Posted by Marian Vasilescu on September 3, 2019 in Education
Let’s explore additional education news, with a focus on The Music Educator. Successful teachers break out of the box: It may be a self-made box. “Oh I could never do that,” you say to yourself. Perhaps you promised you’d never become the teacher who would let students grade each other (maybe you had a bad experience as a kid). Sometimes the biggest obstacle to growth is us. Have you built a box around your teaching methods? Good teachers know when it’s time to break out of it. Successful teachers are masters of their subject: Good teachers need to know their craft. In addition to the methodology of “teaching”, you need to master your subject area. Learn, learn, and never stop learning. Successful educators stay curious.
Model expectations for your students. Interactively model how to complete an activity or task. We often offer multiple, repeated opportunities when teaching “academic” skills (e.g., letter sounds, math computations), but typically neglect to offer multiple, repeated opportunities for practicing behavioral routines (e.g., lining up at the door, pushing in their chairs). Say what you mean and mean what you say. If you make a request of a student, follow through with that request. If you cannot follow through, avoid placing the demand or providing the instruction. Know yourself and adjust expectations (for yourself and your students) accordingly. See more details at Teacher Guides.
Learning is not only for young people. How-To Books for Seniors. Visit your local library or bookstore. There you’ll be sure to find a variety of books to help you learn how to use different types of technologies. Some are quite simple to follow and written specifically for seniors such as the Visual Steps and For Dummies series of books. You can also order these books online at sites like Amazon.com.
It’s always best to start small and have multiple sessions so you don’t give them information overload. The last thing you want to do is get them feeling too overwhelmed and then they give up because you gave them too many tasks to try by themselves. A very good website for senior learning is http://seniortechtutorials.com/.
Music teaching is hot this days, many people try to learn music, for various reasons. There are a few podcasts that focuses on teaching people about music and one of them is The Music Educator by Bill Stevens. There isn’t much shorter than the attention span of a child today. New technologies are making it easier for us to read and learn in short bursts. It is getting harder for young people to focus on one topic or task for a long period of time. Fit your lessons to your students’ concentration levels. Mindchamps explains that kids can become overwhelmed when presented with a string of tasks. This makes them get bored and give up. Luckily, it is easy to avoid this scenario in your classroom.
Tip of the day for music teachers : Pre-Establish a Protocol for Reluctant Learners: In the perfect classroom, every student is excited to learn and happy to participate in any and all classroom activities. While this may often be the case, in reality, there will days where students are more reluctant to learn and participate in activities. To assist with these difficult times, young teachers will want to have pre-established protocols for encouraging reluctant learners. Ideas may include incorporating songs into the curriculum that reluctant learners like or even simply providing these students with special tasks.
You can listen to the The Music Educator podcast by using the app from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.themusiceducatorpodcast.android.music. You can learn more about Bill Steven by checking his website at https://www.4themusiceducator.com/.