Community, Family, and Life Updates

Hello readers,
Let me set the scene for you - I am currently with my mother, a woman that has been dealt a rough hand, not always been able to play to her strengths, in the hospital. The post surgery recovery has been rough and she has been up here in Mason City for about 24 hours now. I am in scrubs and gloves to protect me from the contagious bacteria that could be in my mothers system.

I set that stage for you because I'm learning a lot about this thing we call being an adult. A couple of weeks ago, I had a fantastic opportunity to attend 7 Habits of Highly Effective People training, offered through the Leader Valley Program. I need to tell all of you, how truly beneficial and life changing that training was. Some of you may know that Stephen Covey researched and pooled resources, creating the 7 habits. These habits are extremely beneficial and the first three - Be Proactive, Begin with the End in Mind, and Put First Things First, put things into perspective for me.

As an educator, I typically put my students, my family, my job, and everything else before me, but that shouldn't be the case. Think to yourself, be brutally honest, how much of what you do is for you? How much of what happens in life, do you have control over. That is the most freeing, yet terrifying prospect we have...

Habits 4-6, relate to our interactions with our colleagues, our families, our friends, and everyone else. They are "Think Win-Win", "Seek 1st to understand, then be understood", and "Synergize". How often when we are working in a collaborative setting do you think about what allows all parties to win? This is definitely not compromise, but rather, it's consensus to a degree. The next habit is very tricky for me... My class sizes are anywhere from 30 to 7- students in a period and it can be hard to take time to truly listen. Active listening is a skill that is necessary for us to get the whole picture and not just snippets. There can be a better chance to students or other adults understanding your side if you listen without planning what your "comeback" or "last word" will be. Synergy is putting things together in a collaborative way. In my classes, we have to work together, otherwise, we cannot make the choral sound we desire/need.

Habit 7, is another struggle for me. Sharpening the saw relates to health, spiritual, mental, physical, and more. This means to not do things in excess, instead budget daily time to take a walk, read a book, meditate, and whatever makes you happy and renews your energy. Dear teachers... the struggle is real... we are at the driver's seat of that struggle bus and we can't get off sometimes... Get an accountability partner, do something! I took the time to leave my house this past weekend, which is rare. I felt so extremely refreshed!

I left that 2 day training, exhausted, mentally and emotionally. It was worth every minute though. I loved it. I have been working on a specific habit as I can to ensure balance within me and my life. Take the time - it is self help, but it is even more related to your lifestyle. Pick up the Seven Habits book that fits you and take some time to make you better.

Thanks for reading my musings... More to come after this hospital visit is over.

TGZ

How to "Close Read" in Chorus

Hello friends!

In the Waterloo Schools, we are fortunate enough to have the accessibility to technology when we need it, and we have recently begun a 1:1 device program with our 6th grade students.

As a Leader in Me Lighthouse School, students lead a lot of their learning and their communications of their learning. Students are expected to run their own conferences. This is done through a binder that has an artifact of learning from their courses, and a reflection of their work in the course so far. They are also expected to meet during Lead Time (homeroom) to discuss the 7 Habits that go with Leader in Me, work to build their binder, and to goal set/check on the progress of those goals.

In an attempt to save paper and costs (music teachers pay out of their budgets for concert programs), I decided I needed to become creative. Instead of having students in 8th grade fill out a formal reflection sheet and have a worksheet to demonstrate their learning/progress, I have decided that students in chorus need to be singing and can record themselves individually singing within a group. On Monday and Tuesday this week, I had students either bring their device to chorus, or use my phone to record them individually singing the Star-Spangled Banner. I wanted to have them sing together as a group, but be able to pick up their specific voice for the recording. After they completed the recording they emailed those to me, I added them to Google Drive, and I shared them with the students.

Today was our day to perform some close reading. After having some MISIC training and working on ways to authentically integrate literacy into the music classroom I think I found a way for it to work. Students were given a set of questions to ask, but had to listen to their own recording 3 specific times. We went to our computer lab and students listened and responded to their recordings. To access that specific assignment, you may view a copy here. As I was instructed by Nancy Lockett, text can be anything and in this case it's a recording that students have to close "read" or rather listen to.

