Professional Development

This past Wednesday we had our latest professional development day. We met as a department to discuss amongst other things, what professional development activities have we done this year have been successful. It got me thinking about what professional development has always meant to me and why I struggle with what school districts want it to be. First of all, I don't believe that every discipline taught in school can use the same template of professional development. Trying to do so limits and frustrates the curriculum writers and teachers. Second, professional development involves finding best practices and experts to discover what works best in education. As a music teacher, I find these best practices and experts in the following places: Music conferences such as Minnesota Mid-Winter Music Education Conference, national National Association for Music Education conferences, and the Midwest Band Clinic Taking courses that apply to what I need to know. Some great courses I have taken lately have been in the categories of Music Technology, Bullying, and What Makes Great Teachers Great. Performing and Composing/Arranging Music. I get so energized when I perform with the great groups of musicians I'm privileged to play with here in the Twin Cities or when I write a piece of music that I can't wait to get back with my students and share the experience, what I learned or the simple love of music in our lives. Third, I think professional development is never done. Curriculum writing is constant. It's always changing based on what doesn't work or what is changing in our world. Fourth, professional development is costing our schools too much money. By trying to structure professional development into school workshop days, 2-hour late starts and having multiple coordinators is costing us money that could be used more directly for our students.

Expectations

I have noticed during my many years in music education both as a student and now as a teacher, that there are varying degrees of expectations. Some music directors have very high demands for students while others simply want the students to have fun and enjoy music and not worry too much about having the best band in the region. Some music teachers are very competitive and judge their program's success on winning awards. Other music teachers are philosophically against competition and stay away from contests. Some music teachers have high expectations in certain areas of their program, for example their marching band, but don't have as high of standards in other areas, say for instance jazz band. The past few years, I have given my expectations for students more thought. I have considered these thoughts above in trying to do what I feel is both best for the students and what fits best for my teaching style. I have noticed that my expectations for musical success need to be raised. And when thing came to me today as I was focusing on raising my standards: both your level of fulfillment and level of frustration go up. You look at the student that you inspired by telling her how good she is sounding and that you are going to give her more advanced music to work on. You get an e-mail later in the day from her mom thanking you because they were just having the conversation at home about wanting to be more challenged which would lead to more motivation. As a teacher, there is nothing better than watching that all happen. Then there is the student that lets you down because you tried to raise the standards, and she didn't take those steps with you. I wonder that had I just let her keep music in that small level of importance in her life if both she and I would have been just fine to leave it as is. Instead we both walk away frustrated. I guess I come back full circle in thinking that is why we have teachers that have different levels of expectations. If a student has a ton of motivation and potential, the bar needs to be raised. If the student just wants to play in the band a couple days a week, never practice but have music be a part of their lives for those couple hours, is there anything wrong with that? That student is not going to progress very quickly and is never going to be an outstanding musician, but if that student is learning to appreciate music and is enjoying it, how much do we push as a teacher? So is the gain in fulfillment worth the gain in frustration? What do you think?

What Makes Our School Great!

If I am going to want my blog to be taken seriously, I better start posting more than once a year. Many thoughts have been running through my head regarding education. It's amazing how when you first start teaching, your thoughts on education don't extend much past the four walls of your classroom. When you are in Year 15, you are constantly thinking big picture and what is both right and wrong with education extending far beyond your immediate situation. At this point, I could write a novel of thoughts both positive and negative. So maybe I should stretch this out and make several posts over the next several weeks. And maybe I can even get some of you to join in for some dialogue. That brings me to where I should start? And as I would hope my nature usually dictates, I will start with the positive. I will start by explaining why Chaska Middle School-West, the school that I teach at, is so successful. 1. Administration is absolutely fantastic. I have learned through my years of teaching that being an administrator is an amazingly difficult job. As a teacher, 90 percent of my time if not more is spent with the students. As an administrator, your "spread-thin" time is spent with students, teachers, other staff, parents, community, administrators at other schools in and out of your district, government officials, local authorities, outside educational organizations, and then of course your own boss: the superintendent and school board. Quite honestly, I have no idea how they do it. Our school has two of the best around. I think the way they are successful is that they trust the people around them to do their jobs. They set expectations and don't micromanage. This leaves them with time to deal with the issues and problems that come up that truly need their attention. They also understand kids and where we need to take those kids in order to be successful in life. They will do anything they can to make our kids outstanding citizens. This goes beyond just being able to test well in math and reading on two days in April. This extends to all areas of academia and beyond. 2. We treat the students with respect and let them learn in a comfortable yet safe environment. Through our Star Program, we make it very clear to students what the expectations for success are and what will happen when poor choices are made. Then we follow through as a unified staff with consistency. Since the Star Program was implemented a few years back, I am amazed at how little discipline issues we have at our school. Not to say, problems don't come up. And there will always be those few kids that don't respond. (You have to keep in mind that if the parents are not doing their job, it's very hard for us to make up for that.) However, the statistics that are kept by our amazing dean of students show that behavior referrals continue to go down year after year. 3. The opportunities for kids are incredible. We are allowed as teachers to offer so many cool things for kids. This includes after school clubs such as the music things I get to do (rock band, marching band, jazz band, country/bluegrass, guitar, country/bluegrass, hip hop, Mariachi, music technology, movie band, etc.), the art clubs that are very talented art teacher offers, the graphic novel club one of our language/arts teacher has started, and the phy ed extra curriculars that are offered. Then there are school wide activities like History Day, the Medieval Banquet, the Veterans Day festivities, Pennies For Patients (raising money to find a cure for leukemia) and our Evening with the Stars event. It's also great that our school believes that learning can take place outside of our four walls. Being able to go to places like the Festival of Nations, Orchestra Hall, the Science Museum, art museums, and skiing as well as discipline specific field trips like a Mexican restaurant for Spanish, and a band festival for Music. These are all activities that help kids retain knowledge, use their knowledge and give them positive memories from their middle school years. Oh yes, I could go on and give more. But as I said to start this entry, I need to stop and save some thoughts for later posts. Teachers, parents, students: I want to hear why your school is incredible and what makes it that way. Because I think the last thing I want to add to this post is that what makes our school great is that we are always looking for ways to make our school better. And there are plenty of schools out there doing amazing things. So let's hear it!