Of course Santa delivers there.

I may have shed a manly tear over this drawing.

This Has Got To Stop!

I woke up this morning and did my usual social media checks, I didn't get all that far before I noticed that a teacher at my old high school had posted on Facebook that school was cancelled there for the day. I thought this was a little odd, since I didn't think the forecast had been stormy, at least not enough to merit a snow day. So I went to Twitter to see if any of the local news sources had tweeted about what was going on, and that's where I got the whole story.

The Cache County School District made the decision to cancel school today, as well as games and activities, because a student was overheard making threats; the student said that they planned to come to school today and take their own life and the lives of others. Now I don't know how credible the threat was, I don't know if the kid was serious or just joking. I don't know if the student who reported overhearing it was credible or not, and I don't think it really matters; there is a pattern with school shootings and other violent tragedies and suicides, it seems that one act will spur others on the edge to commit the same type of act. The district is almost obligated to cancel school for the safety of the students.

It frustrates me to think that a student would even joke about this sort of thing, let alone be serious about it. I almost feel like it is somehow a failing of the education system, like we teachers were supposed to teach this kid coping skills but we failed. I just don't understand the mentality of these students, they are looking for such a permanent solution to what is in reality a very temporary problem. It's even more crazy to me when an adult does something like this. I just can't fathom that sort of mental breakdown. I don't think that this is something that we will ever be able to eradicate completely, but I think something has to be done.

I think one issue is that there is limited access to mental health professionals for those who do cannot afford health insurance. President Obama's Affordable Healthcare Act will hopefully increase access to treatment for those individuals. I think that if these people were to have someone helping them to cope with what is going on in their life they would not turn to violence so often. Along with this, it is high time that America removed the stigma surrounding mental illness; many people do not want to get treatment or admit they have a problem because society has convinced them that to do so means to admit that they are weak, or incapable of the rigors of daily life.

I think the other issue here really is the access these people have to lethal weapons. Many conservative news sources reason that if these people don't have access to guns they will simply use a knife, and this may be true, but unless they are capable of accurately throwing that knife, they are much easier to stop before they have the chance to murder more people. It's much easier to rush and overpower someone with a knife than someone with a gun. I'm not saying that we need to ban gun ownership altogether, but we should think seriously about how we check those to whom guns are sold, and how those guns are stored. The shooter at Newtown didn't use his own guns, he used his mother's.

In an case, even though I know that this is something that will never be completely eradicated, I think that as and educator I can do my part to try and reduce the number of tragedies in the world. I hope to help kids develop coping skills, and as a music teacher I hope to encourage all kids to join my classes so they can have a feeling of belonging. I also intend to make my classroom a safe space, where mocking, teasing, and bullying will not be tolerated. I hope that I will be able to affect change for the better.

Student Teaching Part III/Football Mourning

Today's post contains good news, and bad news. I'm going to go ahead and start with the good news, it's better that way. The good news for the day is that I have a student teaching placement, for real this time! I will be teaching at White Pine Middle School, which caters to sixth and seventh grade students. It is still in the area where I live, I don't have to commute too far, which is nice, and I think that I will be doing more than just woodwinds, which makes me a bit less nervous. This teacher also has choir classes, so I might get to teach a little choir too, who knows. I think it would be fun.

So the bad news that I have today is that Utah State has lost their head football coach to Wisconsin. I know that that is the way of things, college athletics has become more about business and less about loyalty to the team and to the school, but this coach made it a point to tell reporters in a press conference that he had no interest in taking another job, so that kind of made it sting a little more when he turned around a couple of days later and took another job. I just can't wish him the best after he did that, so I guess I just won't wish him anything at all. His offensive coordinator has interviewed for the job, and I hope he is as good as Anderson was, but who knows.

Student Teaching Part II

So over this weekend while I was on my way to Boise for The Famous Idaho Potato Bowl (which my Aggies won) I received an e-mail from the Office of Field Experiences telling me that the vice-principal at the school I was supposed to student-teach at had called them an informed them that the teachers at that school only wanted to work with one student teacher, not two. My placement is once again up in the air, and I'm kind of bummed. This has been a very inconvenient process for me, and I'm tired of being stressed out about it. I just hope that they can work something out within the week so that I can actually go and meet whoever I will be working with before I actually start teaching. I may even have to commute as far as the Weber school district, so it would be nice to know if I need to make living arrangements before I am supposed to teach.

No Child Left Behind: Football Edition

Thanks to Nathan Mensink for sharing this, and Mr. Charles Long for posting it to Facebook.

No Child Left Behind: The Football Version

1. All teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable. If after two years they have not won the championship their footballs and equipment will be taken away UNTIL they do win the championship.

2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time, even if they do not have the same conditions or opportunities to practice on their own. NO exceptions will be made for lack of interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities of themselves or their parents. ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL!

3. Talented players will be asked to workout on their own, without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes who aren't interested in football, have limited athletic ability or whose parents don't like football.

4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th, and 11th game. This will create a New Age of Sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all team will reach the same minimum goals. If no child gets ahead, then no child is left behind. If parents do not like this new law, they are encouraged to vote for vouchers and support private schools that can screen out the non - athletes and prevent their children from having to go to school with bad football players.

 

I think that education reform is a good idea, but I don't think that programs like NCLB or even Race to the Top are the way to do it.

Student teaching!

I got my student teaching assignment over the weekend, and frankly it scares me a little. I have been assigned to work with a teacher who does woodwinds grades 7-9, and I am a brass guy... I really am not so good with woodwinds, I'm terrible at playing them, I mix the fingerings up all the time, so it will be an adventure.

This kind of made me think about my instrumental methods and materials class. The course is taught by the band director at my university, he is a very particular guy, but he is a solid classroom teacher. As a part of our methods course he insisted that everyone was to learn the fingerings for all of the common instruments used in band and orchestra. At the time we all hated the quizzes we would take daily, but I realize now that these quizzes are a life saver, because I have to use that information now. I'm honestly scared, but at least I have some basic idea of what is going on.

Improving Literacy Through Music

Well, I've hit the end of the course I set this blog up for, though I've had fun with it, and I think I'll keep using it, you never know when you will want to be able to refer people to a blog. To be perfectly honest, when I began the course I really wasn't convinced that I was going to gain much useful information out of it, because the music classroom is so much different from most. I wasn't really sure that it was even remotely my job to make sure that I was supporting my students in all of their learning endeavors, not just music. Was I ever wrong! I don't think that my educational philosophy has undergone so many changes in the last three years as it did in the last three months.

See, the problem is that a lot of us that go into music education do so because we love music. Big surprise, right? The problem with that is that we love music to the exclusion of a lot of other things, and when we get to the university level we suddenly realize that there is more to music than showing up and playing the horn. These are the things that at the public school level could be ways to support learning. Over the course of the semester I've come to realize that I can use music theory, music history, music analysis, etc. to help students improve their writing skills. I have have them discuss these things in small groups to help them improve their interpersonal communication skills. I can ask them to read texts about these subjects to improve their reading skills. All of this will help support their learning in other subjects, and can be done in the context of something they enjoy.

So basically, I never realized what sort of potential I have to include technology, reading, writing, group activities and projects, etc. in my instruction, and the prospect excites me. I don't think there are nearly enough music teachers who promote this type of literacy instruction in their classrooms, so I hope to make an impact that way.