How do you get your music?
Well, here it is, the last blog of the semester. Coming up with blog ideas has been a challenge within itself. Sometimes articles jumped out at me and sometimes I had to search long and hard to come up with something I wanted to blog about. I have enjoyed reading all of my classmates’ blogs over the past 16 weeks. Being able to share ideas and ‘discuss’ them with classmates/colleagues as been a valuable, albeit time consuming part of this class. I have gained an understanding of the many ways blogs can be utilized in and out of the classroom. Hopefully when I return to the classroom I will be able to incorporate some of these ideas.
Now, without any further adieu, here is my last blog.
In one of my other graduate courses, I read a research paper about copyright issues. Being a music teacher, I quite often find myself at a crossroads of infringing on copyright laws in one way or another. In this paper, a music teacher found it quite disturbing how little students knew about copyright laws or what little respect people had for them. The students actually thought that copyright meant that they had a right to copy music. Students think that just because they have a cd burner, they have the right to copy music and do what they want with it. This line of thinking is what got a student from Boston University in deep doo doo.
Have you ever downloaded a song off the internet from Kazaa, Limewire, or Napster or any other music sharing site? Did you think twice about the legality of doing so? The premise of these sites was that you would just share the music you legally obtained (bought) with millions of other people via the internet. It soon became a process of other people just ‘ripping’ tracks any time from anyone. This is where the music industry has the problem. This is what got Joel Tenenbaum from Providence, Rhode Island in such hot water. In fact, according to this article he has been ordered to pay four recording labels a total of $675,000 in damages, To me, that is just a ludicrous amount for the ‘crime’ he committed. He is expected to pay $22,500 for each song he illegally obtained. That is crazy. How did this student get singled out and prosecuted. I would imagine every student in my school could potentially face the same charges as this guy did. I see the kids walking around with their I-pods loaded with thousands of songs. I don’t suppose they paid for each and every one of them. According to the law, that is not legal. But, how does that differ from the days of yore, where you let somebody borrow your records, cassettes, 8-tracks or CD’s. (Some of you probably don’t even know what records, cassettes or 8-tracks are. I once had a student ask me if records are those ‘really big CDs). Anyway, the threat of getting into random trouble like Mr. Tenenbaum has is enough to keep me from ‘ripping’ any music from any site. I definitely subscribe to i-tunes now and pay the low fee for any songs I want.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Blog 15
What can you sing at your school Christmas/Winter Program?
At this time every year as a music teacher, I struggle with finding appropriate music to put on the winter concert that is held in December. I am still able to call it the Christmas program. I always have been able to. I am lucky, because I don’t have to be so careful with the music I pick out. I can put any sort of songs on the program regardless of religious content or not. I try to mix it up. I usually put secular holiday songs as well as religious Christmas songs together on a program. I have never had any issues from students, parents, administrators or community. In fact I can remember one year I had the elementary students perform a little ‘musical’ about Santa and his goings on in Branson Missouri. I was asked by a pastor’s wife if I could incorporate things about the birth of Christ into this little musical to benefit her kids as well as all the others. This was such an unconventional request. It is usually the other way around, where you are not allowed to use anything related to Christ or religion in any sort of public school performance. We are a very small, close knit community and I don’t think it would ever be an issue if I used religious music for my concerts. But I suppose I should be prepared if it ever becomes a problem just like it has for a school in New Jersey. I found this article quite interesting because the courts upheld the decision to not allow religious music in winter concerts. The schools involved even went so far as to list what holiday songs they deem appropriate and what songs have religious overtones and should not be used. But, the kicker is that the same school, the same music kids, the same teachers are allowed to use these same disallowed public performance songs in the regular curriculum as learning devices. What? Doesn’t that seem quite contradictory? The basis of choral music is religious and I think it is an absolute shame to remove some of the best music just because it comes from the religious side. I found it interesting that this article also said the school has used songs such as "Waters of Babylon (psalm 137)," "Jubilate," and "Agnus Dei/Cum Sanctis" even after 2004 when the complaints had been made. Why are these songs okay, but not “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” or “Silent Night”? My theory is that the aforementioned songs are Latin and the complainants probably don’t know what they mean. That sure sounds cynical doesn’t it?
What is your public school allowed to do? How do you feel about it? Hope you are enjoying the holiday music that is playing everywhere your ear can reach these days whether it is secular or sacred!
