#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!

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Candy and Hats Won't Bring Them Back

It's National Teacher Appreciation Day, and my school has this whole week as Teacher Appreciation Week. I very much appreciate the pizza, candy, baseball hats, drawings, and cancelled meetings that I've been showered with this week. It's nice to hear 'thank you'. But this isn't about that. It's about what happened hundreds of miles away, this time in Colorado. Another school shooting, another evening of "thoughts and prayers", and another round of disturbing images of young children with their hands on their heads, trying desperately to get out of their schools alive. At least one student lost their life today, and many students and staff will go back to school with trauma no one should have to experience.

It happens too often

I can't keep track of all the school shootings that have happened since I've been teaching. It's only my fourth year, and already the tragedies all blend together. That's not to take away from the immense loss each one represents, but simply to highlight how frequent these events have become. Wikipedia lists 10 school shootings so far in 2019 in the United States. How can we possibly focus on learning when any day it could be our school, our students?

Nothing has changed

I vividly remember the Sandy Hook shootings, as it was the first school shooting with major media coverage while I was in college as a music education major. There was hope after Sandy Hook, hope that something would finally be done about the easy access to guns that had allowed this tragedy to happen. And there were minor improvements to at least give the illusion of safety. But the dozens of school shootings since have still happened. And every time, we get the same thoughts and prayers of politicians with no real action. By doing nothing, lawmakers have shown that the right to possess a weapon no one in modern America reasonably needs is more valuable than a child's life, a teacher's life, or the mental health of a nation of school children.

It is not normal

The kindergarten teachers I work with have a charming story about a moose about why we practice Shelter in Place and Enhanced Evacuation/active shooter drills. But the reality is so much more sinister, and even my young students are often aware of this. I've had students ask if they would get in trouble if they ran past the edge of the school property if there was someone chasing them with a gun. Kids are often still visibly shaken hours after a drill, because they know what they're practicing for. In an education system when kids are challenged to understand why they're learning something, they get it: they're being asked to learn how to stay alive in case the worst happens.

Real change is needed

I'd give up a lifetime of teacher appreciation gifts and food for the assurance that no more students will die in school. That we'll never see kids being rushed out of a school by police, or kids mourning their friends who didn't make it out. Until thoughts and prayers turn into action and policy, teachers are not appreciated. They're expendable, and so are students. Appreciate teachers by asking your elected leaders to pass common-sense gun control regulation, and do more than pray that this will never happen again.

"Quiet Music"

My district is in the midst of The Big State Test. Literally every space in my school needs to be used for testing, including the room right next to the music room with a thin wall in between. Much of the next few weeks will be spent doing "quiet music class". Yes, music class is not normally a quiet thing. My students always point out to me that music is sound and sound isn't quiet. We all agree it's not our favorite, but it's necessary for the good of the school overall. If it's really nice I try to take students outside, but the gnats and rain have been keeping us in and quiet most of the time. Singing as a whole class can sometimes be quiet enough, but no students playing instruments and low amounts of rambunctiousness are required. Here's a few "quiet music" activities I use with my students:

For upper elementary:

Articles and questions about musicians

I don't do a lot of teaching "about" musicians, so this is a good way (along with sub plans) to squeeze in some contextual information. NewsELA is a great source of articles with pre-written questions, and they have musicians from a wide variety of genres. This year, my students are reading an article about Esperanza Spalding, and one about Lauryn Hill. Once they complete both, they will compare and contrast the two musicians based on what they read in the article.

Videos

I'm typically not one to show a lot of long videos, but quiet music time I am a little more open to using them to keep students engaged, learning and quiet. It's also a really good break for students who have tested earlier in the day and are totally fried. This week, I've been showing a walkthrough of the Benning Violin Factory by Music Express to my students. It's a relatively short video but has led to good discussions about the different string instruments and about careers in music beyond teaching and performance. You can find the video on YouTube here. There are similar videos for other families of instruments, and Music Express also has a video series of composer interviews that are quite good.

For lower elementary:

Echo songs and patterns

For whatever reason, I find my students are able to control their singing volume more effectively when they are echoing rather than singing a song that they already know. The Feierabend book of echo songs is great for this purpose, as are simple tonal and rhythmic patterns. I also challenge students to echo sing a pattern I play quietly on an instrument, which helps them hear and respond to pitch across different timbres.

Move Its

I adore the Move-It DVD! It's a lifesaver when my voice is shot or I otherwise need 2 minutes of engaged focus from younger students. It's especially great when we have to be quiet, since silence is part of my pre-existing procedures for move-its and many of the songs are slower and more relaxing. I'll often do this to settle a class back down if they start to get overexcited and a bit noisy.

Singing Games

Some of my classes enjoy the challenge of staying quiet enough to keep playing a preferred singing game. I always warn them that if they get noisy the game has to stop right away since we want the students testing to be able to focus and do their best work. Usually even the chattiest or most rambunctious class can keep themselves together for five or ten minutes to do a game they really love. Obviously, I don't use games with running or major competitions to set students up for success in staying quiet. Acka Backa, Doggie Doggie, and similar games tend to work well for me.

Quiet music class is definitely not ideal, but when it has to happen there certainly are a variety of options that allow students to keep learning music. I'll definitely be glad when testing season is over and we can bring out the xylophones and drums again! 

Not Mozart's notation: How simplified notation helps beginning band sanity

Music notation is a valuable tool. Music literacy (including the ability to read traditional Western music notation) is an important skill which should be developed in order to help students achieve total musicianship. But lines and spaces are not always the best tool for every context, especially when it comes to popular music. I'm using a score consisting of tables for one of our beginning band songs this year. This song is a popular tune (and a student favorite) with rhythms well beyond what is typically covered in first-year band. Here's my score (note the lack of clefs, note heads, and even rhythm notation):

The lyrics are underneath, but before we get there: can you name that tune? It's certainly harder to sight read without the context of rhythm or meter. However, virtually all of my students have heard this song outside of school. So here's what a student part looks like:

Obviously, a beginning band student isn't going to get a whole lot if they just play those notes. I don't use the parts the first time we touch this song. Once we've learned the main sections (in this case, green blue and red), the written parts act as a memory aid. The small lines next to some of the notes indicate that they're "low" (below the tonic of the song). The dashes in the last line remind students to hold that note (the ending I used seems to be less familiar to students than the main tune). 

The benefit of this system is that students can play rhythms well beyond their reading ability. My group hasn't gotten to individual eighth notes yet, or dotted rhythms, but they can execute both well in the song because they know the tune and are playing based primarily on an aural concept. This "part" serves more as a reminder than something to stare at. Today, a student discovered that after a few weeks of practice, she can play the whole thing from memory! I teach band for the music, not the notation, so using this kind of part has helped my students play music that they care about and perform at a high level without getting caught up in music notation confusion. It's another way (not the best way or the only way) to write music to help student learning.

Band teachers: if you'd like parts and score for this tune, leave your gmail in the comments and I'll share with you.