okay then

Okay so I just got my comments back from my lesson plan and I don't know about anyone else but they made me feel completely ashamed. I did not do as well as I thought I would. Which frustrates me because I am a senior and I student teach in the fall. Shouldn't I already have this all together? Why am I having issue writing a lesson plan?? Honestly I think its because it is a different world in music, for example, I have asked previous music educators as well as some I have met through various conferences if they write out lesson plans. Only ONE of them said that they do lesson plans religiously. I am not sure how this makes me feel. This is exceedingly frustrating for me in this class because I have a very hard time connecting the things we are doing in class with music education. The BPH really is frustrating for me because these standards are not music related at all. Consider this honest time with Katie cause this is getting difficult for me. I enjoy this class and learning but am having an impossible time connecting it to music. When it comes to standards I have 3b1 knowing my content area down. But 3c1....... that is another story. All this to say I am extremely ready for spring break.

More Lesson Stuff

         I really enjoyed what we did in the last class period. Having the students act as the teachers and teach a piece of LEARN was incredibly beneficial. This was helpful to me because when you get to the level of teaching others on your subject you should have that information at mastery level. So therefore I feel a lot more confident about the LEARN process. Now when I go to apply my 6 point lesson plan to the LEARN template I will feel a lot better about doing so.
        While I am continuing my education by learning material in this class, I also just signed up for flute fest, where I will continue some professional development in the music world. This really fulfills standard (1b1 developing) because this is going to provide some extremely valuable learning activities. This flute fest is basically one huge masterclass where I will improve my playing and also learn some techniques for teaching flute. The masterclass will provide some serious networking opportunities for my professional development as well as a very encouraging environment for music making.

Lesson Planning

This week my attention has been on two things: opera and Education 316. As much as I enjoyed playing in the opera I am glad that it is over because now I have a bit more free time. Before I was in a cycle of constant music and barely had time to devote to school. The time I did have available I tried working on assignments for Education 316, mainly the 6 point lesson plan and Teachscape Modules. When I brought my lesson plan to the last class I came to the realization that I had done it all wrong. I am so thankful for Austin because he has helped me countless times with this lesson plan. Which is such an excellent example of collaboration (1b1). Through this collaboration it helps with improving my school work and also can act as practicing instruction. Along with conquering the 6 point lesson plan, I have been working on the Teachscape learning modules. Even though I get frustrated with these videos at times and the length it takes to complete them, I feel like I am gaining huge professional development in college. Like Dr. Clark said, this will look great on our resume and we will have gained all of this before we even graduate.

It is March yet?

I say "Is it March yet?" because February is very overwhelming and I feel like I am drowning in everything I need to do. I am involved in the Opera here on campus and this weekend is its show time. Between rehearsing practically everyday as well as my other ensembles and class, it seems like I'll never catch a breath. This space is really good for me to organize my crazy thoughts and really tone in on my classes. Speaking of classes, our last class meeting was a very interesting one. Discussing the essential questions really involved the whole class and had me thinking. The part of the class that really helped me differentiate essential questions was hearing how an essential question could be applied as a whole school question. Like the example; "what makes a true friend?" using this question in all classes to act as on over-arching essential question for the year. To me these essential questions can really be attached with NCTCS #4 "Teachers facilitate learning for their students" This is because these questions allow for a huge opportunity to learn by having more than just a "yes or no" answer. It gets the wheels cranking in the brain for a possible discussion and also a thought out answer rather than "yes or no."

standards oh my!

It is definitely beginning to hit me that these standards are not going anywhere. They are going to pretty much become my life and haunt my dreams. I am joking about that last part, but in all seriousness the NCTCS are super important. Today in class I felt like a had a bit of a breakthrough, when looking up the reading/writing standards to research strategies for these I found myself succeeding at knowing the NCTCS. To fellow peers who have been dealing with these for a couple semesters you might be thinking "how do you not know these?" or "help me???." All I know is coming from my background, music students never deal with the NCTCS so having just now learning about these I feel proud of myself. While I look at the NCTCS I have determined that the standard I personally connect with the most is standard #3- Teachers know the content they teach. I love music. It has always been my entire life. In saying this I am very confident in my ability to know music. However; I want to apply this standard a bit farther in saying "yes I do my content , but I do not want to stop learning about my content." I strongly believe in "know the content they teach" should also have underlined meanings of "continue to learn about your content". My belief is strong in this because there are always new breakthroughs and you will never know everything there is to know about your content. With saying this, can we fully reach the standard #3? This is why I want to say "teachers strive to continue the knowledge of their content they teach."

snow thoughts

While thinking about what I wanted to write about for this weeks blog post, all I could think about was how the snow has completely thrown me off track. This got me to thinking about how precious time will be in my future classroom, for the time is already limited to begin with. So when preparing for students you have to be intentional with every move you make. This really starts with making those initial steps when prepping starting all the way with standards. I am not 100% confident on unpacking standards but the little tutorial and example we had last week in class was a good start. Now as a music teacher our standards are a little bit different because they are broke down into grade, musical concepts, and then into the individual standard. This can be very overwhelming so having this skill of unpacking standards will be helpful for digging into these to understand what is expected of the students.
         Also just because we have gotten our flipped classroom certification, I noticed how another one of my professors uses this strategy for her classroom. Outside of class we have our instruction and readings. Then during the actual class time we have discussion and work on an assignment. I have some good and bad opinions about this. The good would include having the professor there during guided practice. However, the bad would have to be if you have a question about the material being taught you can't ask the professor a question then and have to wait. Personally it is difficult for me to learn in this way and it might be because I haven't learned in this flipped classroom environment before. With more exposure I believe it is a good tool for being taught in college. But in my own personal field you can't teach band in a flipped classroom.

things are looking up

After having more class time I can say that I am beginning to feel more comfortable with this class. My favorite part of our class mission is " In a safe, vulnerable learning atmosphere" and I feel like this is the atmosphere we, as a class, are creating. This really gives me a sense of a group effort and this reflects in the class discussion that we have as well as our replies in these blogs. At first I was hesitant about having to keep a blog for this class but I feel very positive about it now. It allows for a space for me to organize my thoughts as well as hear from my classmates. It is also neat having a place to discuss in a professional manner about the process of this class. It will be cool having this to look at how far I came at the end of the semester. My favorite aspect of class has been having those discussions with other students and through this I am getting to know these other future teachers. This is important for me because I can give some of my ideas as well as learn from the other students. Often times I find myself looking at things in a different perspective or even hearing about a concept that I had not thought about before. I thoroughly enjoy this group discussion. One aspect of class that will take some getting used to is the random selection for being in front of class and the tech smackdowns. But hey I already have ripped that band aid off in last class when I was chosen for the first tech smackdown. I still don't have it all together but things are looking up especially after this past week.