At this time every year as a music teacher, I struggle with finding appropriate music to put on the winter concert that is held in December. I am still able to call it the Christmas program. I always have been able to. I am lucky, because I don’t have to be so careful with the music I pick out. I can put any sort of songs on the program regardless of religious content or not. I try to mix it up. I usually put secular holiday songs as well as religious Christmas songs together on a program. I have never had any issues from students, parents, administrators or community. In fact I can remember one year I had the elementary students perform a little ‘musical’ about Santa and his goings on in Branson Missouri. I was asked by a pastor’s wife if I could incorporate things about the birth of Christ into this little musical to benefit her kids as well as all the others. This was such an unconventional request. It is usually the other way around, where you are not allowed to use anything related to Christ or religion in any sort of public school performance. We are a very small, close knit community and I don’t think it would ever be an issue if I used religious music for my concerts. But I suppose I should be prepared if it ever becomes a problem just like it has for a school in New Jersey. I found this article quite interesting because the courts upheld the decision to not allow religious music in winter concerts. The schools involved even went so far as to list what holiday songs they deem appropriate and what songs have religious overtones and should not be used. But, the kicker is that the same school, the same music kids, the same teachers are allowed to use these same disallowed public performance songs in the regular curriculum as learning devices. What? Doesn’t that seem quite contradictory? The basis of choral music is religious and I think it is an absolute shame to remove some of the best music just because it comes from the religious side. I found it interesting that this article also said the school has used songs such as "Waters of Babylon (psalm 137)," "Jubilate," and "Agnus Dei/Cum Sanctis" even after 2004 when the complaints had been made. Why are these songs okay, but not “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” or “Silent Night”? My theory is that the aforementioned songs are Latin and the complainants probably don’t know what they mean. That sure sounds cynical doesn’t it?
What is your public school allowed to do? How do you feel about it? Hope you are enjoying the holiday music that is playing everywhere your ear can reach these days whether it is secular or sacred!
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Blog 14
Master’s Degree = No Salary Increase. Is it worth it?
We are home safe and sound after the birth of our precious baby boy. Everyone is adjusting to life with a baby in the house again. All is well!
This is so NOT what I needed to be reading right now. There is an urge to halt paying extra salary to teachers who earn an advanced degree in education and teaching. The reason being is that there is no correlation between a teacher getting an advance degree and student achievement improvement. In fact , in the article “Halt Urged to Paying Teachers For Earning Master's Degrees” by Stephen Sawchuk, Raegen Miller states that it is known that the relationship between the advanced degree and student achievement is NON-existent. It is thought that funding for compensation policies that are tied to improvement in student achievement would be a better use of money.
This is very upsetting to me. One of the main reasons I decided to earn my masters degree was for the pay increase. Our school recently added a master’s lane to our salary schedule. I was non-renewed as a music teacher at my school for the present school year. I was offered my same job back, just at a 60% load/pay. I thought I would get my masters degree to help alleviate the loss of income from the down sizing move made by my school. Surprisingly, our school is one of a very few around the area that even have a master’s lane in the salary schedule.
I don’t really understand this movement. What other profession would discourage advance education to improve employee job performance. I just can’t think of any. It really seems so counter- productive. We as teachers are always required to maintain our licensure by taking professional development classes. If you read the first paragraph in my link for professional development it gives a great definition of what PD should be and why it is important. We need so many of these credits each year to uphold our license. I don’t know about you, but the classes I have taken for professional development reasons tend to be fluff or worthless in reality. Usually, for me, the classes have nothing to do with my discipline. I just pick one that is offered and hope for the best. Wouldn’t it be a much better idea to have legitimate, serious education in the form of a master’s degree to improve our teaching profession? For years I had no interest in advancing my education as a teacher simply because there was no monetary reward for it. It was as if my school actually frowned upon teachers getting them. After a very bold move on behalf of the school board, a master’s schedule was added to our salary schedule. Only then did I entertain the idea of an advance degree. But it seems like we are back to square one if this idea of no pay for advance degree catches on. That would be a shame, to say the least. What do you think?
We are home safe and sound after the birth of our precious baby boy. Everyone is adjusting to life with a baby in the house again. All is well!
