Written by Delmarice Price, Class of 2021
Last time we met at the beginning of September, I was student teaching in the Elementary school band setting. I wrote that East Brunswick was fortunate enough to be one of the few districts to implement a hybrid model of learning, but that didn’t last long. The week of November 16, we went fully virtual due to outbreaks in the district. Luckily for us, a large majority of the kids were already virtual so there much change for the students. This semester I’m full-time, 5-days a week, student teaching in East Brunswick High School. Due to the breakouts that caused us to go to virtual back in November, we were going to be virtual until February.
I started my student experience for the spring semester at 7:06am on January 4th at my desk. I’m responsible to teach AP Music Theory, the EB Wind Ensemble, two periods of
Concert Band, and a Percussion Ensemble class this semester. There’s also jazz that goes on after school, but there hasn’t been much of that up to this point. The AP Music Theory class is by far the easiest class to teach virtually because you still hold a lecture style class and have them work on their own. I’m having a blast teaching AP theory because I get to experiment with different technology and methods to get the students to understand concepts. The ensemble classes are the toughest part of student teaching. There’s inequity on the student’s side because classes are as early as 7:26am. In school it’s fine to be playing that early because you’re in a room that will accommodate the noise. However, many students can’t play their instruments that early because their parents may be working from home and have meetings, siblings are at school in the room, or they don’t want to bother neighbors. So what do we do? How do we give kids a comprehensive instrumental music education without the ability to play? Well, we try as hard as we can. My coop and I will structure the class to have half about theory and content knowledge of the music they’re playing and the other half about interacting with music, whether that’s playing, counting, or singing their part with a recording software. It’s not the same as playing, but it’s something we can get the students to do so early in the morning.
One of my biggest challenges this semester is not being able to get to know my kids that well. I’ve only seen about a quarter of my students' faces across the five classes that I teach, and I’m afraid that that number will not change as the year goes on. Another big challenge of mine is motivation. I wanted to student teach at a school like East Brunswick so that I could get experience with a large ensemble, jazz ensemble, and AP theory. Since the pandemic has taken those experiences and whittled them down to something that doesn’t feel like anything, my motivation has really gone down. I’ll be real with you, there are some times where I’m questioning whether I still want to do this. I know it’s all temporary, but
in the moment it all feels like there isn’t any reason to do this. On the bright side, we did go back to a hybrid model, where I get to see and play music with some students. Seeing those students in person was really nice. Just being in the class with two other students and playing with them made me realize why I wanted to get into Music Education. While the education field may seem dark now, I promise you normalcy will come back to us soon.
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