Weekly Blog # 5

 The end of last week I was on tour with the EWU Wind Ensemble, Concert Jazz Ensemble, and Code Red. Because of this I missed two observation days. This week’s schedule is going to be very different for me because the school is in their second week of testing. A couple of days, my cooperating teaching will be subbing for the Art teacher and other days the Art teacher will be subbing for the music teacher. Because of this schedule, I will be observing a music teacher teaching art – interesting. I think that the value of this will be to see how my cooperating teacher handles a whole different group of students in a different atmosphere.

 Today the students had second period for two hours. I was present during the first hour of instruction. The class that my cooperating teacher has is percussion. I imagine it would be quite difficult to keep a group’s attention for an entire two hours; 50 minutes is long enough. They key in these types of situations is incorporating a lot of variety and keeping the pace. Obviously you can’t just rehearse the group for two whole hours – professionals can barely do that without needing a break. Besides needing a break, these young musicians just don’t have the chops or ability to play for that long.

Regardless, as I said earlier, I was only present during the first of the two-hour block so I didn’t get to observe how the class behavior changed. Hand drumming was the primary focus of the first half. All of the students made one long arc in the middle of the room. They did this drumming activity where someone would start with a rhythm on their drum, and then they would go down the line, adding people in. As students were reached, they came up with their own rhythm to layer on top of the others. Once they got through adding everyone in, one student played the rhythm from some famous oldies rock tune, and then everyone began to add in to that. The students really enjoyed this opportunity for creativity. As a prospective teacher, I see this value in this type of exercise; it boosts self-confidence by allowing student expression, but without singling any one person out.  However, I believe that the student’s could have done much better. For instance, when it was someone’s turn to add in it was rare for it to be in time with the others. Because of this I would have prefaced the activity telling them that the tempo needs to stay the same throughout and that everyone needs to be playing in the same tempo. To do this, everyone has to be listening to everyone else.

They were discussing the idea of incorporating this short activity into their next concert. That could be a cool idea; to have something that the students are improvising on the spot to be performed publicly. I believe that the structure could be altered a little bit to make the group and the improvised music sound more impressive.

One thing I noticed was the technique that the students were using on their instruments. Overall, most technique was not up to par. Students basically grabbed a random percussion instrument and begin to bang on it in whichever way they thought seemed correct. Their playing technique would be something else that I would address in addition to the listening for tempo.