This is so NOT what I needed to be reading right now. There is an urge to halt paying extra salary to teachers who earn an advanced degree in education and teaching. The reason being is that there is no correlation between a teacher getting an advance degree and student achievement improvement. In fact , in the article “Halt Urged to Paying Teachers For Earning Master's Degrees” by Stephen Sawchuk, Raegen Miller states that it is known that the relationship between the advanced degree and student achievement is NON-existent. It is thought that funding for compensation policies that are tied to improvement in student achievement would be a better use of money.
This is very upsetting to me. One of the main reasons I decided to earn my masters degree was for the pay increase. Our school recently added a master’s lane to our salary schedule. I was non-renewed as a music teacher at my school for the present school year. I was offered my same job back, just at a 60% load/pay. I thought I would get my masters degree to help alleviate the loss of income from the down sizing move made by my school. Surprisingly, our school is one of a very few around the area that even have a master’s lane in the salary schedule.
I don’t really understand this movement. What other profession would discourage advance education to improve employee job performance. I just can’t think of any. It really seems so counter- productive. We as teachers are always required to maintain our licensure by taking professional development classes. If you read the first paragraph in my link for professional development it gives a great definition of what PD should be and why it is important. We need so many of these credits each year to uphold our license. I don’t know about you, but the classes I have taken for professional development reasons tend to be fluff or worthless in reality. Usually, for me, the classes have nothing to do with my discipline. I just pick one that is offered and hope for the best. Wouldn’t it be a much better idea to have legitimate, serious education in the form of a master’s degree to improve our teaching profession? For years I had no interest in advancing my education as a teacher simply because there was no monetary reward for it. It was as if my school actually frowned upon teachers getting them. After a very bold move on behalf of the school board, a master’s schedule was added to our salary schedule. Only then did I entertain the idea of an advance degree. But it seems like we are back to square one if this idea of no pay for advance degree catches on. That would be a shame, to say the least. What do you think?
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Blog 13
Learning Through Music; Practical Suggestions for the Elementary Teacher
Music is such an important part of most people’s lives. It is so much a part of it that we probably don’t even realize the extent to which it impacts us. Have you ever thought about all the places you hear music and why you hear music? There is music everywhere you go. I was so tickled when I found this article that I had to use it for my next blog. I was hoping to find something about maternity leave, but try as I might, I couldn’t find anything. As you are reading this I am in the hospital having my 2nd child. So I thought it would be interesting to do some research on maternity leave policies in schools. I am on a sabbatical this school year so I don’t have to worry about taking time of for the birth of my child, but with my first child I was so disgusted with my schools’ leave policy. But, I digress. No need to get into that now that I found an even better, less aggravating topic!
The article “Learning through Music; Practical Suggestions for the Elementary Teacher” brings up how easy it is to incorporate music into a plethora of lesson plans, and rather simply at that. It doesn’t take much to create a little ditty to help remember some facts from a lesson. It always seems like in my music classes I am thinking of ways to cross curriculum via my lessons. Now it is time for other disciplines to cross curriculum with music. As I was looking for articles about this I came across this awesome video. You just have to take the time to view it. It is two guys that have taken valuable content from lessons and put it to rap. As they claim, it is a form of the SchoolHouse Rock of old, with a new hip hop twist.
Tina Jordan, the author of the article came up with a list of 5 ways to help non-music teachers incorporate music into ‘regular’ lessons.
1. Music as Transition/Classroom Management – In tradition of the “clean up” song in pre-school, music can signal students to attend to a task in a specific time frame. With Yakity Yak Don’t Talk Back, students are enthusiastic while they “pick up the papers and the trash” before transitioning to the next subject or leaving for the day. Using age appropriate songs, students of all ages can listen to musical cues to follow procedures in much the same way.
2. Music to Calm and Attend– Music can soothe, stimulate, or excite the students in your classroom to attend to learning. Soft background instrumentals can calm students as they enter the learning environment after recess or as they come excited for the morning routine. Using Good Day Sunshine by the Beatles, for instance, could energize and motivate students who are lagging and need an extra “oomph” to start their day.