The reactions of students were priceless - many students were ashamed of their recordings, or happy with them, or freaked out saying, "You're not going to like, make us have our parents listen to this, right?" To put their minds at ease, I said, "It's up to you if you want to share that. Is it your best product?" The instant growth mindset moment was awesome! Students are begging to re-record, but that's my goal... To build a sound profile for the students and show the growth with instruction. The more we can help students realize that literacy in a meaningful way is everyone's job. I want to make sure that students become reflective, can articulate effectively, and begin to think critically about performance.

I cannot take the full credit for this... Lauren Fladland from College Community Schools suggested using student devices to record students individually while they sing in a group setting. Kayla Becker, our literacy coach, helped me frame the close reading. James Healy provided the arrangement of the banner. Nancy Lockett and all of the MISIC training team, for pushing me to improve my instruction.

Thanks for reading!
TGZ

Choosing Positive in a Season of Change

Some of my readers may know that I have changed positions. I was teaching 5th and 6th grade band as well as 7th and 8th grade choir at South Tama County Middle School, in Toledo, Iowa. It was a hard choice, but a necessary move to Hoover Middle School in Waterloo, Iowa. I am taking the time to reflect on ways things have changed, what I miss about teaching at STC, and things to be positive about.

The first thing I want to mention is that I am now only vocal music at Hoover Middle School. This has been a welcomed change, as I felt that I was a "jack of all trades and master of none" in my position at STC, but oddly enough... I loved every minute of teaching there. I was able to balance the high school instrumental director, as he was a brass player and a much better percussionist than I would ever be. In that time, we did grow a program, add another grade level to instrumental music, and chose a new book series to use. On the vocal side, I was able to grow the program from 45 to 60/65 strong, that could sing in parts and was willing to sing "serious" repertoire.

I honestly miss working with my direct ELL students, my Native American students, and every other student. I highlight these minority groups, because they offset the majority and I found some interesting questions based on this - why was vocal music primarily a course that Native or Hispanic males elected to be in, but not Caucasian males? In my choir at STC, I only had 1 fully Caucasian student in choir. What does that say about the cultural implications of music? These are questions that I cannot currently answer, as I am no longer there - if anyone else has this issue, please feel free to reach out and share your insight.

Now - the positive changes, the room for growth, and the driving force behind my positivity at Hoover.
- I am the only vocal music teacher in the building, but one of five staff members in the music department, and one of four middle school vocal music teachers in the district. Yes, this is a perk to being part of a larger district, but as a reflective teacher, this allows me the chance to grow as an educator. I receive feedback from our music lead teacher, and I get to work under an administrative team that includes a singer, a former band director (music educator at heart), and, though I haven't quite figured out how to describe him, another grade level administrator that cares that I'm doing well, am respected, and treated as the expert in my field. They have done many a walk through and I'm warming up to having an administrator in my space, holding me accountable, but also driving me to succeed - more importantly, helping me improve my instruction to do what's best for kids.

- In past experiences I have been a skeptic of "Choosing Positive", "Riding the Energy Bus", and other things of that nature, but I am changing. I was once shown the video of a speaker talking about feeding a negative dog, or a positive one... While yes, it is true that we should feed the positive dog, we also need to see what type of food the positive dog is getting. Is the positive dog getting synthetic, artificial food, or organic, homegrown, and well prepared food? We can be positive minded in negative situations, but that means, we have to get our hands dirty, we have to face our problems and come up with solutions. If we don't, then, what's improving? Choose to be positive, but choose to make changes, swallow pride, and realize that the newer teacher may know something beneficial, but also the veteran teacher can speak from experience and work collaboratively to make changes.

- A 10 period day is brutal - this was created to ensure that students can have interventions, band or orchestra, and choir in their daily schedule. My voice is often exhausted, but it's wonderful getting to know all 300 kids I serve and see 3 times a week. My choirs are split by gender 2 days a week and then we come together in a mixed group on Wednesdays. Those days are extremely exhausting, but also, extremely rewarding.

- I am learning to "Keep Calm and Teach Middle School". I am learning that regardless of language spoken, every student can learn. I am reminded that Common Formative Assessments are not the bane of a teacher's existence, but rather a means to identify where the disconnect is between students and their teachers.

- I have different field experience students from the University of Northern Iowa. I am learning that they need to observe, then get their hands dirty. This is what I've wanted for a long time. It allows me to pay back institutions of higher learning, will paying forward to the profession. More to come on this topic.

How is your year going so far? How do you authentically "Choose Positive"? What is one thing you're changing in your teaching this year to do what's best for students?

