Today I finally finished my Letter of Intent

Today, I finished my letter of intent for yet another teaching set of positions in general music. These positions are from AUSL, another branch of Chicago Turnarounds. They wanted this fancy letter of intent. I think I can give it to them. Since I only wrote today and did not read anything formally, I will post my intent:

As a music teacher, I understand the importance of delivering a well-rounded musical curriculum to all students. With this well rounded curriculum comes the need to design and implement lessons that cater to the diverse needs of each child versus one learning style. A holistic approach which harnesses the intellectual and emotional facets of each child must be utilized to maximize learning. For all of this to occur, students must gain trust from teachers. The teacher has to communicate a passion for their trait and for each child.

Music encompasses every sense of the mind and heart. Positive instruction enables children to perform to their highest potential. Since music is so personal, as it is something created (unlike being able to produce the answer to a math problem), children must not be held back. When a child senses any form of negativity, resistance to showing creativity and musical expression occur. Eventually, the student will shy away from creating music and may never again choose to partake. My teaching style is one that harnesses the strengths of every child and one which allows for a weakness to become a teachable moment, not a regret on the student’s part.

Within this caring environment, I utilize a holistic approach to instruction. This allows for emotion to become part of musical understanding, comprehension and composition. I ask students to think beyond their normal skill levels and analyze music at a deeper level. Half of the appreciation of music comes from the abilities to be able to interpret it and make it one’s own; a composer writes music for our enjoyment. Teachers who allow students to make their own judgments about music in turn help them make their own story whilst listening or composing. A good teacher invites creativity and does not push past original thinking.

Encouraging a child’s creativity comes from the teacher’s fearless ability to cross the curriculum to teach; music teachers have the advantage of being able to fit any subject within their criteria. Every lesson I have ever taught involves cross-curricula planning. Math, science, history, English, foreign languages and art are just touching the surface of how I a manage this. I also like to address cultural studies. Various holidays, traditions and cultures are the best way to teach about music across the globe. Teaching in this style reaches all of the multiple intelligences within one classroom; this is also a way to encourage students of special needs and English language learners. When a teacher crosses the curriculum to bring something new and exciting to the music classroom, it is important to collaborate with other teachers. Having an open relationship with other faculty is important for students to see, as well. If they know faculty communicates openly, they feel more comfortable. A well established system of communication with faculty also brings more resources forward. Faculty peers are sometimes the greatest source of information a teacher can have within a school.

Each day, a successful music teacher must set learning goals. This can be managed by displaying them in a prominent place in the classroom. A focus question is also a good way to connect lessons to goals, as well. This ensures instructional time is maximized and there is a purpose set to what is being sung, played or explained. These goals and learning objectives and content objectives also specify how class time will be delegated thus maintaining focus and fluency. Without goals, students cannot be so sure as to what they are trying to accomplish or retain for a particular day.

To tie all of this instruction in music together, students must have an opportunity to perform. I have worked on many performances in my teaching career. I directed middle school choir in quarterly performances and a Spring Arts Festival; my children also had to sing for the State Superintendant of Education. At the high school level, my students sang for special events, concerts and many competitions. My elementary students performed in a county-wide competition held at my university. Allowing so many outlets of performance encouraged excitement in music and built steel nerves. All of these performances once again break down to collaboration. The teacher must work with the school to reserve facilities, maintain working relations with the custodial staff and keep parents informed (parents are sometimes the backbone of a good music program if communication is clear). Finally, organizational skills are necessary to make all of this possible.

A caring, respectable, talented teacher can ensure all of the above is possible. Music teachers are becoming few and far between. It is important to preserve such a delicate subject in schools with only the most compassionate educators. Teachers willing to get their hands and feet dirty and work with the kids are sure to create a successful music education curriculum and classroom environment.

Earlier today, I went to Garfield Park Conservatory, again, with one of my friends. We also went to the Cultural Center. He had never been to either of these places. We then went to visit my friend Chuck at JP Morgan in the Chase Tower which was nice. I had a great workout and I cleaned most of the apartment. Tomorrow, Bridget will begin moving some stuff in. I am really excited she is coming in. I think it will be a good thing. Today, I did read a little bit on the elliptical, but it was something I could hold in my hand (Game Change is pretty big); I read Butcher’s Storm Front. It is from a series of books that are about a wizard who lives and works in Chicago with the CPD.

Tomorrow, I will post pics from Garfield Park on there. They turned out really nicely. It was such a beautiful day. I am so excited I have off from work, as well. Oh...and I will get to see Avenue Q next Wednesday night!!! I am very excited.

