Well it is vacation time and I finished my last holiday program on Friday. I am seeing improvements in my students convidence and ability. The music is quite easy for some and some of the advanced I have given a solo or duets. I am reviewing the Pink book to see what I can do to improve the quality of my program. The feedback from some of the teachers and my base school prinicpal has been good so far. When we come back from the Christmas brake, we will be moved into the renovated Dunbar. From what I have been told, the new band room is nice with good storage space. Hopefully I can take the planning day before and create new positive atmosphere for the rest of the year.

FACULTY MEETING

Today was very rewarding musically and educationally. The string students played their lessons very well. I noticed that most of them played close attention to posture and hand position. My new cello students is gradually getting use to the hand positions of the cello even though she is a tall 5th grader with large hands she is doing quit well. We are getting ready for a performance at Lenox Square Mall next week and for most of them, it will be the first time they will perform before and audience outside of the school environment. They are excited and and playing their music with more confidence. Time is limited for practice, about 45 minutes for two days. In that time I have to provide a lot of information for them to digest. With these time restraints (like my collegues) it gets to be rather frustrating to have to let them go just when they are starting to sound like a group. In some respects they are suconsciously in a way listening to themselves and hearing music. Which leads me to the faculty meeting after school. We had a great discusssion between the principal and the music teacher debating whether rap artist are musician. The principal went on the discuss merits of fields trips taking away from class instruction. One classroom teacher passionately expressed the fact that too much emphasis is placed on testing and not developing the complete child. She stated that these field trips are meant to introduce these students to places and exhibits that would not normally see on a day to day basis and that the test (CRCT) should not be the sole criteria for a successful school or student. Let me say that my base school principal is truly supportive of the arts but he is trying create an atmosphere of teacher and students success using all resouces available to him. With that in mind, myself the music teacher and band teacher will be doing our best to enhance the school adgenda.

November 14, 2009

Today I receive more insight into the course work. I got the impression that what we accomplish during this course will go a long way toward improving music in the school. The first session dealt with journaling and how we should document and evaluation what we do in our classroom. What works and what doesn't, how we can improve on what we do and other way to inspire and communicate with our student. I feel I need to go back and read the book Daniel Pink and incorporated those Senses to help with my classes.

The second session dealt with who or what inspired us to do what we do. In the case of music some of the members of the class submitted recording of music that inspired them to become musicians and certain people that influenced them. As I was listening to there comments and examples I reflected on how I was influenced. I thought about some recording and people that I encountered in my life but no one person or event stood out as a defining point. My generation goes back to the fifties when television first came to importance, so bascially I my influences range from American Bandstand to Leonard Bertstein's Young People's Concerts. But the main influence would be my parents who unknowingly sang hymns at night and listened to music of all genres on the radio.