The American Educators Abroad crew on a 19.4km hike through the Tongariro Crossing
Mt. Ngauruhoe (background), the peak used as Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings movies!
Hey once again folks! My apologies for not having written in
so long, but there’s been SO much going on in terms of teaching, personal
situations, and my future as a teacher. We’ll get to all of those…eventually.
I’ll start with a bit about a major change that’s taken place since I last
wrote.
As many of you know, I’ve moved into a different host house
than the one I started in when I arrived in March. I don’t see a benefit to
elaborating as to why I left the first house, but I will just say that my
former host parents and I came to several disagreements during the weeks
leading up to my moving, and it was decided among all parties (them, me, and my
supervisors) that I should be moved. So, the day before the start of Term 2, I
moved to another house, and things have been absolutely swell ever since. I’m
well taken care of, respected, there’s pets running around for me to interact
with, and I can even go out back and jump in a hot tub to relax if I want to!
Karen is my host mum’s name, and she’s simply the most wonderful, thoughtful,
caring person I’ve spend extensive time with during my time here in New
Zealand. We’ve almost become more friends than host student/parent, as she’s
gone on a diet so I’m helping her by not letting her have biscuits after
dinner! And by biscuits, I mean cookies, of course. Oh, NZ lingo…
Ok, on to how the teaching has been going. I’ve really taken
on a lot more responsibilities since my last post, and it showed for a while
when I felt like I was under some pretty good stress. Throw in the factor of
starting the job search the week before term break, and you could say I was
pretty swamped for a while. Before the term break, I would say I had spent more
time with the Year 11 class than the others. I put together some pretty awesome
lessons on listening to and analyzing music from video games, to prepare them
for my part of their Term 2 composition task. Explanation of that…
One of the NCEA Level 1 standards that Mr. Cargill had
chosen for the Year 11s to meet is Achievement Standard 91092 - Compose two
original pieces of music. Since he knew that I have a background in
composition, he asked me if I would want to come up with a composition task to
meet one of those compositions. He taught the students about fanfares to
satisfy one of the composition requirements. I decided to take my love and
passion for video game music and turn that into something instructional. The
result has been my favorite lessons to teach so far at any level. I call it my
chance to totally “nerd out” when analyzing game music and teaching students
how to do the same. Yet, I sense that my students have caught on to my
enthusiasm for it, because the compositions that they’re churning out so far
are absolutely incredible. Since I’m leaving at the end of next week and the
students won’t be finished, Mr. Cargill has agreed to carry on my lessons after
I leave and to send me the final projects so I can give them my own grades and
comments.
Since the start of Term 2, not only have I added on more responsibilities
with the Year 10 and 12/13 classes, but my biggest project has been a new Year
9 class. This is not a class that has chosen to take music like the Year 9
class of Term 1. This is the class that rotates arts classes each term, and
this term is their turn in music. Mr. Cargill set me to be responsible for
teaching this class each and every lesson this term until I leave, and this by
far has been my biggest challenge of student teaching so far. Year 9 is the NZ
equivalent of 8th grade, so these students are only 13-14 years old.
It’s been my job to teach them music. As you can probably predict, my first
reaction to this was, “Ok, what the heck do I teach these kids in the realm of
music?” But of course, this is why we as student teachers have cooperating
teachers, isn’t it? Because their expertise and resources are invaluable to us
as beginning teachers. Both Mr. Cargill and Mr. Throp (part-time music teacher
at HNHS) gave me a few tips as to what to do with a brand new class that
doesn’t have any sort of music background. I took their suggestions, made them
my own, and we’ve been knee deep in a lesson on the blues and group performance
ever since. Their final projects for me are group performances of original
blues songs, due next week.
So, I thought that planning for these students was going to
be the biggest challenge I had to face. It wasn’t until I got to the first
class period with these students that I realized how much work was yet to be
done. Simply put, this class has absolutely pushed me to my limit in terms of
classroom management. For some reason, I hadn’t anticipated this being a huge
issue when I started teaching them, but by the end of that first lesson, it was
apparent that I had a challenge on my hands. (P.S. MaryBeth, this is why I’ve
held on to this topic for my PrePDP!) The big issue is that they’re 13-14 years
old, and that’s the age when they like to talk, and talk a lot. There’s a group
of four girls who I call the “pre-teen queens” that seem to be at the center of
it all. Anyway, I spent a decent amount of time the first lesson lecturing
about respect for me as the teacher, and respect for their classmates as
disruptions inhibit others’ learning as well. It became evident over the next
few class periods that that particular went straight in one ear and out the
other. Mr. Cargill watched me the first couple of times and suggested that I
was too nice, and that I wasn’t establishing myself as the ultimate authority
figure in my own classroom. He gave the advice that students that age can see
right through empty threats of discipline and will continue to be disruptive
until the something is actually done, and is done consistently. I thought about
that and realized that I was afraid of initiating discipline, because I would
think that if I disciplined a student, they would come back the next class
period resenting me, and as a result they wouldn’t pay as much attention as
they should to the lessons and would miss out on the learning opportunities.