-TGZ

Educating Activist Allies - Musings from the music teacher

Recently, I've been trying to find my place in this world of education, and the world of music education. I have shared that this past year I have been working with our ESL/ELL teacher Jessica St. John to integrate students that have issues with English into the choral music setting. This is a low stress way of helping, in our case, Spanish speaking students acquire language skills through music. This has been instrumental (pun intended) in my research goals and need to seek an equal educational opportunity for all students. But the story didn't just start there...

My district is very close to Grinnell College, where my husband graduated from. I had the fortune of meeting Dr. Cori Jakubiak, a professor of education, there and the connection was instant. Cori is an academic that began in the classroom. After some talking and some need for connections with K-12 schools, she began attending South Tama County Middle School with her field experience students/volunteers. Cori would hang out in my classroom, while her student volunteers help Ms. St. John with ESL instruction and we spoke rhetoric. She then pushed me to consider looking at Iowa State University's Education for Social Justice Certificate and the PhD program in Social Foundations in Education. While looking at the program, I wasn't totally convinced. In Iowa, the typical teacher education college is the University of Northern Iowa, but... ISU has a fantastic faculty, with a very diverse background!

I was given a book from Cori, written by one of the ISU faculty, Katy Swalwell, entitled Educating Activist Allies - Social Justice Pedagogy with the Suburban and Urban Elite. Whew! That is quite the title, but the reading has been riveting. I am a Caucasian male in my twenties and I struggle with the idea of privilege. I was born with privilege and what does that mean, or what does that require me to do on my own and with my students?

Chapter 1 Why the education of privileged children matters

This chapter discusses the following questions - "How should these students be educated? What happens when we try to educate them in those ways? Why are we asking this question now?"

Swalwell seems to have a great perspective - "privilege(d)" those who possess unearned advantages based upon socially constructed categories.

It seems that the first part of this chapter relates to properly defining privilege and what that means for students/schools. Privileged individuals are those that lack their understanding of their own privilege and the benefits that come with it. This is a packaged deal. Superiority is often a word used to describe those with privilege.

I feel there is a specific need to teaching privileged children, but we as educators need to recognize any privilege we have. Conversations have begun and within my district and I am seeing that students are compared typically to standardized tests of Caucasian students, grades in relation to students across the board, and other factors, but what I'm most concerned about is, are we being true to culture/needs. Yes I believe a student should receive high marks in their coursework, but perhaps the instructional and assessment/feedback giving needs to change.

Many of you know that I am an advocate for standards-based grading/assessment and this renders itself nicely to the model. Many of our students are mom, dad, brother, sister, grandparent and the list goes on... they are the primary care giver in a house, but the typical points-based system we use is used more for punishing a student's behavior than sharing academic progress. I cannot begin to wrap my head around this because many of my Hispanic and Native students live within close quarters to their families, the last thing that do is think about their homework, they instead think about which medications to give their siblings, what time they have to be to work, and so much more.

The reason for the slight rant/vent of moving to a SBG system and even mentioning race and ethnicity, is that in talented and gifted programs, students without privilege are unable to be recognized to receive services. They may not receive high marks on the national standardized test, or be able to receive high marks in a class because of factors they cannot control. Is this just an unfortunate system, or is it deep-rooted in something more?

The purpose of this is post was to begin putting my findings/thoughts on "paper". The next chapter of Swalwell's book relates to Social Justice Education. More to come and let's be real... this post may change before then... Thanks for reading!

Cora Jakubiak's Bio - https://www.grinnell.edu/users/jakubiak
Katy Swalwell's Bio - http://www.education.iastate.edu/people/faculty/faculty/katy-swalwell.html
Katy Swalwell's Book - http://www.amazon.com/Educating-Activist-Allies-Pedagogy-Suburban/dp/0415529468ie=UTF8&keywords=katy%20salwell&qid=1464626477&ref_=sr_1_sc_1&sr=8-1-spell

6th Grade Band Letter Writing

It has been a goal of my current district to integrate writing in meaningful ways in every class. I took this challenge to heart and decided that I was going to have my students in 6th grade band write letters to college professors from Iowa that teach their instrument. That being said, I wrote to nearly every college applied or music education professor at a majority of the colleges and universities to see if students would receive replies.

