It’s wonderful to repeat lessons and units. It gives you a chance to refine and practice the craft of teaching with a specific lesson or topic. It can feel like seeing a new friend after being apart. There is far less prep when doing a lesson that you have taught before and returning to lessons that you enjoy teaching provide moments in the year to look forward too.
Too much familiarity can be a bad thing. Teaching the same lessons year after year even with an eye for improvement can sometimes feel stale. Yes, it’s new students every year but with too much of the same in a school year it can lead to stagnation, lack of enthusiasm and complacency in teachers.
This is one of those “do what works for you situations.” There may be teachers who teach the same curriculum every year and are always excited about their work, but that is not me. What I’ve found is that in order to keep myself excited and engaged in the practice of teaching is that I need to do new things with my role at this school every year.
Part of this is my understanding of the role of education in our society. If we are educating our students to be active citizens, who work towards improving our society through seeking social justice than what we teach in schools must evolve. The current problems in our society require a much more purposeful education that addresses equity and justice than four years ago. Related is the need for curriculum to reflect and illuminate current events.
The other reason doing new stuff is invigorating is because the process of creating new curriculum is similar to how teachers should re-examine and innovate existing curriculum. With new curriculum you have to go through certain processes, that you don’t have to but you really should apply to existing curriculum.
So what am I doing new this year that had me excited?
Harry Belafonte
I was fortunate to hear Wes Moore speak a couple months ago. As part of this speech he spoke about the important role Harry Belafonte played in social justice. I always new about him as a musician and as I researched his life, I became to understand Moore’s respect and admiration for him as a social justice activist.
Musically his work weaves together different cultures, it is beautifully crafted and very teachable. I started looking for a song that I could teach my 3rd graders and I came across “Turn The World Around.”
This song reflects the core values of Belafonte and is a perfect song for 3rd graders and also high school students. As Belafonte himself has different facets of his life that all ages can learn about, I am collaborating with one of our high school choirs to perform “Turn The World Around,” with my 3rd graders.
Some Of That Jazz
I loved playing in jazz band when I was in high school, but I never learned how to really teach jazz band. My approach is generally to jazz is no different than my approach with other concert band music. Working with our adjunct brass teacher who is jazz musician and in fact knows how to teach jazz, we are doing something different this year. I letting her do her thing with my 6th grade band.
The wonder and beauty of jazz the way she teaches is that is can be taught to beginners. The students learned a bass notes of a 12-bar blues, the moved right along to “C Jam Blues,” and now they are working on “John Avery’s Blues.” Most of this learning is done by ear and then later reinforced with written notation. The pedagogy is reflective of how this music was conceived and is introducing students to not only a diversity of music of but also diversity of musical approaches.
This approach lends itself well to differentiation, and also self-differentiation. And most of all, it’s a way to reach the joy of playing music quickly while reinforcing foundations.
One of the most joyful and interesting parts of this is that I’m handing over a great deal of this teaching to someone else. The longer I teach, the more I don’t feel a need to be the one who is in front of students making meaningful experiences happen. My job is to facilitate and arrange for my students to have meaningful experiences with music, and for them to grow as musicians and people. If this means that I’m in front of them actively teaching, fine, but if it means that someone else comes in and teaches my students and I stand to the side, that’s just as well.
It’s not about me, it’s about the students experiences, and with my 6th grade a great deal of that joy had to do all that jazz.
No comments:
Post a Comment