3. Music to Build Community – Songs can create a since of cohesiveness and cooperation through a shared love of music. Brooke Cherry, a third grade teacher, challenged her students to nominate and vote on a theme song for their class. They overwhelmingly chose We are the Champions to help motivate and encourage each other during their first experience with the state assessment and the rigorous curriculum they felt they would experience that year. She used their song to enhance her writing curriculum as her students wrote about, defined, and described qualities of a champion. As they shared these personal perspectives with each other, they devised a class pledge to remind them to strive toward their shared set of goals.
4. Music to Enhance Creativity- Music unlocks a plethora of creativity and inspiration to students. For example, Betty Smith, a first grade teacher, uses the song What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong to arouse her first graders to think how they would imagine a “wonderful world.” Each of her students was given lines of the song to mentally visualize and then illustrate its beautiful theme through art. Fellow teachers, parents and colleagues were impressed with the complexity of their thinking as they show-cased their creativity and their interpretation of the song’s message. She even used different versions of the song to demonstrate how different artists could produce a different image and meaning to the lyrics simply by using different rhythms and vocal styles. With the depth of thinking in this activity, Mrs. Smith reached every level of Bloom's Taxonomy. Powerful indeed!
5. Music to Support ESL Learners- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said, “Music is the universal language of mankind.” Using music bridges the culture gap in the classroom. Regardless of race, religion, or language all enjoy and can relate through music. Holly Zalenski, an ESL teacher, used Christmas Carols of different regions to introduce vocabulary and American culture. Using the Christmas carols also enhanced her reading instruction as the students searched for the main idea, or “the gist” as she called it, of the song’s printed lyrics. Students repeatedly used the printed lyrics to allow students the time to work on reading fluency effectively. Ms. Zalenski confirmed, “Music was our common thread when the spoken word often becomes lost in translation.”
Here are just a few ways that I have seen my fellow teachers use music to help their lessons:
My Kindergarten, First and Second graders came into music class one day with a song to teach me. They had been studying the planets in our solar system and they had a catchy tune to learn and remember the names of the planets. They were so excited to sing it for me. This was at the time Pluto was demoted as a planet. So for our spring concert we sang their planet song and a song I had already planned on doing about the plight of Pluto.
Who can forget “Fifty Nifty United States” It is the song that lists, in alphabetical order, the names of all the United States. As a music teacher I have gotten a lot of mileage out of this one.
You don’t even have to be good at music to incorporate it into your classes. Trust me, I AM a music teacher and little kids absolutely don’t care what you sound like. They just love to sing and use music. If you have any ways you have found fun and innovative to use music in your classroom feel free to share!
Reference
Jordan, T. (2009, July 30). Learning through music; practical suggestions for the elementary teacher. Retrieved from http://www.edarticle.com/k-12-subject-areas/the-arts/learning-through-music%3B-practical-suggestions-for-the-elementary-teacher.html on November 14, 2009
Music is such an important part of most people’s lives. It is so much a part of it that we probably don’t even realize the extent to which it impacts us. Have you ever thought about all the places you hear music and why you hear music? There is music everywhere you go. I was so tickled when I found this article that I had to use it for my next blog. I was hoping to find something about maternity leave, but try as I might, I couldn’t find anything. As you are reading this I am in the hospital having my 2nd child. So I thought it would be interesting to do some research on maternity leave policies in schools. I am on a sabbatical this school year so I don’t have to worry about taking time of for the birth of my child, but with my first child I was so disgusted with my schools’ leave policy. But, I digress. No need to get into that now that I found an even better, less aggravating topic!
The article “Learning through Music; Practical Suggestions for the Elementary Teacher” brings up how easy it is to incorporate music into a plethora of lesson plans, and rather simply at that. It doesn’t take much to create a little ditty to help remember some facts from a lesson. It always seems like in my music classes I am thinking of ways to cross curriculum via my lessons. Now it is time for other disciplines to cross curriculum with music. As I was looking for articles about this I came across this awesome video. You just have to take the time to view it. It is two guys that have taken valuable content from lessons and put it to rap. As they claim, it is a form of the SchoolHouse Rock of old, with a new hip hop twist.
Tina Jordan, the author of the article came up with a list of 5 ways to help non-music teachers incorporate music into ‘regular’ lessons.
1. Music as Transition/Classroom Management – In tradition of the “clean up” song in pre-school, music can signal students to attend to a task in a specific time frame. With Yakity Yak Don’t Talk Back, students are enthusiastic while they “pick up the papers and the trash” before transitioning to the next subject or leaving for the day. Using age appropriate songs, students of all ages can listen to musical cues to follow procedures in much the same way.
