I also try to throw a few things out every time there is a snow day.  I usually have a list..dusting, vacuuming, all the things I never have time to do!  But the past two days I had enough time to write for a long time in my journal, and talk to my sister on the phone, and work on my knitting project, a Charles Brocade blanket for my granddaughter's doll.  I played the piano, I worked on my music for an upcoming concert with the symphony in Portland, I continued to read Raised from the Ground, by Jose Saramago.  I threw out some old magazines, I shoveled for hours, I baked to cranberry/blueberry breads.  I got a lot accomplished.

Now I am back at my desk, and it looks like tomorrow is another storm!  Yikes.  I am hoping to get this project with dynamics finished today, in case we miss tomorrow's class, as I then won't see them for two weeks.  The only problem with one week on and one week off is that..

This blog is just about going with the flow, and letting the wind howl around you without being afraid of it.  My quote for my advisory today was, "Look to what you are afraid of to learn where you can grow"- I am afraid of being alone in a scary storm, but I do it now every winter at least a few times.  I am afraid of not being able to get where I need to go..but maybe I am learning not to be afraid to say to whomever, "I cannot get there, the storm is keeping me here."  I may be afraid of losing time with my students, but if I have no control over the weather or what there is to be done about it, I must not be afraid of not being in control.  Just watch how the big trees' limbs would bend in the wind, and not break.

 I am hoping to continue to learn from the bending trees, from what I am afraid of, from time alone.  There is always music, books, a roaring fire, and there is always hope that students will be practicing or playing or listening to music and thinking about it, even when they are not in school.  I believe that if it is important to all of them, they will.

Snow days are days of reflection, days of renewal, days of restoration.  They are days when we can do things we never have time to do, days we can, if nothing else, breathe deeply and then, when the snow has cleared, and the sun is up, we can begin again.  Let us begin again.

First Week Fifth Grade

For all those parents who wonder what their students are doing for the third quarter, other than recess, lunch, math, science, language arts and social studies, here is a place to find out.  This is the first week of music for fifth grade students at YMS.  The lions and tigers team, or "ligers" or "Oz" team will have music this week and gym next week and then will continue to alternate for the rest of the year.  The Panthers team has gym this week and music next week and will alternate for the rest of the year as well.  Yesterday was the first day of music class, because Monday, of course, was a holiday.  We jumped right into the musical fray, as it were, and we will continue at this pace for the rest of the school year.

Introductions were quickly and perfectly accomplished, expectations laid out, and then we began to sing, "Get on your feet".  We discussed the meaning of this song.  Most people get it right away, it is, yes, about getting out of your own way, letting the past go, and starting fresh.  Let's forget about the past, let's jump into the present and make it exciting and full of positive energy and full of learning and enthusiasm for a new day.  I love this song by Gloria Estafan and the Miami Sound Machine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPOSGVUYgVQ because it is full of wonderful rhythms, it is great to teach the salsa with, and there are great examples of what one might do with different DYNAMICS in this piece.

After our discussion about new beginnings, and after showing the students how to read a song and how to understand repeats, and d.c. al fines and so forth, we then discussed the idea of dynamics. What are dynamics in music?  They are the loudness and softness of sound.  The students speak the definition as a chorus, using their voices at different dynamic levels depending on the word.  We discuss what types of dynamics you might use for different types of music, or different emotions..soft for sad or tired, loud for excited or angry.  Dynamics show emotion, expressiveness, and create contrast in a piece of music.

The project they are now working on is to show that they know what "pianissimo, piano, mezzo piano, mezzo forte, forte and fortissimo" mean.  They work with a group of four people (or fewer) to create a composition that includes all those dynamic levels.  They work in class and collaborate with their group, they practice it, and then they finally perform it for the class.  I look forward to working with them on these projects and I know I will enjoy their compositions.  They seem very enthusiastic about this endeavor, and the challenges that go with it, so I am sure they will show me very quickly how they have processed these terms and have learned how to use them in a piece of music of their own creation.

Last Week of Sixth Grade

This is the last week that I will be teaching sixth grade.  I have been teaching this group of students since last January.  Yes, they all did have a summer break, but then I was teaching them again every other week, four days a week, until the end of this quarter.  Perhaps you are saying, is that such a big change?  Well, it turns out, it may actually be.  Think about this.  For the past year, I have had these students not just for music, but also many of them I have had every day also for targeted learning time, and also some of them I have had three days a week for Enrichment period.  Some of them are also in my advisory.  I have also been doing recess and lunch duty twice a week.  Basically, for many of them, I have spent half the day with them, which is more than their core teachers do.  Hmm.  I want it known that I will miss them when I don't see them anymore for three periods a day.  I will miss their wonderful senses of humor, their delightful joyful personalities, and their focus on meeting all the standards.

