This season in life is a strange one. Hard. Uneasy. Worrying. Troubled. I find that it’s not as predictable as the life I had become used to. Even if things appear certain, they’re not. One of the things that throws me off more than anything else is uncertainty. I love control (or the feeling that I have it anyway). I like predictability. I like being able to plan out how I want to start the school year - using long term goals, breaking them down to monthly, weekly, and daily assignments in my classes. It’s a struggle for me to even know where to begin. And that’s been eating at me. As music educators, making music and bringing musical experiences to our kids is the best thing ever. Hearing them sing. Watching them grow as musicians. Moving together. Playing instruments together. It is truly killing me to know that singing won’t be the same. Or even present at all. That instrument ensembles won’t happen the same. That movement together won’t be the same. Performances won’t look the same. And I’m already mourning the swift change that has been made in how teaching will look this fall.
It’s not going to be the same for anyone, but I can see that it’s especially not going to be the same for the fine arts. I can spiral down really fast thinking about the negative impacts and I’ve had to make the choice to find the good. The closer we get to the start of school, the more anxious and uncertain I am becoming. I don’t like that feeling. I’m generally a very positive minded person and this uncertainty is throwing me off big time beginning with my thoughts. I’m trying to find ways to accept the unexpected because I have a feeling we’re going to have a lot of shifting going on this year and we’ll be stretched. We’ll find amazing new ways to teach and many successes. We’ll find that we are more creative. We’ll find that we make the impossible possible. We’ve done it before - every single year as educators we make amazing things happen. This year is no exception.
1 - Turning it off/embrace silence
2 - Make a list of the things you will still be able to do
Body percussion
Speech
Singing - modified
Notation - each student has a ‘kit’ with four hearts… you can do a million things alone with that
Online resources - Soundtrap, Seesaw, various theory sites, Google Drive
Flipped classrooms - responding through video recordings
Books - reading/singing for students
Podcasts - researching music topics, sharing what they learn, sound effects to books (reading the book and adding sounds), writing… could even be tied to a genius hour project
3 - From there, consider how you want to plan all lessons
If you’re teaching in-person, but there are several families whose children are still learning virtually then you have double duty. Beth Philemon described an idea recently in her podcast episode #45 “Why we should prepare to teach/conduct choir online this fall. She talks about how she has used videos in her classroom to teach content (note: it is not a replacement for you as a teacher - it’s a great way to engage students in singing and learning music that they can relate to)... Beth goes more in detail about this in the podcast. Her episode gave me permission to allow myself to think outside of what I alone can do and some ideas for what could be possible. Whether you’re teaching in-person, fully online, or in a hybrid style, it’s helpful if your students are able to participate and the content is the same for all without having to plan two or three different lessons for one class. One way to do this is to record yourself and use the video in both the in-person and online classes. This could be used for specific content and not necessarily for the entire in-person lesson, but by recording a 5 or 10 minute segment of a class period you are guaranteed that all students (online/hybrid/virtual) are getting that same content in the same way. And then what you ask students to do to demonstrate their learning after that content from the video could be more engaging physically - maybe students record a flipgrid video of themselves explaining the new note or pitch learned. Maybe students respond through creating something using manipulatives. Maybe students sing the song taught or record themselves performing the body percussion.
Look at ways that you can use what you already know, what you have at your disposal (devices, videos, online websites, individual instruments), what you’re allowed to do with students (sing? Speak? Stationary movement? Go outside?), and then make a plan of how you can use what you can do to teach students.
Before we close, I want to share that there are more and more educator podcasts out there, which I’m thrilled about. The more of us that share, the better we all are. I was recently emailed about a blogpost that highlights 20 music education podcasts. My podcast is on the list and several others that I listen to consistently. Check out the link in the show notes to read about the Top 20 Music Education Podcasts blog post.
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