Mr. Cargill reminded me that, for this age level, along with the ability to
talk forever comes a very short memory, and that, contrary to my belief,
students take discipline/punishment in stride and actually to learn the lesson
that the discipline means to teach. The next lesson, I had one of the chatty
girls, as well as a boy in class, act up one too many times, and I simply
pointed at them both and said, “I’ve had enough of your chatter. I’ll see you
two at lunch time.” They served a half-hour detention with me that day, and
what do you know, the next class period they came in quiet and respectful.
Since then, I have issued a few more lunch time detentions, and I believe that
my students finally know that I’m for real, I’m serious about creating a
classroom with the most learning potential, and if they mess around, I’m going
to come down on them.
Now, this has eliminated a lot of the excess talking from my
classroom, but it hasn’t completely wiped it out. I was thinking earlier this
week about what I could do to take the student’s energy and turn it into
something even more educational, and it dawned on me that I’ve been missing a
key aspect to my classroom management that could have well eliminated
disruptions from the start…routine! And wouldn’t you know it, this was the
realization that I had when I observed other teachers from my elementary
placement back in Oshkosh; they all had routines that their students knew and
followed every day. The last two lessons I’ve used the same routine: I always
meet the class outside the classroom, but now I’ve been giving them a heads up
that there is information on the board that they need to either copy down,
think about, or both, for a brief class discussion that everyone needs to be
prepared to participate in. They now also have the expectation that items for
discussion need to be written down in notebooks, so that I can call on any of
them and they’ll have an answer written down. After discussion, comes 5-10
minutes of silent written work, emphasis on the silent part, either reading a
handout about blues history and answering assessment questions or thinking
about keywords for that day’s class and writing down their thoughts on them.
Once they’ve done that, then they’re given time to break into their groups and
practice their songs for performance next week. At that time, they’re given the
notice that I’ll be asking for one of the groups to perform their song as a
work-in-progress in front of the rest of the class as a sort of check-up on the
progress they’re making in their group work. I call everyone back into the
classroom with about 6-8 minutes left, have a group perform, and then wrap up
the lesson with a discussion on the progress they’re making in their groups.
It’s proven effective, and I need to make sure it continues. The disruptions
have been absolutely minimal these last two periods and it’s been wonderful!
Whew! On to a bit about my future and we’ll wrap it up for
this time around. As many of you already know, I’ve been hired as the K-12
Music Teacher for the public school district of Underwood, North Dakota for
next school year! As I mentioned earlier, I started the job search about a week
before term break (around March 30-31). I got into a routine where every day I
would go online and check the job databases for Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas,
Iowa, Illiois, and Indiana and record which ones I could apply for. A lot of
districts simply asked for a cover letter, resume, and references, while others
also asked for a copy of the teaching license and/or university transcripts. I
sat down Saturday afternoon that week and completed my WECAN profile, tedious
as it was. I updated my resume, wrote a cover letter and set it up so I could
just plug in the info for whichever district I was applying to, and got an
unofficial copy of my transcripts from TitanWeb. Armed with my materials, I
sent application after application, and email after email to prospective
employers. But, as every student teacher goes through, I didn’t get any “bites”
for a few weeks, and started to get a bit disheartened. I don’t know if I was
on an ego trip or if I was just expecting too much, but I remember thinking to
myself that my international student teaching experience was going to set me
apart from other applicants and that I’d be getting email after email asking
for interviews. So it was pretty sobering to not get any responses for a while.
I took a bus down to Wellington for a night during break to catch the NZ
Symphony Orchestra, and spent a few days after that with my EA supervisor, John
Meade, and his wife Marian at their vacation house up on the Coromandel
Peninsula. A few days away from all the stress, coupled with the positive
change in NZ home life, seriously had an effect on the atmosphere as I came
back to school the first day of Term 2 and had not one, but two emails asking
for interviews! One was from Rice Lake, WI for a 5-12 Band position, and the
second was from this tiny little town called Underwood in North Dakota. Both
people asked if I could interview via Skype, and asked for a time that would
work well for me, given the substantial time difference between USA Central and
NZ. I replied to both that 8am would be perfect for me, as school doesn’t start
until 8:45, and 8am for me is 3pm the previous day for them. The superintendent
from Underwood responded and we set the time for 8am that Friday for me, 3pm
Thursday for them. The interview went decently well considering it was my first
actual interview, and obviously it went well enough because I got an email the
following Wednesday morning with their official job offer! I called the
superintendent a few days later from my computer and formally accepted his
offer, and now I am officially contracted to begin work as a teacher on August
15, 2012 with an in-service at school. Six long years in college and thousands
of dollars in school loans doesn’t really seem that bad now that I’ve got my
foot in that first and most crucial door. I still don’t know if this
international experience is what set me apart to the folks in Underwood, but
either way, this experience has definitely been worth it and I don’t regret
deciding to do this in any way, shape, or form.
Ok, that’s it for now! I’ll have another entry towards the
end of next week to provide a wrap-up to this incredible experience! Until
then, have a good one!
