Weekly Blog #4

This week I had my observed lesson. I was really glad to get it out of the way earlier in the quarter. I received a lot of very helpful and guiding feedback. One comment that really struck with me was that the lesson plans we make are only our “ideal” plans. I have heard this many times, bit it seemed to click when it was reiterated in reference to one of my own lessons. I got to experience first hand what following a lesson plan is like versus letting things go. In my lesson I wanted to get through two different pieces. I had worked on the first one longer than intended, so I only had minimal time to go through the second one. My observer told me that I should have just ended the lesson after the first piece and saved the second one for next time.

After I warmed up the band we moved to the first piece. Percussionists needed instruments from the office; I waited for them to get back. Those 30 seconds felt a lot longer than that because I was ready to go and so was everyone else, but we had to wait for the percussionists. While I was waiting I felt a bit unsettled, thinking maybe I was waiting for too long, but my observer told me after the lesson that I did the perfect thing in that situation.

On Friday I had to run the connections class and first period last minute because my cooperating teacher had a meeting with a parent. One of her student’s knocked another out during lunch and the discipline was to be decided upon. Both of the students ended up being suspended and not allowed to participate in the lilac parade.

Monday began off with jazz band. As expected, the drummers were very disruptive and goofing off. This goofing off includes: drumming while being spoken to, playing the foot pedal with a hand, and trying to mess each other up when playing. In my opinion, this rude drumming when the teacher is talking could be solved with a simply drawing the attention to the fact that you shouldn’t be playing when the teacher is talking. Another way that might prevent them goofing off with each other is to not allow the students who are not on the drum set to sit directly behind him – there must be some amount of distance. This is probably only an issue to me because I sit right next to them and see that their behavior goes unnoticed or ignored.

I received a couple of recommendations from my cooperating teacher regarding securing a teaching job. The first was that, during the interview you should ask about the classes. For instance, is percussion included in the band or do they have a separate class? Also, one thing I had never thought of was to drive around the neighborhoods near the schools. You can get a feel for what the school environment will be like, but also, are their any apartments (if you plan on renting) for you to live in? Some areas only have homes, forcing you to look for housing in another nearby city.