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 to start this semester by giving a pretest assignment to my theory classes to find out what they knew before class started. the results were more encouraging and my current students all were much stronger than the ones from last fall.
why could this be?
then i remembered a parallel from teaching 5th beginning band. let me digress...
every spring would spend a lot of time demonstrating and pretesting all incoming 5th graders to help them pick an instrument they would best succeed at. we had parent meetings, letters home, and many conversations with the students about playing in the band or orchestra in the fall. our two main goals were to put the student on an instrument he/she could be immediately successful on, and have a relatively balanced instrumentation. through this process i noticed a few unsettling patterns evolve every year.
no matter how much we tried and educate the parents about the program, there are some that fight it or choose not to participate until the last minute (the program was mandatory for all 5th graders). the problems that i started to see was that all these families who came in at the end (or not at all) were left playing the least popular instruments (trombone and tuba). this was mostly because parents cannot see their ten year old playing such a big instrument. we tried to combat this buying a class set so they could keep the one they rented at home.
for the first few years these students were the least likely to have any musical support at home. the result was high concentrations of students with little interest and parental support on the most needed instruments. the thing that really started to piss me off was when i realized i was one of those kids.
my parents skipped the "band night" and probably was pushed into playing trombone because that is all that was left. i instinctively knew there was no real choice and getting out of the house after school would be a good thing. what a wonderful way to start my musical career.
that all being said, i think that my fall eartraining class probably falls into a similar category.
it was added at the last minute and many students (not all, the other half were very hardworking) were probably late adds and transfers who might not have the best organizational skills and motivation for college.
maybe this is the reason for the high concentration of fails?
i wonder if their parents skipped band night also?
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 to start this semester by giving a pretest assignment to my theory classes to find out what they knew before class started. the results were more encouraging and my current students all were much stronger than the ones from last fall.
why could this be?
then i remembered a parallel from teaching 5th beginning band. let me digress...
every spring would spend a lot of time demonstrating and pretesting all incoming 5th graders to help them pick an instrument they would best succeed at. we had parent meetings, letters home, and many conversations with the students about playing in the band or orchestra in the fall. our two main goals were to put the student on an instrument he/she could be immediately successful on, and have a relatively balanced instrumentation. through this process i noticed a few unsettling patterns evolve every year.
no matter how much we tried and educate the parents about the program, there are some that fight it or choose not to participate until the last minute (the program was mandatory for all 5th graders). the problems that i started to see was that all these families who came in at the end (or not at all) were left playing the least popular instruments (trombone and tuba). this was mostly because parents cannot see their ten year old playing such a big instrument. we tried to combat this buying a class set so they could keep the one they rented at home.
for the first few years these students were the least likely to have any musical support at home. the result was high concentrations of students with little interest and parental support on the most needed instruments. the thing that really started to piss me off was when i realized i was one of those kids.
my parents skipped the "band night" and probably was pushed into playing trombone because that is all that was left. i instinctively knew there was no real choice and getting out of the house after school would be a good thing. what a wonderful way to start my musical career.
that all being said, i think that my fall eartraining class probably falls into a similar category.
it was added at the last minute and many students (not all, the other half were very hardworking) were probably late adds and transfers who might not have the best organizational skills and motivation for college.
maybe this is the reason for the high concentration of fails?
i wonder if their parents skipped band night also?
Labels: teaching
posted by paul bailey at
11:17 AM
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