Classroom Management

Find information about classroom management, behavior intervention strategies, and ideas to run a smooth class environment.

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Teaching On A Prayer

Full disclosure, my friends, I got the idea for this blog during my church’s Trunk or Treat when Livin’ on a Prayer came on and it made me think about how teachers are surviving right now. We’re surviving on sheer will and quite frankly, a prayer. We have to hold on to what we’ve got, it doesn’t make a difference if we make it or not, we’ve got each other and that’s a lot…  Oh, we’re halfway there, o-oh teaching on a prayer! Truer words have never been spoken, Mr. Bon Jovi. Can you believe we still have over 7 months until the summer? How will we ever make it there?  

5 Things to Get Us to the Summer

1. Hold on to what we’ve got

We’ve spent half the school year either avoiding getting sick, being sick, keeping kids from getting sick and trying to teach without enough. Enough staff, stuff, and all the things. We need to keep holding on to the things we do have and keep working. The students aren’t misbehaved because they dislike us or our content, they’re misbehaved because they are trying to regulate. Trust me, just when we find our groove, summer will hit, and we will have to reset in August again. Find ways to use existing resources, TpT resources, social media, and your fellow music teachers in your district to find new and innovative ways to teach students your content. The children are not fully ready to dive into full grade level content and that is ok. The beauty of what we do is that we watch these kiddos grow up and we get to adjust to their specific needs. How cool is that? Other grade level teachers do not have that luxury, but we do. We can adjust in the years to come; we can send our fifth graders off knowing they are loved and valued and have an appreciation of making music with people who care for them. That’s an amazing thing we should not discount.

2. Find someone in your building to talk to

I know that often times music teachers are working alone and do not have another person in their building to talk to about specific music things, but I’m sure there is someone in our building that can commiserate with you about administrative changes, directives that make no sense, and student shenanigans. Sometimes just venting about those things is enough to keep the grumpiness away. We need to know we are not alone in our feelings and in our struggles. Also, we may also be the person who can offer some insight on how to solve some problems and think outside the box.

3. Plan, plan, plan and prepare for the plan to fall apart

I’m a planner, in fact I own like three of them. I’m also able to teach the best lesson by the seat of my pants. Impromptu observation when you planned to show a video about instrument families to save your voice for the tenth time that week? No problem! I can launch into an instrument petting zoo, with information about all the things, complete with higher order thinking questions. I can also plan every song, by concept, for months in advance and execute those plans without even batting an eyelash. Plans are wonderful, long-range planning brings us some comfort, short range planning is great for the times we have disruptions to our plans, but will the lesson fall apart, probably. Will there be a fire drill for the millionth time that month, absolutely, you can plan on it. Have some back up plans ready to go, some quick teach, group activities you can pull out whenever you need to. Have a stash of books, play-alongs, videos, coloring sheets, anything you can quickly pull out, teach, and send the kids off to work on. If a lesson tanks, do not take it personally, dust off that game the kids love to play and do that instead.

4.  Don’t be afraid to dream: Dream of what used to be and what will be again

I miss the old days, when I would work for months on a performance that lasted 26 minutes, that we would somehow stretch to at least 30 minutes so that our PTA meeting would be a total of 45 minutes and worth the parents drive up to the school. I don’t think those days are completely gone, but they are on hold for everyone’s safety right now. So, let’s do some “informances”, use the skills virtual learning taught us and make videos of our kids and what we’re doing in our classrooms and push those out via Google Classroom, SeeSaw, or even Zoom! Bring the parents to your classroom and show what our kids can do and keep reaching out to the community. We put together a video of some of our classes singing a Veteran’s Day song to post on our schools’ social media instead of our entire school Veteran’s Day program we used to host. It is a huge deal at our school, but we just didn’t feel it would be safe to do this year, so we came up with something else. We can still reach our community, advocate for music education, and bring awesome music to our families, just in a different way.

5. Take my hand, we’ll make it, I swear!

Find other music teachers you can brainstorm with, follow my blog and social medias, and a few others I follow here:

Becca’s Music Room by Rebecca Davis

Mrs. Miracle’s Room by Aileen Miracle

O For Tuna by Aimee Pfitzner

Make Moments Matter by David Rowe

We can do this, friends! Together, we can conqour this school year and not only survive, but thrive!

