The Bigger Picture
a few nights ago i got an email from a old friend and former student about how i helped him over 20 years ago. it reminded me how it’s too easy to get caught up in the day to day successes and failures of teaching and forget about the bigger picture
“Just read your Derek Sivers post and it made me think… This guy from Kansas named Paul Bailey was my high school marching band coach my senior year, and from that he was able to get me a job at Poway HS (which he got because he marched Madison (Madison Scouts Drum and Bugle Corps), and I ended-up working with HS marching bands for 7 years before it got to be too much while starting my now 15 year career at Accenture… Great experiences, great memories, and definitely a great part of my life. Thank you again, Paul.”
Twitter Weekly Updates for 03-28-2010
- My Top 3 Weekly #lastfm artists: Weezer (10), Everclear (4) and Michael Nyman (3) #mm http://bit.ly/aTA338 #
- just got back from a two week emotional furlough. looks like i’m ready to be a human again #fb #
- @OscarBettison or who decided that we were going to use a glass. I don’t remember voting on that
in reply to OscarBettison # - just realized I haven’t passed back any papers in a few weeks. WTH? #fb #
- could somebody explain what i’m missing here? isn’t this a cliche of a cliche? http://bit.ly/9QnFXM #
- I’m a kindle user & interested in the ipad, but won’t buy a new device until it supports annotations & bookmarks that sync to all my devices #
- you know as I working on a lecture about about early jazz I realized that textbooks 2.0 would be a lot more useful if the linked… #fb #
- directly to primary source materials and would rather have my students read primary sources also and discuss those opinions #fb #
- just think how powerful it would be to share the most interesting quotes & ideas from books (just like we already do on the interwebs) #fb #
- @dbtoub have you tried mint? I like it in reply to dbtoub #
- next week it’s going to be nice to have a break that isn’t part of a furlough #fb #
- @carlstronach exactly (dude should back off the reverb) in reply to carlstronach #
- The Slaw Dogs on #Yelp i guess I was expecting something else and you could say slaw dogs is reallly more like a ga… http://bit.ly/aTymNA #
- RT @HLP90042: Booooo! New Fare Gates at Gold Line Madre Villa Station (until they fix the TAP cards it’s money down the drain) #
- Space Photos of Earth Shot from Balloon, Used Camera and Duct Tape – ABC News http://bit.ly/aHQ1DA #
- @uglyrug best part of teaching elementary school
in reply to uglyrug # - LAPD helicopter ordering partygoers to dispurse from an ‘unlawful festival’ in a foreclosed house up the hill from us #fb #
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comfort zone
if i said its been a tough year it probably wouldn’t be quite exact. i guess its more accurate to say it feels like its been a tough year. the biggest problem with working in higher education and the economy going to crap is that you feel pretty good about having a job for about 4 months until you have to start worrying if you have any work the next semester. i actually worked (and made more) more money teaching college than i ever had, but unfortunately there is no guarantee that i’ll have any classes in the fall.
its not been a bad year, i really enjoyed teaching quite a few new classes; a music pedagogy class for general ed elementary teachers and music appreciation (through southwest college) for charter high school students. both classes exposed me to the non self-selecting music students for the first time in my teaching career and i loved it. in both classes besides focusing on the traditional lecture materials we sang songs, played games and learned a variety of instruments.
although the increased workload of teaching new classes kept me extremely busy i was really happy to do something outside of my comfort zone. as bad as the economy is right now fall 09 is looking better. i still will probably have some work at csuf (although they are expecting to cut an additional $29 million), and my charter HS is exploring creative ways to get me back in the fall by setting up their arts electives through a different community college.
it all could still go to shit (like it did at the end of last summer) but right now i’d choosing to see the future with the glass half full.
the trees without the forest
well i made it…
as i’m starting to wade through the piles of paperwork i have to grade i’m slowing down enough to finally start to reflecting and assessing this fall. as semesters go it was one for my record books: 3 schools, 19 units, and 2 new classes.
its not that i haven’t been here before. i had 11 preps (separate classes) that met over a 6 day schedule at during my first two years teaching 5-12 instrumental music at a private school. i almost forgotten what it felt like, but now i clearly now remember that feeling of controlled insanity so that i’m ok with a normal class load for quite some time.
one of the things that i really try and stress with my young teachers is that we should always self-assess and reflect when the memories are still fresh. taking a break and waiting until we are rested or even the week before school starts can dull the our highs and lows. so as i’m grading papers and reading stacks of student reflections i figure its time to give it a go. (especially to remind me that now matter how good the money is 19 units is too much)
music 111 (music theory, level 1)
i think its my 3rd or 4th semester in a row teaching this class of enthusiastic freshman who have always have a wide range of skills coming into college. unfortunately at least a third have any experience with any music fundamentals (i’d say half class has problems reading clefs outside their primary instrument). we call this class music theory, but its really music fundamentals in which the goals are pretty simple: know all your clefs, keys, intervals, and chords. be able to do basic part writing and analize short musical examples.