Night. :)

Unsettled

Did not post yesterday. I went to bed at 7PM last night and woke up at 8:45 this morning. I tried working out but that didn't work so much this morning. I am tired and my stomach is bothering me. I cannot get a routine back at the gym anymore. UGH. I might go to a Cubs game at 1:30 today because it is free. We shall see.

101 Dalmations

Today I wrote a graduate school paper. Here it is...Enjoy. I figured it would be a good alternative to my reading since I did not get to touch that at all. Tomorrow, I can start again, I think. Here is the paper. It is LONG. I think it should be some value of entertainment.

Over the course of my teaching career, I have not had many second language learners in need of a pull-out program within my classroom. Most all of them have graduated from their program or were already English proficient; many maintained excellent grades within the self-contained classroom. As a fine arts teacher, specifically music, I am granted the ability to be creative in my lesson planning. There are no ends to the possibilities in one single music lesson for enhancing a student’s learning prowess. Music is a language which touches the hearts of everyone; at any place on this expansive planet, someone can be found with roots anchored in a culture with music at its core. Therefore, from my experience and learning, second language learners have been incredibly receptive to learning music and being assessed vocally (singing), through writing, oral assessment or aural assessment.

Over the past three years of teaching, I have taught around one thousand, three hundred children, coached seventy-five in track, led four hundred in service activities and student taught around nine hundred. Within the walls of my classroom, I have documented forty-five nations of origin of students. I found it utterly amazing that nearly ninety-nine percent of my children found music fascinating and loved coming to class. Success was undeniable. I managed to keep the children enthusiastic, therefore, their positive energy in turn maintained my enthusiasm for teaching. I believe this is a valid point to make before I begin talking about assessments. The second language learners in my classroom were never shy or timid. They expressed opinions, needs and emotions at all times. They sang, they volunteered and they presented just as all of my native English speakers. With all of the enthusiasm in the classroom, it was easy to teach my Choir and Service Learning students. All minds were present, therefore, when it came time to assess what they learned, difficulties did NOT abound. My children knew what to expect. They knew to ask questions while learning. They knew not to be afraid to learn which in turn kept them from being afraid of an assessment.

Lexington Middle School was my first formal teaching assignment. I taught a total of four hundred fifty students in my year of teaching. Out of all of these students, only three were pulled from my classroom for ESL instruction (as an Exploratory teacher, I had to understand students would always be pulled from my class time because I was not a core academic teacher). The three girls pulled were in my Seventh Grade Choir. All three moved here from Mexico in their elementary years, but made significant gains in English language learning. In the classroom, only one characteristic separated them from the rest of the students: they were always together. To make them feel welcome, I spent time teaching lessons about Mexican music and culture and conducted numerous teamwork exercises to mix them with the rest of the students. Again, it is that feeling of being welcome in the classroom which allows opportunity for holistic learning.

My methods of teaching in all of my classes, especially my Seventh Grade Choir, were to cross the curricula to enhance all fields of learning. Every lesson incorporated core academic subjects as well as movement and art. This way, each learning style was addressed within my classroom. I think Gardiner would have been proud if he would have walked in on any given day. As a result of all of this diversity in lesson planning, students excelled in the non-singing parts of my class such as music history and music theory. My ESL students were making the same grades as the rest of my children. I set my learning expectations early in the year (this being the fact that even though my classes were chosen, it did not mean the kids could goof off without worry of assignments, assessments and grades). Children knew I had high expectations during class and for test taking; they were aware of what to expect when the time came to be tested on various musical subjects.

The test I chose to critique is one on the Baroque Period. An important part of learning Choral music is to study the various periods from which particular pieces come. My students happened to be singing the first movement of Vivaldi’s Gloria. Appropriately, I taught parallel lessons (a three week unit) on the Baroque Period highlighting key composers, musical structures, events, terminology and foundations of the period. Every three days, I would administer quizzes to keep the information fresh. The children knew to keep a portfolio (as outlined in the syllabus at the beginning of the year) of artifacts and notes collected in the music classroom. I held everyone accountable for their own learning and wanted to give music validity within the other academic fields. Each Friday, I gave one “unit” test and returned it on Monday with the results. This way, I could find out what the students did not understand or capture while I was teaching; it also held me accountable for their learning and my teaching styles. At the end of the three weeks, I administered one large unit test to congeal all information. As a result of this testing, I found my English language learners, pulled out three times a week, were experiencing no difficulties in comprehending subject matter. As the paper progresses, I will discuss some of my teaching styles that might have contributed to their ease in test-taking within my classroom.

