Happy New Year! Semester breaks are a great place to reset things that went awry during a previous part of the year. January is all about resets so let’s look at a few things that you can quickly review at the new semester.
Grading/Rubrics
I know I’ve said it before but music teachers are the best assessors. We are CONSTANTLY assessing students to know if they are playing/singing/performing/writing/etc. correctly. Naturally, most of our assessments are aural and we aren’t actually aware or specifically assessing. But we aren’t always great at writing that down. We know what’s going on and most lay people can come in our classroom and know if our students are performing something correctly/in tune/etc. It’s so natural to us that we forget it’s actually assessment.
But it is.
Make a point to actually write things down this year. Use rubrics to give more actual graded feedback. Even if your grades are a checklist, having the data to back up what we do, how you grade, and to be able to give students’ adults feedback is a great thing. Plus your admin will love it.
If you need some rubric help, check these out. This rubric set has over 300 rubrics with and without an assessment log so that you can be prepped for any assessment that comes your way.
Classroom Practices
Take a few minutes to think about your day, your week, and what’s been going well in your classroom. Or hasn’t been going well. Take time to adjust. Make changes to the procedures that aren’t working.
If you don’t have a procedure for something that has been causing some issues, make one.
If you are always behind on planning performances, get ahead of the game!
If you are struggling with student behavior, address it.
Here’s a few blog posts to help out:
- The Giant List of Music Class Procedures
- Gender Neutral in Music Class (there’s a lot more to this than pronouns – check this post out as it will benefit ALL your students regardless of where you teach and if you have students who are non-binary or not in your classroom).
- The Truth About Letting Students Go to the Bathroom
- How to Plan a Concert Backwards
- Inclusionary Practices to Start this Year
- The Best Classroom Management Tips
Your Practices
What about you as a teacher? Talking about resolutions, self-improvement, etc, I always end up thinking about me as a teacher as well. How can I improve?
Here’s some things on my radar:
- Sleep which is always the first thing I start sacrificing when push comes to shove and I DEFINITELY cannot handle it the way I could a decade ago. Insert comments about health, mental state, and long term effects of sleep deprivation here. I’m still guilty of doom scrolling at night instead of putting my phone down and trying to sleep right away. I’m working on it.
- After 2-ish weeks of sleeping late, lots of food, and the “what day is it?”s, it’s hard to be motivated. Finding motivation is hard. Ease back in.
- Healthy eating and water – being a music teacher in December can destroy all your good practices. Reassess where you’re at, add more water, remove extra cookies.
- Boundaries – reassess and reset.
- Social Media – I’m a TikTok scroller and occasional poster and I love a good skit as much as the next person but social media can be a problem sometimes, and not just scrolling too much.
– You need a release for your social media in order to post students. (The school media release is for the school/district account not an account you use.)
– Students should not be part of selling material if you are selling teaching materials, and there should not be constant videos of them for internet views. It’s such a conflict of interest and I’m always concerned it could become a legal issue with a school district.
– Students, parents, and the overwhelming majority of your coworkers are not your social media friends.
– Remember your own privacy when you post! This goes for classroom set ups! Don’t give the full run down of what your classroom looks like, especially for lockdown situations.
Need more thoughts on social media? Check out this post. - Free Time – do you let yourself have it or are you constantly working/busy? I’m guilty of the later because even my “downtime” is usually planned out.
I hope this has given you some ideas!
Happy New Year!