2. Music to Calm and Attend– Music can soothe, stimulate, or excite the students in your classroom to attend to learning. Soft background instrumentals can calm students as they enter the learning environment after recess or as they come excited for the morning routine. Using Good Day Sunshine by the Beatles, for instance, could energize and motivate students who are lagging and need an extra “oomph” to start their day.
3. Music to Build Community – Songs can create a since of cohesiveness and cooperation through a shared love of music. Brooke Cherry, a third grade teacher, challenged her students to nominate and vote on a theme song for their class. They overwhelmingly chose We are the Champions to help motivate and encourage each other during their first experience with the state assessment and the rigorous curriculum they felt they would experience that year. She used their song to enhance her writing curriculum as her students wrote about, defined, and described qualities of a champion. As they shared these personal perspectives with each other, they devised a class pledge to remind them to strive toward their shared set of goals.
4. Music to Enhance Creativity- Music unlocks a plethora of creativity and inspiration to students. For example, Betty Smith, a first grade teacher, uses the song What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong to arouse her first graders to think how they would imagine a “wonderful world.” Each of her students was given lines of the song to mentally visualize and then illustrate its beautiful theme through art. Fellow teachers, parents and colleagues were impressed with the complexity of their thinking as they show-cased their creativity and their interpretation of the song’s message. She even used different versions of the song to demonstrate how different artists could produce a different image and meaning to the lyrics simply by using different rhythms and vocal styles. With the depth of thinking in this activity, Mrs. Smith reached every level of Bloom's Taxonomy. Powerful indeed!
5. Music to Support ESL Learners- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said, “Music is the universal language of mankind.” Using music bridges the culture gap in the classroom. Regardless of race, religion, or language all enjoy and can relate through music. Holly Zalenski, an ESL teacher, used Christmas Carols of different regions to introduce vocabulary and American culture. Using the Christmas carols also enhanced her reading instruction as the students searched for the main idea, or “the gist” as she called it, of the song’s printed lyrics. Students repeatedly used the printed lyrics to allow students the time to work on reading fluency effectively. Ms. Zalenski confirmed, “Music was our common thread when the spoken word often becomes lost in translation.”
Here are just a few ways that I have seen my fellow teachers use music to help their lessons:
My Kindergarten, First and Second graders came into music class one day with a song to teach me. They had been studying the planets in our solar system and they had a catchy tune to learn and remember the names of the planets. They were so excited to sing it for me. This was at the time Pluto was demoted as a planet. So for our spring concert we sang their planet song and a song I had already planned on doing about the plight of Pluto.
Who can forget “Fifty Nifty United States” It is the song that lists, in alphabetical order, the names of all the United States. As a music teacher I have gotten a lot of mileage out of this one.
You don’t even have to be good at music to incorporate it into your classes. Trust me, I AM a music teacher and little kids absolutely don’t care what you sound like. They just love to sing and use music. If you have any ways you have found fun and innovative to use music in your classroom feel free to share!
Reference
Jordan, T. (2009, July 30). Learning through music; practical suggestions for the elementary teacher. Retrieved from http://www.edarticle.com/k-12-subject-areas/the-arts/learning-through-music%3B-practical-suggestions-for-the-elementary-teacher.html on November 14, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Blog 12
Those who teach, don’t need to talk
What do you do when you have laryngitis but don’t really feel sick? It is kind of hard to go to school and teach a classroom full of rambunctious kids with no voice. Well, now you don’t have to call in sick. Heather Wolpert-Gawron wrote a great little article about what to do when you don’t have a voice in the classroom. I thought her ideas of what to do while on “mute” were very relevant since we have been discussing classroom management ideas lately. Ms. Wolpert-Gawron met her students at the door and gave a list of three things she instructed her students to do even before they set foot in her class. She didn’t let on that she had no voice. The kids followed her instructions and as her story goes, it sounds like she had a very productive day with her students. At one point she used her computer hooked up to her LCD projector and spoke to her kids via the typing on screen. She even had a clever way to tell if her middle school kids were paying attention to what she was ‘saying’ on screen. She had them stick out their tongue when they completed reading the instructions. Ingenious!
