I just finished my final day of my first week teaching in the elementary setting, and I must say that it is loads different than teaching in the high school. I’ve decided to use this week’s Student Teacher’s Notebook to highlight the differences I have experienced:Schedule
You may have already noticed the frequency of posts here at MusicEdMajor.net increased over this past week. This is a function of a LOAD more free time that I have as a part of my elementary internship. The first aspect of this is a decrease in time spent at the school. When in the High School, I arrived at 6:45am and typically did not leave before 4:30 or 5pm. Now, I arrive at 8am and am out the door by 3:15pm. This is no surprise; I knew the high school schedule was grueling. It is, however, a welcome shift compared to the busy schedule I was coming from.
Another reason I have as much free time as I do is that I have a large amount of planning time during the daily schedule. At the high school, I did not have any formal planning period (we had a Eurhythmics class that was run by the color guard captains, which became planning time for us, once every two days for two hours). In elementary, however, we have planning time every day for at least 90 minutes. All this time during school allows me to make sure I am getting my student teaching obligations (lesson plans, reflections) typed into Evernote early.
Students
I just recently wrote in my STN Weeks 6-8 entry about the incredible relationships I had the opportunity to establish with my high school students. This was a result of the fact that I only had five classes of students, and the longest I went between days seeing a student was 4 days (and THAT was only over weekends). At the elementary school, I have 26 different classes (some are double classes), and I see each student at most once every seven days (some only once every two weeks). This makes it much more difficult to learn names and establish any type of rapport with the students; I only have seven more times to see my 2nd-5th graders, and 3-4 more times with my 1st grade and Kindergarten students. I guess this is just a part of teaching elementary general music…
Stress Level
One big change I am noticing is how much more relaxed an atmosphere the elementary school is. In the high school, most performing ensembles were in “contest prep” mode, so most rehearsals were very focused and intense. I arrived home each night exhausted, not just by the hours I spent at the school, but also by the amount of focused thought I had put into the day. On the contrary, I arrive back from the elementary school relaxed and refreshed. This is in large part due to the nature of the classes. I am beginning to determine my philosophy on the purpose of elementary general music, so I’ll take a shot at it here:
The purpose of the elementary general music class is to create an enjoyable environment in which students can develop fundamental skills in music and start a journey of life-long music loving.
How did I do? What’s YOUR definition?
About Andy Zweibel