Supporting Students Beyond Basic Music Instruction Ep67

  Music Room Dilemmas from the Happy Music Teacher. It's the Happy Music Teacher! Elementary music teacher who's frustrated and overwhelmed. I'm Jeanette Shorey, a happy music teacher who loves teaching every day, but it wasn't long ago I was in your shoes. Join me weekdays as I answer all the questions that elementary music teachers have Surrounding what's going on in their classroom, what their students are doing, and the challenges they face every day.

Do know that these are my thoughts and they are my suggestions on what you might do better. If you disagree with me, that is totally your prerogative. These are just my suggestions and things that have kept me being a happy music teacher for over 25 years. If you do find something valuable, I'd be so thankful if you'd leave me a five star review.

Now let's get into today's question. Today's question comes from Jalen Fenner. Hopefully I'm saying that right. And this one reached out and just grabbed my heart. Here goes. I just finished year two of working with K 5 in a fairly low economic district. Throughout the year, the students had gone through so many unimaginable things with their families and home life.

And I found myself teaching them more life skills and social emotional regulation rather than music. Yes, I did do a lot of instrument stuff with them, but I feel like I fell pretty short on teaching them foundational basics like sharps, flats, and other music terminology. I am now switching districts and my fear is while I can be there for the students emotionally, what if I'm not what they need as a music teacher?

I want to do the best I can and be an asset to my new district, but I can't but feel like I'm not enough right now. I literally cried after work yesterday, the whole 40 minute drive back home from feeling very lackluster. Is this a normal feeling? Because right now I'm debating not teaching anymore, even though I really do love kids.

Oh my gosh. First of all, Jalen, the fact that you are willing to take your time and teach life skills and social and emotional regulation, is amazing. It is so, I, I'm telling you, I'm blown away by your heart right now and your love of children and really your love of people. And here's what I want to tell you.

As the music teacher in a school, you see every single student in the school. And part, in my opinion, part of your responsibility is to teach them. everything you can teach them through music. You are their teacher. You are important. You are valued. I am sure that the fact that you took your time out to teach them life skills and social and emotional regulation, and they may not appreciate it now, but I am guaranteeing you they will look back and you will be one of those people that they remember in their lives.

You are teaching children, and it's not about the skills. It truly is not about the skills. I want you to let go of that right now. I want you to know that you are teaching way more than music. I will tell you that I mention periodically in my classroom, and next year will be my 26th year teaching, foundational basics like sharps and flats and music terminology.

We do our best to teach those things, but especially with today's students, it is more important to make sure that they are social and emotionally regulated, that they have those life skills. And if you can teach those life skills through music, you're going to be golden. You are an amazing teacher. The fact that you wrote this post, the fact that you Are concerned about what you're teaching tells me what an amazing teacher you are.

And any student would be lucky to have you. Please don't give up. The other thing that I want to say is you will find a lot of music teachers who don't work as much on foundational skills. We are elementary school. The middle school is while they would love for us to teach all those foundational basics, we teach our students for what?

30 to 45 minutes once a week. It is truly impossible to get in all of the, the foundational skills, the basics, the sharps, the flats, reading the notes off the scale, all of that good stuff. It is impossible to get that into our students on a, I mean, Yes, you can do it, but they are not going to have, they're not going to leave reading music.

You're going to have a smattering of students that leave reading music. And I know there are music teachers out there that do that, but with today's students, it If you are giving them a love of music, if you're doing tons of instrumental stuff with them, which you are, you're teaching them foundational skills like steady beat, you're teaching them rhythm skills, you're teaching them how to listen to the music and play along with the music and you are teaching them basic music skills.

Again, you are elementary school. So, the fact that You're giving them a solid foundation in playing instruments and rhythm and beat and, you know, that good stuff especially. If you've got kiddos in a fairly low income district, that is more than Most teachers are going to get into their students and it sounds like you're also really watching your students and learning what they love and just developing that love in the students is going to be amazing.

They are going to go on and do music in middle school and in high school and the best part is when you get to middle school because I taught middle school for a couple years along with middle school. Pre K all the way through 5th grade, and then I taught middle school. What I noticed was, even my 5th graders, the lightbulb didn't turn on for them, with some of those basic reading the notes from the scale, and you know, sharps and flats, and all that good stuff.

