Musical Minds: Music Ed. Student Teaching Blog

 The culture of each of my placements have been very different, but I assume  lot of that has to do with the grade levels. Indian Creek Elementary focused a lot on character strong traits and mainly teaching the students how to be good people as well as good students. There was a lot of school spirit, I think mostly to keep the students from becoming bored since they are so young. Taft Middle School is more strict in their culture, but I think it is necessary for students this age. They relate their expectations to real world examples. They often use advisory time to share skills that will be needed in future jobs, like organizing their assignments and how to be respectful when communicating with teachers (and future bosses). They also focus on bullying, because the school has trouble with students bullying each other. This relates back to learning how to communicate respectfully. In both schools, administration heavily focuses on respect with students, and I think that is gre...

 I feel pretty confident in my teaching abilities as of right now. I don't have all of the answers, but I feel confident in knowing how to find them. Actual teaching is going to be a completely different experience, and I am just excited to figure things out on my own.

 After graduating from Coe, I hope to teach elementary or middle school music. I believe that I would enjoy a small school, similar to the school I grew up in. I think that small schools often get overlooked because they don't have as many resources as the big city schools, but the students at these schools still need music education in their lives. I plan to move back to Illinois and finally get out of Iowa. Honestly, I will be applying to any position that is open, big or small school. I will have the ability to be picky after I get a few years of teaching under my belt.

For personal staff development: At Indian Creek, I participated in spirit dress up days, weekly 'this or that' polls in the teacher's lounge, making a happy birthday video for a special needs student, and more. At Taft, I have also participated in spirit dress-up days, and all of the music staff eat lunch together in the band room daily.  For professional staff development: At Indian Creek, I attended their week of professional development training before classes began. This included an active shooter training (ALICE), fire drill training, cell phone policy training, expectations for staff, and more. At Taft, I have been able to participate in bus safety drills.

 I was surprised with how much I enjoyed teaching elementary music! Going into student teaching, I was focused on middle school, but I think I may have changed my mind. I still have my middle school placement to experience middle school band, but elementary will be tough to beat.

 I do not have much of a "wellness plan". I work all day at school, come back to campus and work in the cafeteria, then I work on lesson plans until I am too tired to write something coherent. I work every day except for Sunday, when I clean up around my apartment and work on more lesson plans. If only student teaching didn't cost $30,000 :)