The ideas that Ms. Wolpert-Gawron had are not actually new to me. I have done things like this when I have had no voice. As a music teacher you can feel totally lost without a voice! But as she did, I found great success in conducting class without speaking. It was actually kind of fun. You would be surprised at how attentive kids can be when you whisper, especially when they expect you to be loud and vocal. It has actually been one of my better classroom management tactics. The kids are so intent on listening to you that I suspect even more can be accomplished with the plans than with full voice. I have actually tried doing this on days when health and voice are working just fine. As with the teacher in the article, I have found charades to be an effective form of communication. I have found kids of all ages really get into this. Anything that resembles a game is always a hit. I hadn’t thought of it, but the use of the laptop and LCD projector is great too. I have a Promethean board hooked up to my laptop in my classroom. I will definitely be using this when I go ‘mute’ again. Clearly, you have to be totally prepared and organized to pull something like this off, but it is a great experiment in classroom management.
The author of this article teaches language arts, speech and debate, but as I have said, I have done things like this in the music room. Give it a try! Awhile back we had a discussion question that asked to give our favorite quote. The last paragraph of this article will give you some very insightful words of advice that you could hold in your important quote repertoire.
“Teaching doesn’t require volume. Classroom management doesn’t require yelling. Being in control is about humor, it’s about having your antennae up, and it’s about being creative enough to make every moment valuable.”
What do you do when you have laryngitis but don’t really feel sick? It is kind of hard to go to school and teach a classroom full of rambunctious kids with no voice. Well, now you don’t have to call in sick. Heather Wolpert-Gawron wrote a great little article about what to do when you don’t have a voice in the classroom. I thought her ideas of what to do while on “mute” were very relevant since we have been discussing classroom management ideas lately. Ms. Wolpert-Gawron met her students at the door and gave a list of three things she instructed her students to do even before they set foot in her class. She didn’t let on that she had no voice. The kids followed her instructions and as her story goes, it sounds like she had a very productive day with her students. At one point she used her computer hooked up to her LCD projector and spoke to her kids via the typing on screen. She even had a clever way to tell if her middle school kids were paying attention to what she was ‘saying’ on screen. She had them stick out their tongue when they completed reading the instructions. Ingenious!
The ideas that Ms. Wolpert-Gawron had are not actually new to me. I have done things like this when I have had no voice. As a music teacher you can feel totally lost without a voice! But as she did, I found great success in conducting class without speaking. It was actually kind of fun. You would be surprised at how attentive kids can be when you whisper, especially when they expect you to be loud and vocal. It has actually been one of my better classroom management tactics. The kids are so intent on listening to you that I suspect even more can be accomplished with the plans than with full voice. I have actually tried doing this on days when health and voice are working just fine. As with the teacher in the article, I have found charades to be an effective form of communication. I have found kids of all ages really get into this. Anything that resembles a game is always a hit. I hadn’t thought of it, but the use of the laptop and LCD projector is great too. I have a Promethean board hooked up to my laptop in my classroom. I will definitely be using this when I go ‘mute’ again. Clearly, you have to be totally prepared and organized to pull something like this off, but it is a great experiment in classroom management.
The author of this article teaches language arts, speech and debate, but as I have said, I have done things like this in the music room. Give it a try! Awhile back we had a discussion question that asked to give our favorite quote. The last paragraph of this article will give you some very insightful words of advice that you could hold in your important quote repertoire.
“Teaching doesn’t require volume. Classroom management doesn’t require yelling. Being in control is about humor, it’s about having your antennae up, and it’s about being creative enough to make every moment valuable.”
Reference
Wolpert-Gawron, H. (2009, November 04). Those who teach, don't need to talk. Teacher Magazine, Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2009/11/04/wolpert_gawron_tln.html?tkn=UUQFEyGplyAc5T7u8g636kEKm/79slI9UVYT on November 09, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Blog 11
How do you grade? Subjectively vs. Objectively
I found this article headline to be intriguing. Grading is always a hot topic and subjective grading is even more juicy. This article brings up some interesting points. I agree with the article that there certainly needs to be consistency when it comes to grading. I don’t know if that will ever be obtainable though, because there are so many different types of classes that all require different types of grading practices. I was rather dismayed by the results of the experiment a grading expert performed with 10,000 educators from the US, Canada, Australia and South America. They were given a set of 10 scores and asked to determine a semester final grade. Results netted grades across the whole gamut from A to F. That does seems a little inconsistent.
