Reply To: I'm Mad As Heck And I'm Not Gonna Take It Any More…

[nafmeadmin]

Just a couple of thoughts…

1.) you say your administration is “supportive of your efforts” but hasn’t done anything to help. Being polite and empathetic is not the same as being supportive, that is paying lip service. If they are truly supportive, ask them to put their money where there mouth is. If they want a successful program for their school, things will change – or they will give you a valid reason why they can’t and you can try to come up with another idea that can be implemented. You need to fight for lessons with students.

2.) block scheduling – I’ve never taught in a block, so my advice might not be worth anything. do you need to rehearse as a full group for the entire time? I would bet probably not. Use some time for group sectionals, maybe some individual work, peer tutoring, individual practice on the fundamentals that you say they are lacking.

3.) enrollment and retention – if possible, you need to show your face at the middle school as much as you can. offer to work with students, guest conduct a piece or a rehearsal here and there. Let the kids know who you are, even those younger ones who might quit before 8th grade could be convinced to give it another shot in high school (It’s not ideal, but you are playing a numbers game at this point).

4.) Curriculum – Some logical curriculum is important. Look into developing (or borrowing from someone else) an instrumental scope and sequence or benchmarks that you want to see kids at during a given point in each year. What skills, terms, rhythms, scales, etc… will they be expected to know and when? Common assessments can be valuable when evaluating a curriculum to see where skills are being left out or missed, or simply not reinforced enough to be retained.

5.) colleague – develop a relationship with them. Find out what their vision for the program is, what do they see as the strengths and weaknesses? If you can get on the same page here, you can move together for a common goal. I think often times we run into the situation where we just want to blame the middle school program or our feeders. This happens in every department of every school – I hear it from math, reading, science, everyone. “What are those [insert grade and subject] teachers doing!? my kids don’t know anything when they get to me. Perhaps they are running into some of the same scheduling problems with their 8th graders that you are seeing. Without communication, you don’t know what’s really going on. You have to accept the situation for what it is, and just work every day to make it better. If there is truly a personnel issue, then administration does need to know and get involved – that can be very touchy, though.

Hope something in here helps you…