My Summer Break at Home Is Still My Summer Break

If you read any education-related social media right now, you're probably as flooded with the "shoulds" as I am. Here are just a few of the things teachers are being pressured to do:

• Make a bitmoji virtual classroom 
• Create virtual bands/choirs/orchestras for all their ensembles, the reality of the time it takes or difficulty getting a good result be damned
• Use their own personal devices for work purposes while still not getting paid nearly enough
• Spend their summer break learning to do distance learning "better" in case we're still online in the fall. 

It's that last one I really take issue with. I get paid for 183 days. I always work about 5 more than that getting my classroom ready for the year and prepping curriculum. Which is fine. I choose to do that. But other teachers are telling me that I need to "sacrifice" and "be flexible" and learn tons of new stuff this summer in case I have to do a job I didn't sign up for in the fall. My answer is simple: NOPE. I'm going to take some summer courses (gotta get that pay bump!), but not on how to be a good distance learning teacher. I'm going to pick classes related to what I teach that I think I'll enjoy and will help me be a better teacher in general. 

I'm not going to learn to do a virtual ensemble. I won't be making one. It's not my job, and it's not realistic in my teaching context. I'm not going to learn to do flashy video editing tricks to make my lessons "more engaging". I'm not going to spend my personal time learning things I don't want to learn. 

"But you can't go anywhere anyways! Be a team player". My answer again: NOPE. I might not go anywhere (and will adhere to guidelines regarding travel as long as they are in place). But I can sit outside and do absolutely nothing. I can read a novel that has nothing to do with my job. I can watch hours of mindless reruns. I can be a person, not just a teacher. Global pandemics shouldn't be another excuse to perpetuate the teacher-martyr narrative.

Impossible question of quarantine

"Are we gonna have a concert, or is it cancelled?"

A band kid typed the question that broke my heart. Two weeks before, we had still been operating with hope - continuing to practice concert pieces from a distance, hoping that we'd be together with instruments in hand.

No, fifth grade band won't have a concert this year. They won't have a last lesson in person. They won't get their promotion ceremony, their last day of elementary school, or a day to sign yearbooks with their friends. Coronavirus took all those things from them. 

This was a special group for me, I had most of them for 4 full years. Many of them have been "music kids" since the beginning, playing in Orff ensemble or strings or singing for special events. And yet I can't make a concert happen. I can't give them the satisfaction of taking a piece that they worked so hard on to the stage. 

This was the first year in awhile we decided beginning band would take on a full piece. It's tough since we don't see the full band together (homogenous or semi-homogenous before-school classes only, across 3 different schools) and we only get about 35 minutes per week of instructional time with them. We picked a piece called Dark Towers. The kids LOVED it. They rose to the challenge, we were 2/3 of the way through before school closed and still had almost 2 months until concert day. 

The good news: the piece will go with them to middle school next year, where they'll have a phenomenal director who's not only excited to work on the piece with them, but who wants to have me and my elementary band colleague back to perform the piece with the kids who had their end of year concert stolen. 

The not good news: we don't know what band will look like in the fall. If band will be. If making music in the same room will even happen. The concert is cancelled. I don't have a silver lining of certainty to answer that student question with.

I still vividly remember my own fifth grade band concert at the end of the year. We got to use a local outdoor amphitheater, to stand on the same stage where so many amazing musicians had performed. We played "Hot Hot Hot" and my Grandma brought me flowers. My students this year won't have those memories. But I hope they'll take with them memories of working hard, laughing a lot, and making music together. And hopefully, we'll take Dark Towers to the stage in a few months. 

Managing Contact Info and Roster Changes with ClassTag

I use ClassTag to manage parent communication with my before and after school ensemble families. Because these groups meet outside of the school day, sometimes students decide to drop out of the ensemble, and their family no longer needs to receive messages. It's really easy with ClassTag to remove students from class rosters, or to change a parent's contact information if they get a new email.

To make any changes, go to the directory tab in ClassTag.

Then, click "edit directory"

From there, click the trash icon next to a student's name to remove them from the class, the pencil icon next to a parent's contact information to update it, or the plus sign to add any additional parent. ClassTag even lets more than 2 parents per student be added, which can be very useful! 

Want to get started with ClassTag? It's a super easy and useful tool! Follow this link to get signed up! 

Teacher Summer Reading: Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America by George Yancy

I typically get to read more during the summer (especially now that I'm done with grad school), so I have been making use of the Libby service offered through my public library to do some reading. Backlash by George Yancy came up as a suggested read for me based on my history, so I figured it was worth a try while I waited for a few other books to become available.

I found it interesting that this book about race was written specifically for white people. Of course, white people are the ones who need books to help them further understand race, but the use of Dear White America as a chapter subtitle was still rather jarring to me. Yancy's letter to white America is brilliant, full of clear explanations of the societal-level workings of racism rather than individual accusations or jargon. Yancy refutes many of the common whataboutisms and arguments against his points in a clear way.

