Many Me

Finally a moment to gather my thoughts.

Its been an interesting week of work, playing, and discovery.
The strings classes are getting more into a rhythm :-), although I have allowed them to go into their own unique directions. Private lessons and playing gigs are routine enough for me, but I've started to find my own teaching style and this has led me to look at my own playing with an objective eye.

I know how to balance all of my different jobs, but how does one balance work, driving back and forth, a personal life, and me time.
I posed this question to myself last nite after a great, but grueling day of lessons, and a whole lot of driving. The answer, many me.

By this I mean addressing different situations with different responses (for me this literally brings out different sides of my personality, but I'm special I guess). For example, a student that is working extremely hard but is not getting the outcome they are looking for will receive a gentler response from me than would a student that just doesn't take the time to do anything for that lesson. In these simple examples it is not too challenging to change course like this from lesson to lesson. What gets complicated (for me at least) is when you are still trying to cultivate a career yourself on top of gaining experiences and trying to off set that with a personal life.

There are days where I wonder if this is the right choice for me, if I am exposing enough to my students or if I am pushing them too hard. I know in order to teach one has to understand psychology and the tendencies of people. I try not to get too bogged down in it though mainly because I think it could backfire and result in a not so pretty situation.
I once had a teacher that would go around telling her students (individually) that they were better than another one of her students. Well it dawned on me one day that she was probably saying these things to other students about me too. At that moment I no longer trusted this adult that I had looked up to for several years, and to this day I have a hard time talking to her about anything really.

I know now that she was trying to encourage the competitive spark that would get us all practicing and focused. But it turned a lot of her students off and away from the cello. You never know what a student is going through outside of class, and honestly sometimes (all the time really) I am going through a lot too. The variables are many and if one is to teach you need to be sensitive to that.

I am already beginning to wish for a period in which I don't have to spread myself all over the place. I know I'll miss doing what I'm doing, but I'm thinking (and hoping) it will give me the time to gather my thoughts and really prepare myself for what I truly want from education, music, and life.

Confessions of a 5th grade String Teacher

OK,

I don't really remember what week I'm in at the public schools all I know is that my house is a mess and there are papers EVERYWHERE!!!

In general it is a bit of a challenge to juggle three different teaching jobs. I don't present myself the same way to each group, I guess I'm less guarded with my college students, a little more guarded with my high/middle school kids and I'm just a fortress with the fifth graders. To me this is a bit of a problem.

Occasionally I let touches of myself seep through but I worry abt allowing too much of myself to be accessable to the kids too soon. Perhaps I just need to allow time to work its magic, or I just need to relax...we'll see.




I need to tap into my ODE bag of tricks,



At this moment I have two 5th grade classes at two different schools within the same district. I guess I allowed myself to believe that I could lead these classes in the same way...and boy did the kids show me otherwise.
It is not that I have lost control, I just haven't been able to tailor a program for one of my classes. The dynamics of that class is that some of the kids are driven by my traditional class expectations and others could care less. Within the "care less kids" there are those that chose strings primarily because they didn't want to be with another class (or rather teacher of another special area). So my hands are full dealing with discipline issues that really have no effect on those kids.

What is my goal for this class now: To get them excited about strings.

How am I going to do it: Develop games, tap into the well of competitiveness that 5th graders possess, and as my friend Paula suggested find what those kids value in my class. Maybe they want more of the spot light, my attention, OR more of a challenge.

So its back to the drawing board. I expected this to a certain degree just not so soon I guess.

Check back in later to see if it works...