overall i have been pretty happy with my teaching, but my main problem is that the low students really don’t seem to improve. my main strategy to combat this has been much repetition through worksheets, daily drills and speed tests (where they are required to give answers and explanations), but i’m not really comfortable seeing the slower students in my class (who attend pretty regularly) not improve and seem to be guessing in the final exam. i’m also not really happy with the overall curriculum and textbooks (which i clearly see the results with my music ed students who cannot really analyze a score or discuss its musical elements, but i’ll get to this in another post when i talk about my mused classes).
conceptually i’m know what the problem is. we are teaching music theory like they used to teach phonics in elementary school.
2/3 of the students do fine with this pedagogy and i’m sure they would figure out how to regurgitate anything we ask them to. the main skills we want our students to learn are fine (voice leading, score analysis), but our strategies of teaching them about the trees without the forest (by endless manipulation of exceprts because they fit easily into classroom pedagogy) has resulted in many of our students knowing how to resolve a 7th chord and and write a secondary dominant but have little or no idea about how music ‘works’
all i know is that after four years of trying to build a better moustrap inside the most common theory pedagogy its time for me to head out on that lonely journey (well not so lonely, michael rodgers discusses these problems in great detail in his book; teaching approaches in music theory) of trial and error that he calls “synthesis of comprehenisve musicianship, eartraining and analysis”
next up; music educaiton classses, music in early childhood and my instrumental music practicum class
zeitgeist (nov 2008)
personal zeitgeist, late fall 2008
- the economy is really bad right now. none of the schools i work at are willing to schedule spring classes until they know more about the CA state budget cuts. we usually know our classes by the 2nd week of september, and have already cut the spring schedule by about 25%. right now it looks like another 30% might be cut. everybody keeps saying if the money is not there, then its not there.
- another warning sign about the economy on last week’s left, right, and center podcast i heard very intelligent
mature adults sound scared for the first time in my life. when all three of them agree, it cannot be good. - Do we really know who the real Obama is? I get the feeling he has been gaming the system (in a positive way) to get himself elected and will hopefully be much more liberal and progressive then he has let on. my guess is that he has had the best poker face ever for the last two years.
- the la times discontinued its homicide blog. this is wrong for so many reasons, but it was probably one of the only things the LA times could do to help this city save its soul (and any other large homicide enclave) by bearing witness to the many minority homicides that happen every day and go unreported because they do not affect the middle or upper class. just as i was getting a handle on how many years that we have ignored this problem, the paper pulls the plug. of course this doesn’t change my plans, it only doubles my effort
- charter schools might be the only way to save public education. this semester has been less monkey business and more teaching than any secondary school i have taught. most of the success goes to the small school community, its small enough were everybody feels responsible for their actions. the obvious problem to this reform is that you cannot turn all schools into charters. also the la times highlights a report stating that charter schools are leading the pack in improving achievement scores in poor children.
- baby mozart was a scam! via new yorker “As children explore their environment by themselves—making decisions, taking chances, coping with any attendant anxiety or frustration—their neurological equipment becomes increasingly sophisticated, Marano says. “Dendrites sprout. Synapses form.” If, on the other hand, children are protected from such trial-and-error learning, their nervous systems “literally shrink.”
- meme for alex shapiro coming soon…
balance
teach, grade, eat, sleep is about all I do these days.
this summer it looked like I was going to be seriously underemployed so I am very grateful and lucky to even have the option of paying my bills. things are better now and i’m glad the sky didn’t completely fall in.
last spring i knew things were going to be bad when i heard that california was immediately starting a hiring freeze because of lower than expected tax receipts. then came word that the california state university system (my employer) was to immediately cut 10% from the fall 08 budget. in past years these cuts and might have been restored after a budget was passed, but the way things were going we would be lucky if the cuts stopped only at 10%.
to make a long story short, three days before school started i also got a call from a local community college who needed somebody to teach two classes the saturday before school started. since then its been a radical change of pace to be more than fully employed (19 units) and teaching many new classes (early childhood music and music appreciation, but this new schedule has reinforced my ongoing quest for the proper balance between time and money.
it’s great knowing that I can pay the bills for at least 5 more months, but with the way the economy is going I have to really wonder how much freelance teaching work will be available next spring or fall. of course at the end of the day this is all fair (and i guess somewhat expected) in the life of an adjunct faculty member. I have no tenure, but lots of flexibility to perform and compose compared to the my previous jobs as a secondary school band director (5-12). this summer (while waiting too see what my schedule would be in the fall) it really brought home the reality that i have a quite low paying job (a full-time adjunct faculty member makes 1/3 of the pay of a tenured professor) with little job security I quickly realized how this job becomes far more stressful in an economic downturn and is making me seriously reconsider my employment options.