The particular subject matter of the test was the general history of music within the period. The bulk of the test was short answer and essay questions regarding facts, composers and their masterpieces. Most questions were comprehension questions and questions based on facts (Level One of Bloom’s Taxonomy). But, I also included many addressing the aesthetic and emotional values of music from the period; this form of interrogation allowed for a higher level of thinking and analysis on the students’ part. The students were forced to think “outside the box” in order to explain themselves. As I stated, I encourage creativity. I wanted to have a visual snapshot of what the children understood about the distinct styles of the period versus being able to provide fact-only textbook answers. I also needed to see how music affects them and their learning.

An example of a simple but powerful question of higher level thinking utilized is: How does Baroque music make you feel and why? As simple as this seems, it is actually pretty hard to answer, especially in the middle school levels. Feelings cannot always be described as fluidly as facts. Feel is a word connected with the soul; answering a question such as this requires thought not only from the mind but from the heart. My three ESL students scored as high if not higher on the questions addressing a higher level of thinking. They understood the content of the question. Their answers did not have completely correct spelling or grammatical structures, but the content was correct. In fact, they were quite creative in their responses; most of my native speakers could not provide creative answers. The answers were cut and dry, emotionless, not creative and basically straight to the point. As a teacher, it is easy to spot moments when students are rushing to finish a test versus take their time to answer correctly or give valid reasoning for their responses.

Questions addressing facts were generally all answered correctly by my ESL students, as well. The one thing I did notice that confused them was the different styles of music discussed in my Renaissance unit right before the Baroque. Because of similarities of styles in music between the two periods, terminology was scrambled. Music is like math and science in the respect that it requires a whole new content language to be learned. The plus and minus of math is equivalent to the forte and piano of music. I do not blame them for their mix-ups because my other students made similar mistakes.

The criterion validity of this test would NOT yield the same results for all ESL students as it did mine. I believe my three girls were stronger learners than most with their same background and had more formal training in English. I included such analytical questions because I could see the strengths within them and knew that even if grammatical structures and rules were not correct, content would be clear. Because of the former tests on the Renaissance period administered, I was able to structure the Baroque similarly. I knew the outcome would be the same if not better. The students knew what to expect, therefore they excelled. I know I would have had to adjust these tests for students with a weaker understanding of the English language. Most likely, I would have had to construct a test of various levels (including matching, fill in the blank and multiple choice) to help me understand their comprehension skills. When I grade, I focus on content; this is not to say that I do not highlight misspelled words and correct grammar. Focusing on content allows solidification of skills crossed over from writing in other academic subjects and maintains the organization of student thought processes.

My teaching encompasses a wide variety of activities, musical listening examples, samples of audio and video, art and academic instruction. The content is evenly skewed throughout each facet. The content validity of my instruction and tests directly line up. O’Malley and Pierce explain:

	The most important types of validity for performance assessments are content validity, or the match between the content of the assessment and the content of instruction…(O’Malley 19)

Instruction and assessment have to be one in the same. The content validity is one of the main factors in ensuring student success. I have never given a test without proper content validity; this test is an example. If the assessment and instruction do not directly align, the knowledge of actual student cannot be attained. They must also reflect each other because students need to see the purpose in what they are learning. If they are assessed on something different from what has been learned there is not validity to their outcome and for why they learned the material in the first place. The only type of exam that would not need sound content validity would be an entrance exam to a course to judge what students know, but even an assessment such as this must have a stated purpose and a follow-up displaying results.

The value of the Baroque Period test was overall tremendous. Units after were built upon this unit just as it was built upon the Renaissance. History has a chronology and in teaching history, there must be a chronology. The basis of this test re-enforced the children’s knowledge and skills and even interpretation (vocabulary was learned that described specific styles of singing developed in this period which apply to Vivaldi’s Gloria) of Baroque music and laid the foundation for the Classical, Romantic and Modern Periods. The test was later used as a teaching tool in other units. Instead of having the students utilize their entire portfolio and all notes on the Baroque Period, they could pull the test and use it as a resource since it highlighted the most important information.

If I teach a middle school in the future, I will continue to test in this manner. I found it successful because it allowed students to think in several ways. The test was designed to meet all learning abilities and not single out any one form of cognitive capabilities. Well constructed assessments and proper administration of these assessments is key to maintaining a rich learning environment.

If you survived that, you get a cookie. Avenue Q is next week. I also have to pay a power bill.

Night. :)