This began with student reading the professor's biographies, and developing answers to some questions like:

• Name
• Educational Background
• Places taught
• Instrument played 
• Locations played

After this - we formulated letters based on this information. Students wrote questions about the above items and it has raised some of the best writing I have seen. I have found that students that play an instrument I don't regularly play, ask their professor pen pals questions related to their instruments, asking for help and guidance in playing their instruments.

After reading through the letters and making revisions, I printed them and the students addressed their own envelopes to the colleges and many of them have been mailed. 

Now we wait... Here's hoping the professors have time to reply! I'm so excited to see what happens in the future!

Thank you to Grinnell College, Wartburg College, Luther College, ISU, UNI, U of Iowa, Drake University, and others. 

More to come!! 

Response to Co-Teaching w/ ELL's

This year I have had the unique opportunity of working with an English Language Learner (ELL) teacher. My teaching load this year has changed to 5/6th grade bands and 7/8th grade choirs. I carpool with our ELL teacher and that got us thinking... How could choir benefit ELL students? My thoughts were that language acquisition could be easier based on assigning pitches to words, teaching proper vowel formations, and working through phonetic language. Fortunately my colleague agreed and she has begun putting ELL students (newcomers) into my grade level choir courses. I cannot tell you how much fun it is, to work on socialization, language development, and music making in a nonjudgmental setting.

The above I share because I have been an Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) since 2015 and I have found a wealth of information through their magazine Educational Leadership. In their December 2015/January 2016 there is an article entitled, Co-Teaching Ells: RIDING A TANDEM BIKE. In this article the authors, Andrea Honigfeld and Maria G. Dove give some exceptional ways to collaborate and co-teach with ELL teachers. I continually hear from my colleague that ELL students will learn the best through content, however some districts and models take them out of courses like social studies and other courses.

In the article the word trust is mentioned as a fundamental part of co-teaching. Often we see teachers afraid of losing control of their own classroom, but co-teaching can build rapport among colleagues, and ultimately boost student achievement. The article also shares a co-planning framework with is three fold - Pre-planning, Collaborative Planning, and Post-Planning. Each of these may at first seem like more work for the teachers involved, but I would challenge those teachers to look at an opportunity for true collaboration.

Pre-planning is performed by the content area teacher and the ELL teacher separately. This portion involves looking at curriculum, identify content specific vocabulary needed, and prepare with background knowledge needed for success in the upcoming lesson. ELL teachers will look at Core language standards and needs - supplemental materials etc.

Collaborative Planning is when co-teachers come together to finish their parts of the lesson. Objectives are determined, and assessments are planned. During this step roles and responsibilities for the lesson are determined.

Last is the post-planning which is where lesson planning and activity creation will take place. Different tools are found to properly assess diverse learners etc.

What I've noticed in different co-teaching set ups, is that often the ELL or SPED teacher are often there for assistance for their specific students on their rosters. Why don't we change this? I found that in music instruction, when I taught elementary, if I made an accommodation for a student with autism, the accommodation could enhance instruction for all learners. Also, why don't we have constant communication regarding lesson planning and specific curriculum? Are teachers being trained how to properly co-teach?

Since I'm still relatively new to education (almost 5 years), I wonder, how to improve such settings. Since our ELL students in particular learn best through content, wouldn't it only help them reach language goals sooner if thrust into content area learning with scaffolds provided? My you, these are merely musings. I think we could utilize professional learning times from proper collaboration. Through unit planning, teachers would be better able to collaborate with ELL and SPED teachers. It seems so simple, but how can we logistically make it happen?

If you wish to be a member of ASCD and reap the benefits you can reach them here - www.ascd.org

Article -
December 2015/January 2016 | Volume 73 | Number 4 
Co-Teaching: Making It Work Pages 56-60

I'm coming back

Dear followers,
Thank you so much for following me, for challenging my thinking, and for improving my practice. I have been extremely busy, but here's a recent right now:

• Year 2 at STC has been promising
• SBG Pilot Team
• MISIC Training
• Real Men Sing at Wartburg College
• Working through choir to enhance language acquisition
• Working with local colleges and universities to create mutual opportunities for our district and the higher education institute
• Continued learning
• I've been looking at post graduate work, currently I'm considering the Education for Social Justice graduate certificate. I think that I will eventually like to make the jump to higher education, but I don't want to leave K-12 learning yet. I want to be part of the change in the in the K-12 setting. 

What to expect?

• Communications and readings from our MISIC training, my metamorphosis through standards-based grading, and helping preservice teachers. 

Readers - thanks. For reading my musings. More to come!