 I will say, I shall miss, more than anything else, the connection I have made with them over the last year.  We have experienced a great deal together.  Last year I was fortunate enough to go to the roller skating rink with the whole grade as their DARE graduation celebration.  I laughed and skated all day, and enjoyed singing along with the songs they played and the kids sang too.  I also fell and hurt my wrist very badly and wore an ace bandage for several weeks after that experience.  The children were very kind to me, because several of them also hurt themselves very badly and either broke bones, or walked around on crutches for much of the spring.  It was a wonderful way to get to know the class in a less formal, not so high pressure context.  I watched them interact with each other, and many of them skated with me and talked to me while they were skating around.

This fall we had the overnight experience at the Boston Science Museum.  This was also a great experience and I will always remember having supper with the kids that night and breakfast the next morning, and our walk back to the train at North Station.  I learned science concepts right along with them, and we talked a lot about the presentations and the cool exhibits there.

 It is a rare thing to know a group of children this well, and I will take with me many of the amazing things they shared with me over the past year.  Some of them I will continue to see in the play, Annie, and I will see my advisory students every morning for the rest of the year, and a few I might see coming and going during the student council meetings.  However, the rest of the students I will no longer see on a regular basis at all.

I want to say how important this time has been with these children.  I have learned so much, and I hope they have as well.  I asked my class how the arts have affected your life, and I got many interesting responses:

 "Without music life would not be exciting it would be lonely and sad life would have a lead foot. Or a dog with no bark. It would be a empty bond. like a sentence with no meaning. I would be the only shark in a sea of fish the lonely one no one wants to me. The oceans would be mean and never wave.

  Or worst of all a music class without a great teacher. Luckily that's a world I don't know.

Another thought was this one:

The arts (specifically drama) have affected my life more than almost anything. My goal in life is to be an actress, and sometimes if I get a Progressing on an assignment, or I have to stay after for a few minutes because I was goofing off, sometimes I can't wait to just go to Drama Club, and get some blocking done really helps me think because I can see my friends and do what I love. Choreography is dancing, and dancing helps release endorphins. Whenever I'm mad sometimes I just dance it out in my room and I feel so much better. It's very helpful when you're getting an apple for a snack and you stub your toe, instead of screaming, sing about how angry you are. The arts have affected my life because they help me deal with stress and keeping myself from boredom.

And I really liked this one too:

       1. Music has affected me greatly. I used to not care about music until 5th grade. When the piano lab opened, I thought the piano lab was going from simply singing, which was hard enough for me, to mission impossible. I didn't think I would learn how to play the piano. I ended up learning how to play C position that day. Music has changed my life ever since. I used to play video games right after I got home every day, (still do) but now I also use sites like newgrounds to listen to music, and get inspired. Every time I visit the site, I find amazing composers, and think that I could never be as good as them, but I keep trying.
           2. I would have never thought about a musician as a career choice for me, I had always wanted to be a veterinarian. However, when I was introduced to the piano, it had popped up into my mind. I used to want to be a veterinarian because I had a love for animals, and the ambition to save the innocent animals who had been hurt. When I was introduced to piano, I suddenly knew it was my destiny. I know that I am going to be the best musician I can be when I grow up.

These ideas really show me the development of some of these students, and how they have changed over the last year. They have matured, most of them are taller than I am now, their looks have changed, their language development has grown immensely, they have been able to focus longer and on more complex ideas. I have enjoyed this process more than anything, other than just getting to know their personalities so well. I hope they come to visit me in the second half of the year, and I want to thank the parents for the opportunity to work with their wonderful children.

I leave you with this quotation from E. M. Forester, the great novelist: "ONLY CONNECT." To me, that is the most important part of any experience.

"Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water, I will ease your mind" Paul Simon

Six Reasons Students Need the Arts

Happy New Year everyone!  Recently, I read the Maine Educator Magazine from January of this year, and the title article covered six reasons why students need the arts.  The reasons made a great deal of sense to me, and I wanted to share them with you all.  The Arts provide so much more than a pretty picture or nice sounds coming from the music teacher's classroom.  First of all, research has shown that studying the arts correlates to higher achievement in both math and reading.  There are obviously social benefits as well.

The arts teach students to think in a critical way.  In the visual arts, students are often given problems to solve, and are taught different ways to solve them.  Students who study art and music history realize the effect that the arts have on the world.  They learn to make correlations between the music of a time, the art of a time, the architecture of a time, and what is going on politically, socially and historically.

The arts encourage students to collaborate with each other.  In a musical, which I am working on this winter, for example, students work on singing together, memorizing lines together, building sets together, practicing every week towards the big performances in April.  Unlike in sports, where children have many opportunities to play games as a team, in theater, you have only a few chances to get it right after the months of preparation.  You must collaborate and get along for the product to be worthwhile for an audience to watch.

