When I decided to give up my planning period to work with a first year teacher in his classroom, I set a goal to reflect upon it daily. My reflection falls within 24 hours, but is a bit shy of being as early as I would like it to be. So here I sit writing a quick reflection before heading off to school for another day to reflect upon.
My 3rd block class is made up of 8th graders. Not sure what was going on with them today, but they were wound up tight. Maybe it was the new desk arrangement. Maybe it was the anticipation of the music. Maybe it was being in my class. Whatever it was, several of them had a difficult time settling down. Even so, I am happy to report that they got into the lesson.
I greet students every morning as they come down the hall. Sometimes I am singing. This morning I happened to be signing ‘Not Afraid’ by Eminem. One of them asked me, “You listen to that, miss?” Well, not only do I listen to it, it is my ringtone. A few had to pick their jaws up off the ground after hearing that, while I was given inspiration for how to start my class. Upon coming into class, students were asked to write the answers to a few questions: 1.) What was their ringtone? 2.) When they turned on the radio, what kind of station came on the air? 3.) If I gave them $100 to spend on music, what would they buy?
I learned that many of my students would go for country. We didn’t include any country in our week of plans. I will be making plans to change one day of plans. People write about what is on their minds whether it be a song, blog, book, or something else. I asked the students if they were to write a song, what would it be about? The post-it notes began to fill up. One group challenged themselves to fill out 50! (It was my group of boys that couldn’t seem to settle down. Of course, I let them go for it.) From there, they categorized their thoughts into topics. Relationships, family, and sports were among the top.
I wondered whether they would be able to pick out the theme or lesson that John Mayer wanted his listeners to get in his song, “Waiting on the World to Change.” After watching the video, I was pleasantly surprised that many of them understood. I still have some work to do. Many did not get the deeper concept. Four more days of music videos and activities to work on this.
My class loves to draw. A graffiti board showing what was on their minds allowed them the creativity. They needed to show it in a way that used symbols, few words, and grabbed attention. Unfortunately, there was no time to finish this during class. Chances are, they will not finish it as homework as they were asked, but a person can hope.
The next block I headed to my team teaching experience. The same lesson with a different group of kids. I lead the lesson. They did not know what to expect from me. It went well. The kids were involved. They were able to find the theme of the song. Usually these students are not into anything to do with drawing. After a slow start, they got into the graffiti wall.
The challenge of finding videos without swearing continues. The music they know so we can go on to some less familiar. I continue to love my job ~ especially the days when there is music involved.
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