right now i’m kind of living in the moment, day by day and lecture by lecture. i’m really enjoying teaching high school kids again (even if it is music appreciation) and could see and have contemplated going back into the secondary classroom for a much more stable and higher paying job. after getting a taste of the 40+ hour work-week i have been reintroduced to that endless cycle of teaching, grading and sleeping that leaves little room for anything else. tonight i’m grading music music theory and going over my lesson plans and lectures before tomorrow. i like it quite a bit, teaching a good class is almost as invigorating as playing a great show, though right now it would be nice to have time for both.
is this balance possible? well at least probably not teaching as an adjunct professor at a 4 year college. although adjunct faculty are notoriously treated like shit (since i don’t have a terminal degree and i expect it from my “peers”), teaching music fundamentals, music theory and music education classes have been very stimulating, but unless i’m willing to pursue a PHD and frequently relocate around the country to start my “career”, i’m keeping myself in the lowest caste of academia with no chance of financial advancement (or job security)
in august i was seriously considering heading back to be a full time “band director”, its a great job, but already i know that if i have the responsibility of teaching 5 classes a day that i can’t possibly have enough time for writing and performing. although the money is good (a tenured professor and a public school teacher make about the same pay), but running back to the safety of a full time job in secondary education isn’t going to give me any balance.
right now i’m not exactly sure what my solution is, but i guess our little financial crisis is helping motivate me to move on to the next thing. i’m not quite sure what that is yet, but my gut tells me that staying in place hoping things will work out isn’t such a good idea.
iphone in the classroom
just a quick friday post on using my new iphone in the classroom. its already become indispensable for teaching music related classes and lectures. here are a few of the new apps that i’m already using on a daily basis. remote like it says its a remote in your hand. i can walk around the [...]
learning is doing
learning is doing
which means I have spent most of my years trying to avoid teaching music appreciation. on the face of it what could be wrong sharing the joys of listening to music? unfortunately to me teaching people how to “listen to music” is like teaching a math class without doing any math. no matter how you cut it talking (and lecturing) about music is about as interesting as teaching an sex ed class on abstinence in alaska. most people “appreciate” music very well and the elephant is the room is that they are expected “appreciate” art music, because it will make them smarter, more cosmopolitan, or something like that. times are tight and being one of the many california state university pt-faculty who have been cutback this fall I gotta take whatever classes that come my way.
my main concern with teaching music appreciation was confirmed after a quick perusal of a few textbooks. most are based on teaching western art music through the reduction of the historical periods in to easily digestible generic “facts” and the predictable passion and personal trivia narratives of art music composers. (i think i know why composer biopics usually suck so much, the writers are using their music appreciation books as primary source material) its not that every music appreciation book totally sucks, just that i can see that most of my time is going to be spent cherry picking reading material from a variety of sources that doesn’t reduce the lecture to simplistic cliches. my gut feeling is that the more time we are reading and listening to primary sources, the better.
i wasn’t quite sure what to expect teaching an 8 am saturday morning class on a off-campus site (a local charter school campus). since most schools are locked down pretty tight on the weekends i figured that on the first day there would be a crowd of us waiting outside the main gate for a janitor to show up the school. I was surprised that when i pulled up at 7:30 am there was somebody waiting at the gate for me. not only was the school open and students ready to go, but I noticed they were much younger than i expected.
i realized that this was not the class that was advertised to me. after talking to the assistant principal he explained that this was an their pilot program on the saturday school concept. unlike most public schools that have many federal resources to teach kids that are below grade level on the weekends the LA Alliance charter school are partnering up with the local community college to fill this void. to me this brings up a whole bunch of obvious questions. i’m already questioning the logic in having community college teachers work with kids that are quite a bit behind on their path to graduation. (remember all need to teach community college is a masters degree, and most college professors have no training in secondary school pedagogy) this all being said, i’m happy to teach the kids in front of me not the ones you expected.
after the first hour it was obvious that their reading and writing skill are not quite ready for prime time, so by now my goals for the class are changing pretty quickly, more singing, clapping, and experiencing music as possible. gotta break up the class into 15 min segments. i’m also not going to worry about the traditional drop the needle testing of composers and titles. i’d rather have the class be able to just identify music by its elements (melody, harmony, form, rhythm and timbre). just by the short time working with them this is a pretty big goal, but i think a worthy of the class-time. i also know that this class can help improve their reading and writing skills. most students have a problem with technical reading (textbooks) and spending some time in the book, probably could help prepare them on how to use their college textbooks as a resourese and not a doorstop.
