Paradise of Educational Environments

I hope everyone had a great vacation.  I spent time with my family which was fantastic, even though the weather was just as cold or even colder than it is here.  That didn't matter, because being with my children and grandchildren is like being in paradise.

So- upon my return to school I discovered that next Wednesday there will be a public forum about standards based reporting.  There are parents who struggle now with the changes in grading and teaching at the middle school and they have a forum on Facebook where they discuss their problems and questions and challenges with it. They will be challenging all we do and have learned to do.  I am not privy to any of the discussions on FB, and I am happy that I have no idea what is going on.

Politics will kill any experience that you ever have.  This is no exception.  Those people who are regularly reading what these vehement parents have to say are anxious, afraid, and feel dismissed and disrespected.  Some teachers plan to go to this meeting and share their successes with the new grading and teaching at York Middle School.  Some teachers are writing letters to the local papers to share their feelings.  If you have been reading my blog all along, you know how I feel.  

I don't mind telling you again, however, and since it is all the buzz this week, I might as well address it again.  My teaching has been re-energized by this process of of renewal and discovery.  I have been figuring out new ways to connect the standards to the learning and to my projects.  I have designed new projects that I love that have engaged children in ways I have never experienced before.  Without the fear of reprisal if you don't get it completed all on the same date, I see students working harder and longer and better than ever before.  I have always struggled with giving students number grades, so the idea of giving them a meets or exceeds in the end of a unit is much preferable in every way.  It was hard to learn the program at first, but once we got it down, it has been much better for teaching and learning.  We are all still learning, and there is no end to what can be accomplished if we have the time, the support and the motivation to do it.

Finally, I believe that people should trust that teachers and administrators know how to do their jobs. They should trust that teachers have the experience and the understanding to make the right decisions for their children.  They should know also that the school is not working in a vacuum, we are implementing changes that are generated from a state and a federal level.  We are not renegades, we are all about making changes that will benefit all children for many decades to come.  Let us hope eventually parents will see we are buying our tickets to the paradise of educational environments for children, not drinking some "koolaid" as they call it that will leave everyone high and dry in the end.  Patience, compassion, listening and empathy would be the cocktail we would all be seeking, in the end.  

Communication without words

Today is the day before the last day of school before February vacation..the penultimate day of school.  The sky is getting lighter in the morning, and the days are getting longer.  And yet, another storm is predicted for this weekend of up to two more feet of snow!! Are you tired of my blogs talking about the weather?  I am tired of talking about the weather too, so I will leave that idea for now...

I am slowly getting to know my fifth grade classes.  They are an energetic bunch!  They are a creative group!  They challenge me every day.  One student was gone yesterday and arrived late this morning.  He had spent the night outside in the woods in a special snow cave that he and his friends at White Pines had built. (A Qynzy?)  Two degrees last night, and he didn't look too much the worse for wear.  He was able to notice that "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child" was in minor key, and that is why it sounds so sad.  Very impressive.  Some years I spend many class periods trying to explain the feeling, the sound, the reasons we compose in minor keys.  These students seem to understand use of the minor key already.  They also know why this song is so incredibly sad.  They always notice how Mahalia Jackson hums a lot and doesn't actually say a lot of words, but there is so much communicated through her voice even with just humming.  They notice how much power her voice has, and they realize how low she can sing, which is rare.  I find it amazing what ten and eleven year olds notice when hearing her powerful voice for the first time.  I love to watch their faces, and I love to hear their reactions to the music.  All you have to say to them is "She sang for Martin Luther King, Jr. when he gave his "I have a Dream" speech" and they are riveted.  History through music is a great form of communication and learning.  Mahalia Jackson Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

But I never allow them to leave the room with this heart-wrenching spiritual as the last tune they hear.  I end this session with Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington singing "Don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing"   We read about Duke Ellington and his band that played at the Cotton Club in Harlem, and we listen to this song, and talk about scat singing.  Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington  It was invented by Duke Ellington, they say, when he dropped his music and forgot the words so he just kept singing nonsense syllables..but it really makes the singer sound like one of the jazz instruments, less like a voice.  It is amazing how much emotion can be shared without words, how much can be communicated with humming, and just making up sounds as you sing the notes.  No one did that better than Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington.