How do you grade? Why do you grade? Have you ever wondered if there might be a better way? Are all your grades based on objective material? I find it very difficult to grade in my discipline of music. Things are quite subjective when grading a performance based class like band or choir. I generally grade things like participation and attitude more than I would grade ability and accuracy. In my situation, I am desperate to keep kids in my music classes because of small school enrollment. So, I am more likely to hand out A’s and B’s just to keep the numbers higher in my class. A student is going to take band because they ‘know’ they are going to get an easy A more likely than if they think they are going to have to work for a grade or earn one. It is a sad reality, but it is what it is in a small school.
To help me combat grading confusion I am now the proud user of rubrics. I have spent many hours developing my own rubrics for my performance based classes. I spent many years trying to explain why Little Johnny got the grade he did when Little Susie got a higher grade. It just really gave me a great tool for justification and explanation. I am still grading the same way I always have, I just now have it written out in a neat little plan which people are more likely to accept than just my word. I still feel the same way about needing to keep kids in music classes to be able to have a band, but now, kids seem to accept having to earn their grade when they know what they are working for.
The LA Times article refers to the total transformation of the Grand Island Public Schools grading systems. It lists some of the highlights of the transformation. I am not sure I agree with them. It is worth checking out the link to the Grand Island schools to see their whole explanation of their overhaul.
I did really get a kick out of the last sentence of the LA Times article. “Giving kids no credit for not turning in work or flunking them in some other way defeats the purpose, he said. A better result would be to force them to do the work, before school, during recess or after school.” This statement is coming from a grading expert? Have you ever tried to force a student to do anything? Good luck with that. That just screams trouble to me.
I found this article headline to be intriguing. Grading is always a hot topic and subjective grading is even more juicy. This article brings up some interesting points. I agree with the article that there certainly needs to be consistency when it comes to grading. I don’t know if that will ever be obtainable though, because there are so many different types of classes that all require different types of grading practices. I was rather dismayed by the results of the experiment a grading expert performed with 10,000 educators from the US, Canada, Australia and South America. They were given a set of 10 scores and asked to determine a semester final grade. Results netted grades across the whole gamut from A to F. That does seems a little inconsistent.
How do you grade? Why do you grade? Have you ever wondered if there might be a better way? Are all your grades based on objective material? I find it very difficult to grade in my discipline of music. Things are quite subjective when grading a performance based class like band or choir. I generally grade things like participation and attitude more than I would grade ability and accuracy. In my situation, I am desperate to keep kids in my music classes because of small school enrollment. So, I am more likely to hand out A’s and B’s just to keep the numbers higher in my class. A student is going to take band because they ‘know’ they are going to get an easy A more likely than if they think they are going to have to work for a grade or earn one. It is a sad reality, but it is what it is in a small school.
To help me combat grading confusion I am now the proud user of rubrics. I have spent many hours developing my own rubrics for my performance based classes. I spent many years trying to explain why Little Johnny got the grade he did when Little Susie got a higher grade. It just really gave me a great tool for justification and explanation. I am still grading the same way I always have, I just now have it written out in a neat little plan which people are more likely to accept than just my word. I still feel the same way about needing to keep kids in music classes to be able to have a band, but now, kids seem to accept having to earn their grade when they know what they are working for.
The LA Times article refers to the total transformation of the Grand Island Public Schools grading systems. It lists some of the highlights of the transformation. I am not sure I agree with them. It is worth checking out the link to the Grand Island schools to see their whole explanation of their overhaul.
I did really get a kick out of the last sentence of the LA Times article. “Giving kids no credit for not turning in work or flunking them in some other way defeats the purpose, he said. A better result would be to force them to do the work, before school, during recess or after school.” This statement is coming from a grading expert? Have you ever tried to force a student to do anything? Good luck with that. That just screams trouble to me.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Being Falsely Accused as a Teacher
Have you ever been in a situation of being accused of a wrong doing by a student? Have you ever worried about repercussions of disciplining a vindictive student? Have you ever been under investigation by Child Protective Services because of something that was reported that occurred in your classroom? Have you ever seen your career and possibly your life flash before your eyes because you know you have been falsely accused of some form of abuse by a student and their family? If you can answer yes to any of the previous questions, you will be empathetic to the teachers and their stories in this video from Video On Demand/ABC News. If you can’t answer yes to any of the previous questions consider yourself lucky and watch in dismay as these teachers endured horrible circumstances because they were accused of something and could do nothing against public scrutiny to prove themselves innocent. It made my skin crawl after watching the video because the statistics show that music teachers are most likely to be involved in an ordeal like this because of the nature of their work. I am a music teacher and can totally relate to that statement.