three hours on a saturday morning with a class of HS kids was not what i expected, but i really was impressed with the charter school and the students. they obviously have to be there to graduate (and probably continue as students in the school). but we sang, clapped and made a pretty good use of the time. i’m still not sure what i’m going to do about the textbooks/CD’s ($100+) and concert attendance. asking working class families to spend that much on a book that isn’t much of a resource to begin with is a problem, and i’m not sure how i feel about requiring HS kids to attend concerts when public transportation is their only way to get around. in a normal HS setting we would take a field trip to a show and bring groups on campus. i’ll check into seeing if this is possible.
what are my goals? is this class worth teaching? i hope so.
my gut tells me to break it up into theory and practice. if i’m going to have a class for 16 weeks and all we do is talk about music, i hope somebody shoots me.
i want kids to be able match pitch, sing simple songs, duets and rounds, learn to find and keep a steady pulse. i’m going to teach them notation through solfege (i already started and they don’t know it yet) and hopefully tie in all the book learning by relating it through their limited in-class performance skills. i know introducing improvisation and composition should be in there somewhere, but without any keyboards, laptops or instruments, i’m not sure about it? we could make instruments, but because these aren’t my facilities or my classroom makes the whole endeavor more complicated. its going to be a journey, and an interesting change of pace from what i am comfortable with which is probably what i need at this stage of the game.
it was my third year
as i said before requiem for a high homicide enclave is my attempt to make sense of the latimes homicide report. i first encountered the blog, comments and maps reading about the death of los angeles high school band member michael pena and reading his story it brought back a lot of memories that i [...]
carrot or sticks?
on august 16th 2007 michael pena was killed. the police still don’t have a suspect or a motive in his death, but what is clear in the la times article by sam quinones, is that michael led a double life as a los angeles high school music student and tagger who recently dropped out of [...]
congestion pricing
my late summer read was james surowiecki’s the wisdom of crowds which describes how crowds (large numbers of independent people who share a common interest or goal) when left to their own devices seem to make pretty intelligent decisions and how gives some descriptions about they arrive at them. also later in the the book [...]
back to school part II, transcription tips
get the music in your ear, sing it back to yourself, play it on your primary instrument and then try and write it down. focus on what you hear well, most people hear either the soprano or bass lines the best. work on one part or element at a time. if you are transcribing a [...]
back to school edition
do something musical every daylearn your languagetranscribe by earanalyze pieces you likesome pieces (your favorites) you will want to know everything aboutkeep on the lookout for things that make you go hmmm.why does it catch your interest? what makes it different from the other pieces?you might just focus on one element (form, harmony, melody, orchestration, [...]
those who can't teach
work summers. back to school tomorrow. 4 classes, 1 student teacher and little sleep tonight. upcoming… life’s too short IItue, sept 25thpbe and real quiet@csuf (meng hall) Be the first to like. Like Unlike
"now " and "then"
last night was a great example of what i find frustrating in undergraduate comp forums. i know that composition is one of the “black arts” of teaching, so i am really not here to throw stones at students our students. all of the pieces were very well prepared and performed (except for one piece that [...]
band night?
i just finished my first week of classes and so far i am really happy with my classes. last semester is another story. i failed 11 students in my eartraining/dictation class. i didn’t feel good about it and spent much of the break trying to figure out if it was me or them. i decided [...]
designer education
for those of you who think private school is worth it, read this. Be the first to like. Like Unlike
status quo?
over this break i have been doing lesson plans for my spring eartraining and theory classes. as i sketched my classes out i realized that my goals were becoming much different than in the past. i wasn’t worried about what i am supposed to teach, but really concentrated to what skills i think our students [...]
winter break
the semester is over, but i still have final papers to grade and a lot lesson planning to do before over the break. i’m teaching an advanced fundamentals class and its been pretty long since i thought about what “advanced fundamentals” is. the department has some general guidelines of where they should be able to [...]
finals
the end of the semester is finally near, i think i have just survived the transition from secondary ed to college. i’m sure over the break i’ll be able to process it. overall its been pretty jarring. some my biggest mistakes were giving my students too much credit. i assumed that they would read the [...]
back to school
the last couple weeks i have been gearing up for my return to teaching, although this year is much different. class starts in 2 weeks and usually time of the year is all stress. part of it is worrying about the simple things, did they screw up my schedule? how many of my best students [...]
getting back to things
my job is getting in the way of my personal life. november and december are all about concerts, holiday programs, after school meetings, grading projects and writing progress reports. after coping with a few colds and a late night emergency room visit, i might just make it to the holiday break. i have also spent [...]