The lightbulb turned on in 6th grade. Just like we're not going to teach our kindergartners how to do algebra, We're going to teach them more basic skills. That's what your job is, is to teach them those more basic skills, so that they have a solid foundation, so that they understand how to follow a beat, so that they understand basic rhythm skills.

And then when they get into middle school, school, that lightbulb turns on for them and their brains are ready for sixth grade and their brains are ready for reading the notes and some of those basic skills that you feel like you failed at. You have not failed. In fact, The amount of caring that you're putting into your students is awesome and please don't give up.

You, you are an amazing teacher and those children need you. Okay, I have time for one more question. In search of ideas for how to improve my choir club, I just finished my most successful season yet, but I'm hoping to make my life easier and make next year even better. What I'm working with, fourth and fifth graders, not auditions.

They meet once a week during lunch or recess. Kids eat 20 minutes and sing 20 minutes. They have two big concerts a year, December and May, and one district wide festival where the concerts split between junior high and high school, so they only sing for about 10 minutes. This person is looking for some ideas on music distribution, keeping organized attendance rehearsal policy, and anything else that you feel helps run your elementary choirs.

So, let me give you some information. First of all, How cool that you are able to rehearse during the school day. And to be honest, when I was rehearsing my choir, I really only got about 20 minutes with them. We would rehearse before school. And by the time all those kiddos got in there and, you know, people got back from breakfast and all that good stuff, we would have about 20 minutes.

So I totally feel you there. One of the things that I like to do is use a Google classroom. And I would post my music in the Google Classroom. I would post the lyrics in the Google Classroom. Every student would go ahead and join that Google Classroom. Now, I'm going to tell you, I had to send home reminders, email reminders, but, or sometimes I even send home a physical sheet of paper with the code.

But that's what I did. I would set up a Google classroom and my students would join that Google classroom. And then they would have access to the lyrics that they could download and print at home. If they wanted to, that saved me paper. And it also saved me, you know, just making all those copies, et cetera.

And I found that a lot of them, instead of printing out the lyrics at this point, they would just get on their iPads or whatever device they had and they would do it that way. So, I would put the lyrics in there, and then I would also, if you search on YouTube, Nine times out of 10, you're going to be able to find an accompaniment track or possibly another group who has sung the music and that way they can learn it.

So you don't have to worry as much about learning it. I have even found parts on YouTube. So I would also put an area. So I'd, I'd split it where I'd say lyrics for songs would be one section. And then another section would be, um, Songs to listen to that sort of thing. So they would have the songs to listen to and they would have the lyrics.

So that way, and my physical copies of the music would be. In the classroom, I would have a folder system where we had numbered folders and I would have like bins where it would be like 1 through 10, 11 through 20, 21 through 30, et cetera. And the kids were responsible for getting their folder. And that gave me a way to do attendance as well.

I would have a student about midway through, and I had somebody assigned that would go over and see whose folder was left. And as that person was going over, I would be like, okay, Jayden, if you could go over and write down the numbers of the students who did not pick up their folder. And as I was saying that, I would say, if anyone didn't get your folder, go do it now, or you're going to be marked absent, that sort of things.

So that's attendance and music distribution. The other thing that I did is I set up a Google sheet to keep track of everything my students needed information wise. So, I would set up a form, a Google form, and then the adult that took care of them at home was responsible to fill in things like their first name, their last name, name, the parent name or names, an email address, a phone number, any emergency contact information, t shirt size or shirt size, if you do polo shirts or whatever, that sort of thing.

Any logistical information I needed for the kids went into that Google form and then the adult that takes care of the child at home. is responsible to fill out that information. That way you don't have to worry about making mistakes when entering things. It means that you don't have to worry about reading somebody's writing, all that kind of stuff.

So I would have to follow up and usually what I do is I would send a link to the Google form to every teacher and I would say please send this link home. to any of your choir students. Another way to go is you can put together a flyer with a QR code and then they just scan that QR code and they can fill in all that information.

I also on the form would have an agreement like a contract where the student and the adult would have to click I agree so that I had certain rules in place, that sort of thing. I absolutely loved that system. One of the best things about it is that the Google Sheet is able to be sorted. So if you wanted to sort by email address or you wanted to sort by last name.

Oh, and I also would have the teacher name in there. I forgot to say that before. So the teacher name would be in there so you would know exactly what you're doing. which students were from which teachers classes and that would make things easier logistically as well. So those are just some of my ideas for organization and distribution.