Are there other ways I have been teaching my students this week to communicate without words?  Why, as it turns out, YES!  In my creative drama class I began a process called Draw How to Make Toast.  Students must draw pictures of how you make toast.  No one can talk, and they have to communicate just through their pictures.  They learn about how different people see a new task, and they learn a great deal about their own personalities and how they differ from other people's personalities.  They learn how to communicate through pictures and links and  nodes.  http://www.drawtoast.com/

I hope you all have a great February vacation!  I am going to visit my family, and I will be communicating in many ways with them, through singing, talking, gesturing, drawing pictures, reading stories, and laughing and laughing!!  See you all upon my return!

EXCEEDS OPTIONS

I have been struggling all week to figure out what to write about for my blog.  I think part of my problem of inspiration is the amount of snow I have been shoveling since I last wrote.  Also, we have had another snow day since the last blog, and I have already written about snow days and the reflection time they allow for me.  It occurred to me that during our teacher inservice days we discuss many interesting topics.

I thought perhaps I would take one of those significant topics and I would "riff" on it.  Well, the term "riff" is a wonderful jazz word that means to improvise on something.  I actually would not be doing that, as I know a great deal about this topic, and have worked with it long before we started to use the standards based reporting system, and long before we let go of a 1-100 scale and a,b, c, d, and f grading system.

As you can see by the title, I will be talking about the "EXCEEDS" options when it comes to projects and assessments.  We are working today on creating those "EXCEEDS" options in the assessments in different curriculum areas.  I am the only person who teaches general music for fifth and sixth grade, so my "EXCEEDS" options are my own ideas or they are taken from other sources.  All of my projects have an exceeds option on them.   It is way above and beyond what is expected of the student who might be working on the project or assessment.

 Every week, at the end of the week, there is some assignment or project that is due so the students will have accomplished something before they leave music for a whole week.  Take, for example, the "DYNAMICS" project that they worked on and performed last week.  To get a "3" or a "meets" you have to create a one minute composition that uses pianissimo-fortissimo and shows an understanding of all those dynamics.  Everyone must be involved in the group, and the group must collaborate together throughout the process.  To get a "4" or an "EXCEEDS" on this project it is much more difficult.  A student needs to compose music using treble and bass clef, for a specific instrument or instruments, and needs to be able to use standard notation correctly and also add to that the use of subito forte and subito piano.  It is not just "more of the same" it is a more complex version of the project.  Students need to be thinking at a higher, more sophisticated level of music-making to create this composition and to perform it.

It is very complex to re-think your whole idea of "grading" and "assessment".  A four, I will repeat, is not an "A" or an "A plus".  A four or "exceeds" is also not "extra credit".  A four, or an "exceeds" is the option that some students will choose to do or be encouraged to do, because they are capable of thinking at a higher level.  We always used Bloom's taxonomy to understand the different levels of

thinking.  Now they use Marzano's taxonomy,

which actually is not that much different from Bloom's but has a few more parts to it.  If we study these different options, we can be pretty confident that we will be challenging our students and giving them many opportunities to succeed in our classes.  

Yesterday my fifth graders were writing new lyrics to "Down By the Riverside".  When they finished the three verses that were required, they asked if there was a way to get an exceeds for this project, since they had more time.  My immediate response was, in my head was, "more verses?"  However, that clearly is not asking them to think at a more complex level.  What if these students were asked to teach someone else the way we write lyrics?  That involves a transfer of learning, more decision-making, collaboration and more problem-solving, without giving the students the answers.  Then, I thought, what about writing a new song from scratch?  About freedom, peace, and laying your sword and shield down?  That would be another option for exceeds. 

 I think there are a few important final ideas about this subject that I want to re-iterate.  First, we cannot get bogged down in asking our quicker students to do more.  More is just that. More, it won't teach them to think at a higher level.  Second, we cannot correlate "Exceeds" with "extra credit" or "A plus".  It is definitely not extra or plus.  For some students, they are starting at a different point than others.  The bottom line is, this is that wonderful word that I have been plugging away at since I began teaching, and this "EXCEEDS" option keeps us honest and accountable: DIFFERENTIATION!!!!

AHA MOMENT!!! 

WIKEPEDIA ON DIFFERENTIATION 

I LEAVE YOU HERE..Check out Lennon and Maisy singing Jason Mraz..if you had these kids in your class you would have to find some serious exceeds options for them..Lennon and Maisy  

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