Sing! Say! Dance! Play! Care!

Analisa

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We are all struggling. You, my friend, are NOT alone.

Wow, we were all so excited to get back into our classrooms and see our students. I shed so many tears March 2020, through all last school year, and I would be lying if I said I had not shed a tear or two this year. Teaching is hard, the pandemic made it harder. The good news is you’re not alone. This is not only happening in your room, your campus, your district or even your county or state. This is happening all over the US, and I would imagine the world.

As much as we do not want to admit it, what happens in our classrooms is greatly impacted by what happens in the world around us. Our students are amazing, resilient humans that have been through so much. My district used the analogy of all of us being “in the same boat” and why that isn’t true. Some of our students weathered the storm in a canoe, some a sailboat, and some a yacht.

When I welcomed my students this year, I gave no thought to this analogy. Surely, my kids would be ready to jump into making music. Surely, they missed me as much as I missed them. Surely, they would be excited to join all the clubs, instrumental ensembles, all the things! No. No, they weren’t Their stamina isn’t what it used to be. They’re tired. Tired of just surviving.

So, I revisited the district’s analogy. I realized more than half of my campus weathered this ongoing storm in a canoe and they are traumatized, tired, and socially inept. None of these new traits are their fault but are a result of the mass trauma we are all going through right now.

What now, Analisa? I’m really struggling. I want to quit.

1. Meet your student where THEY ARE not where YOU WANT them to be.

My students are about a grade level and a half “behind”. I just did a third-grade lesson in fifth grade, and they loved it! They laughed, they played, but most importantly, they learned. Yes, they learned rhythms that I typically teach third graders, but they don’t know that, nor do they need to know that. Will they be ready for middle school music by the end of the year? I don’t know yet, but they’re happy and healthy, that’s what matters most right now.

2. Throw your IPG, YAG, BOY/EOY Assessments and whatever other acronyms you can think of, out the window.

I normally follow my IPG (Instructional Practice Guide) closely. I monitor where my students are, what they should be learning, where we are in the Orff process in relationship to my district/state expectations. This year I’ve had to readjust my YAG (Year at a Glance) and assess along the way to check for knowledge gaps. My kids are very strong at rhythms. Melody, elements of music and movement are lacking quite a bit. It makes sense that it is these objectives that are lacking as those are difficult to translate through a screen. We need to be okay with re-teaching concepts from a few years past. Our kindergarteners are the only ones that might be on track right now if they aren’t being held back by social skills and developmental delays due to lack of pre-school for some of them.

3. Focus on social emotional learning while you’re making music

I completely had a first-grade lesson go an opposite direction this last week, with my fine arts coordinator in the room. Now he was in the room just to hang out and see what we’re up to and just check up, no formal evaluation or anything like that, but the lesson went off the rails. I had taught this lesson three times already to my other first grade classes and had my pacing down pat. Then it happened. These little ones had a different idea in mind. They weren’t naughty or even off task, but they were very needy. I had to slow my pacing way down, give very explicit instructions in a part of the lesson I hadn’t planned on them struggling with, and model a ton. This took up time, time that I hadn’t expected to lose so I rushed the instructions on their composition pumpkins. Their little pumpkins that were supposed to have So/Mi teeth to play along to this week, basically have teeth with no melodic contour at all. It kind of became an art project rather than a composition. They don’t know that we messed up nor do they probably care. We had a blast, coloring, chatting about Halloween, and building those relationships that everyone keeps talking about. I explained to my fine arts director that I will most likely just adjust their lesson a little bit this coming week and I’ll give them pre-made jack-o-lanterns for them to play on Boomwhackers. I wasn’t going to sweat it. We had a moment, we grew closer together, we complimented each other’s color choices, we talked about being excited to trick-or-treat “like normal” again and they were happy. My job was done.

  • Expectation
  • Reality

If you take anything away from this blog, take away this fact, you are not alone. You may be the only teacher on your campus that teaches music, but there are so many educators going through what you are going through. The kids are disrespectful, yes, I teach organic children, too. I believe if we adjust our content, our approach, and meet them where they are, the respect will return.

Sing! Say! Dance! Play! Care!

Analisa