1st ramble

Welcome to the first blog on my first blog site.

I want to create a place to express my experience and ideas with Music Education so far. Many thought have been whirling around for a while now so it'll be helpful to write them out. I had been a teacher in the New York City Public Schools for three years working as a full time Music Teacher. The first two years I taught at Elementary schools and my third was at a High School. So, as the expression goes that a picture paints a thousand words, I give thee "The Scream" by Edvard Munch. Was it so bad? Yes. And, no. It definitely was extremely stressful. I also taught at inner city schools which included a host of additional issues. The students were quite a handful but I was able to get through to most of them. I was known as having good classroom management. Someone (on a recent interview) asked me to reflect on why I did. I had never really thought about it, nor articulated this, so this was a good exercise. I told her I created clear guidelines, often with the student's input, always enforced some kind of consequence for the breaking of our policy, acknowledged and sometimes rewarded good behavior, and never treated them with harshness or disrespect. Many teachers did control by meanness or disrespect, which has an immediate effect, but it doesn't build cooperation or trust. Plus, one shouldn't need to control by meanness but by building a safe environment and expressing kindness and understanding. They knew I could be strict and would not accept fighting in the classroom. The students began to trust me and relaxed into the structure I tried to provide.

We always came together to prepare ourselves for our presentations. I learned my first year as I was frantically preparing a 5th grade class for a Spring performance of a song with movement that they liked being pushed. I had never been a classroom "yeller" but now I had turned into a tyrannical impresario yelling at them that this wasn't good enough, they could do better and that I'd cancel them if it wasn't better so that I wouldn't embarrass them and myself. I thought they'd hate me after my emotional explosion. But, ironically, I found, they liked me more because I was in essence telling them that they mattered and had talent and potential. They liked being believed in and having a goal. I spoke about this with their classroom teacher who agreed and said she never underestimated the kids and that its important to put the level high as kids will rise to the level of expectation. She was one of the few. Most of the other teachers would actually say out loud, so that the kids could hear them, well what can you expect from these kids?! The school was very rough, with kids punching each other out all the time--in the halls, classrooms, lunchroom, gym, outside--and most of the students were from one huge housing project. These teachers comments were racist and degrading and the students knowing that they set their level of expectation low, rose only to that low level. The teacher's attitudes hurt and made me sick. This same class gave me--the spanking new teacher--a very hard time in the beginning of the year. I had them once a week, and two months in, on the 8th time we met, I still had not been able to even take attendance. I gave up, sighed loudly, and said aloud, what's happening here? I expected my question to be completely lost in the loud rowdiness. But, they stopped, turned around, and all got quiet. It was weird and magical. One student answered that their teachers are "mad mean to us." I told them I agreed. That really threw them for a loop, a teacher agreeing with them, how unheard of. At the time, I didn't realize how rare that was. I was agreeing with the truth from whomever's mouth it came from. So, that broke the ice. We spoke a few more sentences and then they got noisy again. But, it had begun. We had had some communication.

I also had no materials. How crazy is that?! I look back and still can't believe that this had happened. I was given a key to a classroom and that's it. I had almost no materials myself as I had just taken a one year crash course to become a teacher. Essentially, I did all the state required coursework, observation hours and student teaching in one year. It was an insane, intense year. We didn't really focus on content...that is WHAT to teach. I arrived with a few songs and that's it. Plus, I had Pre-K, K, 1st, 3rd and 5th which is preparing for 5 curriculums. I don't even remember what I taught. One month in, the principal told me I had been excessed due to low enrollment. But, he chuckled that he probably would be able to keep me at the school as the Region, which had to pay my salary, didn't have any other open positions. After two months in limbo, I demanded some money to buy materials. He allotted me $2000. I submitted what I wanted to buy for his approval but he ignored my emails, memos to his secretary, etc. Finally, he told me that I hadn't acted "quick enough" and he had given my money to the art teacher.

His nickname was Hitler. The staff didn't choose this name lightly. He was the most disrespectful, meanest, craziest man I had ever met. He would scream at teachers barging into their classrooms unexpectedly. When he was up on the 3rd floor, the phone would ring with another teacher's warning of his upcoming presence. My attitude was fine, let him come in, I'm not doing anything I shouldn't be. He once caught me off-guard, entering behind me as I was settling a class 15 minutes late. He screamed that they should be singing something. I surprised myself and yelled back that yea, that would be nice and they should be, but they just got here. He left the room without a word. Observing him, it seemed to me that he liked when teachers yelled back at him--he respected it. The teacher's union rep was his right hand man, referred to as either Himmler or the Kapo. It was so corrupt that the person you went to with complaints, issues or grievances, who was supposed to help and protect you, was in cahoots with perpetrator.

He demanded a Christmas show (even though he knew he had reneged on the money for materials). I put together a show of all my classes with a song each. I created a CD soundtrack with Christmas songs which played as the students got up and down off the risers. The dance teacher also shared this concert with me. We are still friends and call ourselves army buddies surviving the trenches. (She wouldn't speak or look at the principal.) The principal told us about an hour before the concert that he'd have to excess for one of us and that we should decide. We discussed this quickly and fervently. One hell, that's known, vs. a possible other unknown hell or maybe it could be better. So, of course, this did not help our focus. After the concert, he came up to me, threw his arms around me (much to my and everyone else's surprise as he was not an affectionate man) and actually held them there as I squirmed internally and said "warmly" that he finagled the budget and would be able to keep me. (I had wanted to go.) Soon after, I got a mentor. (I had previously had a mentor for a few weeks but he was fired for telling the principal what he thought about his help with the 1st year teachers.) She helped me with classroom management techniques and was very affirmative. She told me to get out of this school and not waste my time, talent and energy here. I did end up taking her advice. She confirmed that in all her 27 years of teaching, and years of mentoring, she had never met a principal as crazy and mean as this one. I existed for a whole year with a knot in my stomach finally collapsing one night on top of my desk. They had to call the paramedics as I just couldn't respond. Anyway, my mentor got a $100 out of the principal for the Spring concert. I bought $200. She was annoyed and said that the principal wouldn't trust us in the future. I just told him that I knew he said $100, I needed more and if he didn't want to pay the extra, that's OK, I'd keep it. He paid the $200 and smiled at me--with a strange glint of pride.

Next, the Spring concert....