When I first started student teaching last semester in elementary school, I didn’t have a lot of confidence due in part to my personality and also the lack of experience I had in teaching in front of many students. I have been teaching piano privately for a long time and so far I didn’t have any problems with teaching children individually. However dealing with a group of students has definitely showed me that it is a completely different matter. My previous cooperating teacher always told me that I needed to speak louder even though I tried my best to do so. I practiced at home in order to have a “teacher’s voice” and I tried to make every word come out clear every time I spoke, being that English is my second language. I wrote a “script” about what I was going to tell the students and I observed very carefully the way my cooperating teacher presented her lesson. From these prior experiences, I was able to learn how to approach and what to tell the students in order to make a clear point in a lesson. While teaching in high school, I find myself to be much more confident compared to last semester. I wanted to show my strengths instead of being concerned about my weakness.
This week was a tough week for me because I had a hard time handling some students. Since the students know that I am a “student teacher”, most students are more attentive of what I am teaching and sometimes I can feel them judging me if I am teaching correctly. It depends on who they are, but some students have been showing their lack of respect throughout the class as they disregard to what I am asking them to do. Some of students did not seem to consider me as a their teacher. What made it really hard was that those who thought that they are pretty good at singing or reading music didn’t listen to my recommendations about how they were singing or the corrections I made of the errors that they made. Another concern is that so many students suggest and even insist their ideas “at the same time” during rehearsals. For example, when I made the students stop singing since they were singing incorrectly, the students kept on saying, “we need to go back from here.” or “I can sing that part if I start singing from here”. Although I didn’t like the idea, I decided to take the suggestions as long as they could sing successfully. But they kept making incorrect pitches because they didn’t know how the harmony sounded. I explained how each chord sounded and its value of harmony and I emphasized on understanding music correctly and precisely. Some students sang very well but they are so used to hearing the melody without looking at the music that they don’t realize the importance of reading music accurately. I agree singing might be fun, however I believe that fun comes after students learn music in a correct way instead of just singing over and over again.
For my first observation teaching chorale class, I was able to see how much more concentration and experience I needed to have to be more comfortable with students. I tried keeping a reasonable pace while teaching, as well as thinking what to do next. I also needed to watch the students in order to give them better suggestions dealing with the lesson. On the day of the observation, I prepared a much longer time than I actually prepare, however I wasn’t able to teach everything I wanted the students to learn about the music in one period. When I was teaching sight-sing, I allotted 15 minutes since I really didn’t expect the students to have trouble with sight-singing. But 15 minutes somehow felt very short. Although I was going to give them the prepared lesson, I had to change my plans and instead I taught them some new stuff. I did not want them to feel too overwhelmed when learning music and also to spend too much time on sight singing. Instead, I thought it would be more important to make the class move forward with dynamics. The recommendations that my advisor and cooperating teacher made were:
- Make a concise and clear lesson plan
- If I decide to give students homework, make sure that I check it next time.
- Don’t give the same homework twice
- Check if students sit up straight
- While rehearsing each part, ask other parts to sing together with them
- Instead of me repeating the answer, ask the students to speak loud enough for other students to hear
- If they don’t get the beat or everybody has their own tempo, have the students tap or clap the beat all together before reading the music
- Ask students where the trouble spots are in the piece to solve any concerns or problems
I have not had many experience teaching choir but I have been accompanying for different choir groups. While I have been observing many other conductors rehearsing, I found many effective ways of teaching a choir. I think I have to be a good listener while the students sing in order to find any troubles that they might have as well as to think about suggestions that they might need. I noticed that sometimes it is hard for me to listen very well during rehearsal if I accompany the piano for the choir or I am distracted by some other stuff. However to be a good teacher and musician, I believe it is the most important to listen to the music and the sound that student make.
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