The arts help with social maturity.  In my enrichment drama class, I notice students are not only learning how to write about their feelings, and to get up and tell stories about important times in their lives, but they are also able to play drama games, like the "Dinner Table" which talk about emotional times in their lives that they are sharing with the whole class.  They support each other, and they learn from all these experiences and bring this into their lives outside of the classroom.

The arts help students to express themselves in many different ways.  Creative writing is one way that one of my students in music class shared about how it has changed her life.  Another student was very excited to get a certain part in the play, because she could express her anger about many things in her life through the anger of the character and channel that energy into a positive and creative place.

Students can increase their self-esteem by learning to share a monologue with the class.  My enrichment class was quick to point out that this experience of learning a monologue will help them if they ever need to speak in front of a large group, or give a presentation for work, or even more importantly, to speak at a wedding or memorial service.  Introverted students really learn the power of their own voices through this experience.

One of the best reasons students need the arts is to highlight their creativity!  Students in music class this year wrote opera plots and they were able to write these stories about anything that interested them.  Some took the opportunity to write ten or twelve page stories with lots of details, and then they wrote songs for their characters and drew beautiful pictures of their sets and their costumes.  Opera, I teach my students, puts together all the arts into one big art form!  And they can express their creativity in all the forms of art that interest them, as well as collaborate with partners and share with the class!

Finally, the arts teach one of our most important HOWLS, PERSEVERANCE!!  They also teach accountability.  If you show up to rehearsal and you don't know your part, the whole group suffers!  If you don't practice, you don't get better at it.  You have to "fail" or go through a process of not knowing how before you get to be really good at music, drama, dance, or art.  You have to learn that it won't be fantastic the first time you try a new technique or a new song, or a new piece of choreography.  This teaches discipline, and of course, perseverance.  I leave you with this quotation from my student who used to play the saxophone and now plays the tuba: "The arts have affected my life by . . .

Playing the tuba has made me look at the world differently, it shows me that the "melody" of life (main part) doesn't "sound" as well without the "bass line". It has shown me the other side of life."

I hope you have a story about the arts and how it helps you see the world in a different way. If so, thank a music, art, drama, or dance teacher! See you next week!

Maine Educator Magazine website

I promised my creative drama class...

that I would write my blog about that class this week.  Creative Drama class is an enrichment class.  The students who are in there are put in there in a random way, and they go through a rotation through the year, from drumming class to my class and then to other enrichment classes as well.  The students in the class this quarter are all boys.  There are twenty-four of them.  They would not have chosen to be in a creative drama class if they had been asked what they wanted to learn.  No- these boys are more interested in hockey, in video games, in outdoor activities, in hunting, fishing and the like.  However, I have known these young men since last winter, so they have learned that I take the course and my work with it very seriously, even though I can have fun too.  I have taught them about the growth mindset, about resilience, grit and determination, and they have shown this throughout the quarter.

This class is all about speaking and listening skills.  We have spent a great deal of time working on speaking alone in front of the class.  They began by reading poems that they had chosen.  For example, there were poems about sports, hockey, lacrosse and soccer.  There were poems about animals and insects as well.  I enjoyed listening to the students and helping them to put more expression into their reading.  We discussed how this might help them later on.  One person said, "It could help us if we had to give a toast at a wedding. " "or a speech at a funeral" someone added.."or if we were to ask someone to marry.."  I loved that one, of course.  They thought about how they could use this skill when they were talking to a class if they became teachers, administrators, heads of companies.

The next speaking and listening work we did was to create a story together, "fortunately, unfortunately"- You sit in a circle, and the first person begins the story and then says, "fortunately.." and adds something that happened that would be fortunate, then the next person adds an "unfortunately" situation, and so forth.  We played other interesting games, and then began to work on monologues.  Now we are working on taking a subject: your room, your family, your favorite sport, your possible career path, your first experience doing something, something you are knowledgeable about, and I give them the subject as they are approaching their audience, and they have to speak about that subject for one minute extemporaneously.  We will add more time as they get better at it, and I will give them more difficult and complex themes as they get more schooled in this exercise.

At the end, they will have had a lot of experience with speaking and listening, and if they ever decide to get involved in theater or drama clubs, or anything of this kind, they will have my class and their work in this class to fall back on.  Talk to you all next time!  Enjoy your winter break!

My Dear Companion - Writing Across the Curriculum- Letters

This week in general music class we are discussing two important subjects:   Tonic, and  Loss.  The Appalachian folk song "My Dear Companion" can be found in our general music books, and we have been practicing our sight reading with this haunting but simple melody.  We learned some vocabulary while we were practicing this sight reading.  For example, the key signatures are symbols at the beginning of the piece that show what sharps and flats are being used.  This also tells us what "Do" is.

