It's never too late to take a look at classroom management in your music room. Regardless of past failures and successes, each new year gives you a chance to start fresh and try new ideas to build community in your classroom and create an environment of caring, cooperation, and collaboration!
A couple of things: First, I work in a "Title I" school full of families with extremely rough stories. Many of my sweet students have supportive families but many of them don't. I have an extremely supportive principal who knows what our kids face and who knows how to deal with it. That being said, every day brings a new challenge. I certainly don't have all the answers, nor am I perfect, but I feel like we've had a successful year learning and growing together.
Also, I believe that the Kodaly method (specifically the Houlahan-Tacka branch) has transformed my teaching. It has substance and in my experience, the kids respond to substance more than any fun "activity" I could come up with. This has tremendously impacted my classroom as far as behavior.
Suddenly, we weren't going from unconnected activity to unconnected activity. We were on a journey spiraling through concepts and connecting to things we'd already learned. When my students are succeeding at hard musical concepts and internalizing music like they've never done before, they feel the power of that and don't have time to be bored and get into mischief.
I recommend that every music teacher out there (middle, high school and university included) get certified in Kodaly or Orff or something that gives them "meat" for the students to sink their teeth into.
Let's get started!
Building Relationships
My number one tip for eliminating behavior problems in your classroom is to build relationships with your students. I took a Capturing Kids Hearts training last summer and it was great! We got tons of ideas for team building and relationship building.
One of the things I thought worked well was having a class contract. At the beginning of the year, we met all classes in the gym and did "specials" contracts. Then each child and teacher signed it.
Using the Capturing Kids Hearts method, we answered some basic questions as a group:
1) How do want to be treated by the teacher?
2) How do you want to be treated by each other?
3) How do you think the teacher wants to be treated? and
4) How should we treat each other when there is a conflict?
Side note: TEACHER HACK!! Tacking stuff to the ceiling is awesome! It saves so much space and the kids can still reference it later in the year. :-)
It didn't magically solve every problem, but by having that conversation, we opened the door to future conversations about how we should be treating each other. Having a class meeting is HUGE because it empowers every student to have a say.
Of course, being a once-a-week class, it's harder to dedicate time to this or to build deep relationships with everyone. This year, I had lunch duty on a rotating schedule, so I got to eat lunch with one group for a 6-weeks before changing to another group. It was fantastic for checking in with kids, having great conversations and seeing them let their hair down a bit. It also provided a time for them to ask questions about upcoming programs. I was able to use my actual lunch break for meeting with my UIL group, kids that had solos or even lunch detention, when needed.
Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance!
My high school economics teacher used to say that to our class. Every. Single. Day. And I believe it applies even more as a teacher. I am a over-planner by nature, but if I don't plan - watch out! The day will be filled with frustration, behavior problems and a very short amount of patience on all parts.
How do I plan? I'm sure I could write a whole post based on planning, but for now I'll give the gist of it.
1. Goals and Standards: What do you want each grade level to accomplish this year? How long will it take you to teach each unit? What units or concepts can you combine? I like to integrate my instrument identification and listening within each unit.
2. Yearly Plan: Make a rough sketch of each week or rotation and what concepts you plan to teach. Leave a little bit of room at the end of the year so that if you miss school for sickness or snow days, you can bump lessons down the calendar.
3. Individual Lesson Plans: Through my Kodaly certification I wrote tons and tons of lessons. Now all I have to do is plug in warmups, songs, games, practice activities and transitions and I'm good to go!
Whew! That sounds like a lot to do, but the bulk of it stays the same from year to year, so it's not as labor intensive in the short run.
I try to plan way more than I'll ever use, in case of technical difficulty or if the activity just doesn't work that day. I also have a playlist on Spotify and a stack of flashcards handy in case I have extra time!
Positive Reinforcement
Positive reinforcement is so important, I've already blogged a little about it! Check out my post about super cute blue notes
here. They are "star student" notes that go home each day with one or two well-behaved Kinders and Firsties.
My older students can handle a little more teamwork, so we work to reach a goal as a class. If we get our goal each day, we move our magnet up. You can read more about my classroom management
here.
Those are some of my favorite tips for having "dazzling discipline" in the music classroom. I can't wait to read the comments and get some ideas to try for next year!
Let’s Connect!