There are many different ways a teacher can find themselves in ‘hot water’. Students claim sexual abuse, physical abuse and emotional abuse just to name a few. The minute the accusations fly the teacher is automatically presumed guilty. Just like the beginning of the ABC video indicated, there is now a heightened awareness of these offenses and swift action is taken to fix the problem. In the case of Albert Thompson, the substitute from Chicago, he subbed in a classroom for one day. When he woke the next morning he was the headline on the news. Kids reported he fondled them. He hadn’t even been notified by authorities and the school was calling in counselors to help kids that had been traumatized. What happened to innocent until proven guilty? It turns out he was innocent. Thanks to careful police work, it was discovered that a 4th grade student was upset about being disciplined so she bribed her classmates with a dollar if they would make up stories to get the sub in trouble. The charges were dropped in a short time, but how do you recover from that? You never do. Trust me, I know. I was in this very same boat. I went through a CPS investigation. I had no support from administration, and my union rep told me to just apologize to the family and all would go away. Thank goodness for scrupulous investigating by the CPS rep (she was the one I feared the most and she turned out to be my biggest ally). She deemed the accusations to be invalid and all was dismissed. I was lucky, no real lasting implications, except in my own private hell.
If you Google or Dogpile these three words: Falsely Accused Teachers, you will find endless articles of the plight of wrongly accused teachers. It is simply heartbreaking. It is hard enough as it is to be a teacher, let alone have to worry on a daily basis about what a student could go home and make up about you. What ever happened to just being a teacher?
Have you ever been in a situation of being accused of a wrong doing by a student? Have you ever worried about repercussions of disciplining a vindictive student? Have you ever been under investigation by Child Protective Services because of something that was reported that occurred in your classroom? Have you ever seen your career and possibly your life flash before your eyes because you know you have been falsely accused of some form of abuse by a student and their family? If you can answer yes to any of the previous questions, you will be empathetic to the teachers and their stories in this video from Video On Demand/ABC News. If you can’t answer yes to any of the previous questions consider yourself lucky and watch in dismay as these teachers endured horrible circumstances because they were accused of something and could do nothing against public scrutiny to prove themselves innocent. It made my skin crawl after watching the video because the statistics show that music teachers are most likely to be involved in an ordeal like this because of the nature of their work. I am a music teacher and can totally relate to that statement.
There are many different ways a teacher can find themselves in ‘hot water’. Students claim sexual abuse, physical abuse and emotional abuse just to name a few. The minute the accusations fly the teacher is automatically presumed guilty. Just like the beginning of the ABC video indicated, there is now a heightened awareness of these offenses and swift action is taken to fix the problem. In the case of Albert Thompson, the substitute from Chicago, he subbed in a classroom for one day. When he woke the next morning he was the headline on the news. Kids reported he fondled them. He hadn’t even been notified by authorities and the school was calling in counselors to help kids that had been traumatized. What happened to innocent until proven guilty? It turns out he was innocent. Thanks to careful police work, it was discovered that a 4th grade student was upset about being disciplined so she bribed her classmates with a dollar if they would make up stories to get the sub in trouble. The charges were dropped in a short time, but how do you recover from that? You never do. Trust me, I know. I was in this very same boat. I went through a CPS investigation. I had no support from administration, and my union rep told me to just apologize to the family and all would go away. Thank goodness for scrupulous investigating by the CPS rep (she was the one I feared the most and she turned out to be my biggest ally). She deemed the accusations to be invalid and all was dismissed. I was lucky, no real lasting implications, except in my own private hell.
If you Google or Dogpile these three words: Falsely Accused Teachers, you will find endless articles of the plight of wrongly accused teachers. It is simply heartbreaking. It is hard enough as it is to be a teacher, let alone have to worry on a daily basis about what a student could go home and make up about you. What ever happened to just being a teacher?
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