One of Yancy's major suggestions for white people is to listen openly rather than listen to respond. Of course this wasn't a new principle for me, but hearing it in the context of racism was a new take and a different criticism of white privilege than I had heard before. To truly understand the experiences of those who have been hurt by racism, we have to listen and understand rather than becoming defensive.

Throughout the book, many of Yancy's points are made clear through hypotheticals posed to the reader. For example, one particularly striking passage asks the reader to imagine their child was black. Such a simple statement can spark so much emotion in a reader, and makes it easier for one to recognize their unconscious biases and the effects of racism on a societal and structural level.

I would recommend this book, and think it is an important read for white Americans who are trying to do better in regards to confronting their privilege.

Gunild Keetman: The Woman Behind the Schulwerk

Gunild Keetman was a German music educator who worked with Carl Orff. The Orff-Schulwerk (Orff's School) was a music school for young children. She was born in 1904 and died in 1990. In addition to teaching children at the Schulwerk, she taught various lessons on radio and television broadcasts. She was a student of Carl Orff and Dorothee Gunther, and taught at Gunther's school until it was bombed. Then she went on to her more well-known work at Orff's school.

Keetman's parents were a major influence on her love of music and education. She was expected to get a university education, and her parents fostered her interest in music. While working with Gunther, she learned modern dance and used it as a form of protest. She and other teachers from Gunther's school were left with nearly nothing after the school was destroyed in a bombing. The very ideas she had explored at a high level in Gunther's school were those that she took with her into her work with younger children at the Orff-Schulwerk.

Keetman's largest contribution to music education for children is the Music For Children volumes that she co-authored with Orff. These books, known as the "volumes" in Orff circles, have been adapted and translated into many different languages and contexts. Keetman was a strong advocate for playful learning, and she felt children learn music by playing rather than through formal pencil-paper study. This is important because music traditionally uses many theoretical, abstract concepts and can be difficult to learn, but Keetman transformed learning music into literally child's play. The whole premise of Orff teaching is teaching children to sing, say dance, and play, something that is valuable many years after Keetman begam doing it.

In addition to the volumes, Keetman wrote many other children's musical compositions for voices and instruments along with several books. While Orff is the better known name from the Orff Schulwerk, Keetman was the teacher and driving force behind many of the innovative initiatives that still inform music educators decades after they were started.

I incorporate many of Keetman's ideas into my teaching, especially the use of play in music class to facilitate student creativity. Additionally, I often have my students play repertoire that she wrote, as many of the pieces are still relevant and meaningful to students. The music she wrote is designed to have all students experience success, something that is extremely important in today's educational landscape. While I do not consider myself a strictly Orff (or Keetman) teacher, I do use many ideas from this philosophy in my teaching practice.

ClassTag Stories: Sharing Beyond Classroom Walls

I use ClassTag to manage parent communication with my before and after school ensemble families. One of the big benefits of ClassTag is that parents can get alerts via text, email, and/or in-app notification according to their preferences. In addition to announcements, ClassTag allows teachers to share Stories, a social-media-like feature where families can see what is going on in the classroom. 

My students have a concert coming up, and I decided I'd try to come up with some new ways of promoting the concert to encourage families and teachers to attend. We made a promotional video for each ensemble, and I shared it out to the staff at my school via email. Since my students' families are already using ClassTag, I sent the video out to families by creating a story and attaching the video. It was great for families to see an "inside look" at what we're doing in class, and I hope to use this feature more frequently going forward. I love the look of the stories, they are aesthetically pleasing without taking much time for me to put together. I also love that I can share out strictly to approved parents, rather than somewhere public. I am much more comfortable sharing in-process work or other details in a closed environment like ClassTag than on the open internet.

Creating Stories is a great way to communicate and connect with families! If you're already a ClassTag user, I'd encourage you to share a ClassTag story in the next few weeks. If you haven't signed up for ClassTag yet, what are you waiting for?! Sign up here for the best family communication platform there is!

#MakeItHappen Moment: How Far They've Come (and a giveaway!)

Here's my #MakeItHappen moment for Teacher Appreciation Week:

I did some decluttering today at school. A file cabinet I rarely use seemed like a good thing to attack on a Friday (don't know what I was thinking!) Among many dusty copies and broken folders, I found a stack of paper clipped student work on a worksheet I recognized. The names on the papers were students I recognized.

Apparently, I was really careful to save student work on a district-wide assessment from TWO YEARS AGO. My now-fifth graders are almost off to middle school, and yet I got to look today at their work from third grade, and see how far they've come and how much they've learned. It's always gratifying to see student growth over time, and this was it in a big way.

Want to enter to win some Teacher Appreciation Week prizes? ClassTag will hook you up!

For more about ClassTag, check out my blog posts here.