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Katie’s journey back to the classroom (music education)!!

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katie,rinos:
18/8/20
Holidays!
I finished uni and also got 1000 posts on the forums last week which was pretty cool!  :D

But, I’m already starting to get a bit frustrated with Covid and bored of the holidays. Where I live is considered a covid hotspot. Some of my friends aren't keen to meet up and there’s not really many places to go. I tried to meet up with a friend last week and it fell through twice (neither of our faults, but still annoying).

Next term I’m studying three music units. It’ll be the first term without doing an education unit! I’m doing Performance Lab (my last ever performance unit), World Music and Educating the Musical Novice (my last pedagogy unit). At this point, I’ll be doing my performance classes in person (studio and wind sympth). So, I’ll have a 9-6 day on Tuesdays with two in person classes and an online lecture (getting up early again for the train will be so hard!!). I’m really hoping that wind sympth/my studio will be in person because I haven’t played in a band/seen people in my course for ages (and this is our last performance unit!). While it was cool to see people in our ‘online wind sympth/orchestra’ and play some music, you can’t play together on zoom and it was very different to what it normally is. Theres a lot of caution right now with wind instruments, air particles and covid though so I wouldn’t be surprised if its not on in person. Theres a suggestion that wind players may need to prerecord our performances and discuss them in the in-person class which honestly isn’t ideal. There still not 100% sure what will happen  with our performance exams: if they will need to be recorded or online. Overall, I’m pretty happy with my timetable for next term-I have three days of classes and on Thursdays I finish at 11am (although I do have three 9ams!!)!

I think I do want to be qualified to teach both history and music. I want to send some emails to some different unis over the holidays to see how easy it is. I’m not sure if I’d need to study both history and history teaching related units or how long it’d take.

I’m also hoping to move out of home sometime next year. I have no solid plans yet (and haven’t had a shift at my job since March) but I want to move closer to uni and have a bit more independence.

I keep checking if my marks are out yet and I really want to know how I went (especially for my major assignments: my pedagogy essay and my inclusive education booklet) but I only handed them in just over a week ago!

katie,rinos:
Hey,
Will do a longer update later but I'm doing a group research assessment on music education in schools for my World Music course. I would really appreciate if anyone who has studied music in NSW (years 7-12) could fill out our google form!!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdUhmyyyP4W0AUvc12gTsg5OqAqDHCtOlueScfAvZ-zVUocTA/viewform

Thanks so much!!  ;D

katie,rinos:
5/11/12
Week 8

It’s already week 8 which seems weird because this terms gone pretty fast (and also slow at the same time)! I’m excited for this term to be over soon even though I have no plans for the holidays.

I’ve had 2 classes online and 1 in person this term. I was really excited about the in person class but most of the time its been pretty underwhelming/disappointing! My performance lab studio isn’t compulsory to attend in person so some people watch through zoom. Because it’s a 9am class we’ve had a week with 5 people out of 15 in the actual room (so it felt like I’d wasted time travelling into uni). The lecturer doesn’t know how to use zoom well so he picks on everyone in the room to answer questions while those in zoom get out of it. I also don’t have any of my closer friends in this tute so I still haven’t seen some people in ages! My other in person class is tango ensemble (wind sympth isn’t running this term) and for the first half of the term only one wind player was able to play at a time. So, I only came into class every two weeks and could only play for around 20 minutes. Thats changed now so we can all play!

Uni’s been very quiet this term! Nobody really stays in between classes and the music corridor, which is normally really busy, always has no-one.

I have a job interview on Monday for a swimming instructor position at my local pools. It’s only a contract until the end of December but it has paid training and sounds pretty cool so I hope it goes well!

Performance Lab: This is my in person class-we’ve had between 5-10ish/15 people show up each week. We had the option this year to either record or do a live performance exam. I’ve chosen to record my pieces because I can do it as many times and I won’t get as anxious. I’ve just started getting lessons with my piano accompanist and I need to record a piece for an assessment on Monday. My community band started back up 3 weeks ago which has been so exciting because I hadn’t played with people since March! We’ve just got a new conductor so were starting to get used to him and the new music. I’ve also started piano lessons a few months ago. It’s difficult because I’ve listened to a lot of great pianists at uni before and I’m nowhere near that level but it’s been interesting to learn so far!

World Music: This class sounded interesting but it’s probably been my least favourite so far. Our lectures are powerpoints with voiceovers and YouTube links which are incredibly dry and difficult to get through each week! I would prefer if we had live class through zoom or blackboard instead of something pre-recorded. The tutorials go for 2 hours and are difficult to get through as well: they normally just going through questions from the lectures (often in breakout groups). We have a group assessment for this and luckily we were able to pick our groups so I’m with some of my friends. It’s an online ethnographic project so we are researching music education in NSW high schools and how funding/covid/the syllabus has affected it, which is why I posted a survey before. We have a presentation and 2000 word research report due at the end of the term. We also have another listening test which was meant to be next week but got pushed back to wk 10 which is great because I don’t know anything about the pieces yet!     

Educating the musical novice: This is my last pedagogy unit and I’ve enjoyed these ones so much! This has mostly been focussed on beginner tutor books and teaching young children. Our first assessment was critiquing different tutor books for our instrument. Then I had to create a beginning clarinet tutor book for the first 3 weeks with an intro,  (clarinet care, posture, embrouchere, tonguing descriptions) and three pages of clarinet exercises. I have an essay due towards the end of the term on teaching young students.

katie,rinos:
I might properly reflect on last term later but ...
I started placement on Friday!! I'm going to be at a school for the rest of the school term (so 4 weeks). I'm at a Christian school around 20 minutes away from me so pretty close! I was also at this school for year 10 work experience because I know the primary music teacher but this time will be with high school!

I'm mainly teaching years 7 and 8 but have one year 9 class a fortnight. I'm teaching from Wednesday and teach 1/3rd of a teachers load. So, I'll be teaching around 7/8 periods a week, observing another 7 periods and helping with band/orchestra/choir rehearsals!

I was really nervous about placement last week but it was pretty good and everyone seems really nice! It's still a bit stressful to actually start lesson planning and teach! I had some time on Friday to plan and I couldn't really decide what to do! Also, double periods seem like a really long time to teach (100 minutes)! I'm worried I'm going to be really tired over the next few weeks but hopefully it will be really good to start teaching!   :D

katie,rinos:
I have my last ever education class this week! It still doesn't really feel like I'm towards the end of my degree! 

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