We can then identify the scale and the key and finally what the "tonic" is.  We had a discussion about the word "Tonic".  Many students knew it as a drink.  Yes, it used to be a drink that would make you feel better, in other words, you would feel more like yourself after you drank it, it was a drink with medicinal qualities.  It also means that place that you believe makes you feel like you are home, a tonic, a good place where you feel well.  So- does that not translate to the musical definition of "tonic"?  Why, of course.  The Tonic in music is the first and last note of the scale.  It is the note of the scale that is also called the "home tone" and it is often the first and last note of the song.  We begin and end at "home".  We begin at the tonic, and we spend many phrases trying to return to the tonic.  We also connected the "tonic" discussion back to the idea that when we compose music, we often start on the tonic note as well.  This helps the ear of the listener get situated before you go elsewhere and listen to new, unfamiliar material.  We are happy to begin at the "home tone" or "tonic" and we are even happier upon our return to it.  All folk songs begin and end that way, no matter what key they are in.

 We move the discussion from the "tonic" to the idea of what the song is about.  "Oh have you seen my dear companion, for she was all this world to me, I hear she's gone to some far country, and that she cares no more for me."  We decided this could be about someone breaking up, it could be about someone moving away, it could also be that someone has passed away and has gone to "a far country", which could be a euphemism for one's final resting place.  We discussed the next line, "I wish I were some swallow flying, I'd fly to a high and lonesome place."  The question I ask is, "why"?  Because, they say, "when you are really sad you don't want to be around anyone else.  When you cry, it makes other people uncomfortable, so it is best to stay alone."  And then- how do we make connections between music and our own experiences in life, our own "interpersonal interactions" as the Maine visual and performing arts standard says?  Ah- not easy.  The assignment is to write a letter to a person you know or knew, someone you argued with, or someone who died, or someone who moved away..describe your relationship, describe your memories, describe the music you might have shared.  This is a complicated and emotional assignment, but it also works on how to write a letter, how to compose and articulate ideas and memories, and it also is just about reading and writing across the curriculum.   The letters begin with Dear..and end with sincerely, fondly, etc.. I grew up writing letters, but these children did not.  So- it is, if nothing else, a history lesson, a way that music connects with social studies, with our interpersonal relationships, and how it connects with writing, to me an essential part of our teaching.

Learning Targets Reflection

I have always utilized learning targets in my classroom, just to organize my thoughts.  I have always wanted to know where I am going with a particular idea when I begin to think about creating a lesson plan.  We learned this technique when we studied curriculum development and from the beginning when teaching our subject matter.  We called them teaching objectives at that point, and we created them from the national standards for music at that time.  They were important to all of us, because they were like signposts to tell us where we were going with our class, and to help us organize our work with the students, as well as create assessments that directly related to our objectives and that related to the larger standards.  The national and state standards were the final destinations, and the learning objectives were the small waystations along the journey.

There is a sense that we are re-defining these learning objectives, and now, of course they are not called teaching objectives anymore.  But with the change of verbiage, also comes a slight change in both focus and purpose, both of which are inspirational and thought-provoking.  The teaching objectives are now learning targets, and they are always written as "I can" statements.  This is not just a change in vernacular, but a change in focus and responsibility as well.  The students are now responsible for their own learning because the statements are always on the board, they are always on our rubrics and on our assignments, and because we begin and end our lessons with them each day. They are also more responsible now, though, because the statements are not, "Students will" but instead, "I can"- who is "I"?  Students need to read those statements, and be aware that the targets are now their choice to focus themselves, their choice to meet and/or exceed, their choice to work on alone or in groups.  It is their learning, it is not our teaching that brings them to the next level of Bloom's taxonomy, or to the next target along the way.  The learning target world has shifted us from the "teacher" role to the "facilitator" role, and as that has always been my philosophy of education, I am refreshed by this particular technique, this particular focus, this very constant overall structure of teaching.

From...

Learning Targets on Parade
Susan M. Brookhart and Connie M. Moss 

A learning target describes, in language students can understand, what students will learn in today's lesson. That description can be accomplished through words, pictures, demonstrations, or other experiences;; it doesn't have to be in an "I can" statement. A learning target should

1. Describe for students exactly what they're going to learn by the end of the day's lesson.
   
2. Be in language students can understand.
   
3. Be stated from the point of view of a student who has yet to master the knowledge or skill that's the focus of the
   day's lesson.
   
4. Be embodied in a performance of understanding—what the students will do, make, say, or write during the
   lesson—that translates the description into action. A performance of understanding shows students what the
   learning target looks like, helps them get there, and provides evidence of how well they're doing.
   
5. Include student look fors (sometimes called criteria for success) in terms that describe mastery of the learning
   target rather than in terms of a score or grade. 
   

I question the word "parade" however...a parade suggests a schmorgasbord of many, many man-made things...is this not a very specific and related way of writing, reading, relating, learning, and studying, not a schmorgasbord? Hmmmm...let's talk!!!