​Looking back at my own musical upbringing, I was never the poster child of someone even remotely comfortable with improvisation and composition. At the time, I was very rigid with how I viewed music. I read the music on the page, and sang it. That was that. Whenever I was asked to come “off of the page,” I would really start to stress out.
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As I began to think of my own classroom, and the curriculum I employ, I knew I had to be aware of my own tendencies to avoid composition and improvisation in order to make sure that my students were given the best I could give them.

​My first step towards having students create compositions is having them notate the rhythm of a song they already know using popsicle sticks. While this is not composition by any means, I believe it is a low-stakes way to get students involved in the process of writing music down. Once we’ve practiced this activity for a couple of different songs (I usually do a mix of partner and solo), I move on into having students create their own choices to begin the path towards composition.

Once students are able to feel comfortable and successful in being able to write down a song they already know, I then work on having them take the next step into making their own choices. One of my favorite things I’ve used for this step is having students create a rhythmic burger composition. Not only does this help reinforce form, it is also an easy next step into students creating their own compositions. AND it can easily be adjusted for different ages and abilities by changing the form of the piece (I currently have ABA, ABABA, and ABACA).
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I like using this activity for a couple of reasons: Firstly, it is low-stakes and only involves rhythm. Students are able to be successful with relatively low effort on their part. I’ve found that by having more frequent activities like this allow students to build on their compositional abilities with little to no “freak outs” on the part of my students.

When it comes to my older kids, one of my favorite projects is an ostinato composition project that allows students to experiment with four types of ostinato in a fairly easy way! I’ve written out an outline of the structure I usually use for this process at the link below, but the general process starts with students learning the cup song to a known song and then extending that to perform their own parodies with ostinato embellishments!

I’ve been very impressed with the performances of my students each time I have done this project, and I am such a big fan about how students tend to create their own points of extension, which is AWESOME for differentiation!

I love giving students the opportunity to create their own music, and to take ownership in the music classroom. However, I know that I have many students, like me, that are uncomfortable with the notion of starting with nothing and making something new. By guiding students to take smaller steps, I believe we are able to increase student confidence and performance on these types of activities, which is win-win for sure!

I talked more in-depth about these composition resources and lessons in Midweek Check-In #2! If you are interested in learning more about these, you can find the resources, as well as a recording of the live event by checking out the show notes at the link above!

​For better or for worse, being a traveling teacher is a reality for a large percentage of music teachers, especially those at the elementary level. While I can vouch that there are definitely advantages and disadvantages of sharing your time between multiple schools, I can also vouch that you need to set some specific procedures for yourself so that you don’t go crazy.

I got my first taste of being a traveling teacher when I was doing my student teaching placement. In this situation, I spent 4 days of the week at one elementary school and the remaining day at another. This situation really made me aware of the differences between the schools, and I had to make sure I was being aware of these differences when I did my planning. I quickly found out that one lesson would not fit both schools.

When I took my current job, I really wanted to make sure that I made an effort to balance both schools. I knew that since I didn’t have any planning periods or lunch at the middle school, it would be easy for me to allow this school to be the other. While I still have work to go to make sure I am balancing both schools, I think I am better off because I recognized how easy it would be to focus on one more than the other.

When it comes to keeping your sanity as a traveling music teacher, my first piece of advice would be to make sure you are always one step ahead of everything. It can be easy to mess up the rotations between multiple buildings, or to leave an instrument or manipulative at a different building on a day you need it. To keep these things from happening too often, I have a few things to share that keep me organized:

1. Stay Ahead on Plans: Especially if you are juggling additional preps between multiple buildings, it can be easy to fall behind on planning. I’ve found myself a couple of times without a finished plan due to a change in schedule or a mistake in the rotation. To make sure that I am prepared in case something like this happens, I try to stay one or two lessons ahead of where the kids are. This also lets me understand my macro-sequence a little better as well!

2. Digitize EVERYTHING: I’m going to start this one with a disclaimer: ALWAYS HAVE A BACKUP IN CASE TECHNOLOGY BREAKS.

But I carry very little paper copies of anything between buildings. My class rosters and grade books are on my iPad, my lesson plans are on Google Drive, and any interactive resources or presentations I use are stored in the cloud. This works for me because I do all of my planning, assessing, and resource organization digitally. I keep my Google Drive organized and indexed so I can find anything I need in a moment.

But again: ALWAYS HAVE A BACKUP.

3. If It Can’t Be Digitized, Make TWO: Obviously there are some things that can’t be digitized. Certain manipulatives, flash cards, sub folders, and song props need to be a non-digital resource. For these, I make two of everything. If I truly believe I will use this resource for multiple years, I think it is well worth the time to make multiple so I don’t have to worry about transporting things between buildings.

Obviously there are certain things, like instruments and more expensive things, that you can’t practically have more than one. But by making multiples of things you can, it cuts down on the crazy amount of stuff that needs to be moved from one building to the next.
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4. Spread Some Roots: Being a traveler can be hard. As music teachers it is very easy to feel isolated, and that is made even more possible when you don’t have a home base all of the time. My advice to anyone that feels this way would be to spread roots.

When possible, get out of the music room. Eat lunch in the teacher’s lounge, go to staff outings, get to know the people around you. Don’t let being the other be an option! You are just as important of a part of each school you teach in as those who are there all of the time. You make just as much as an impact on the students you teach. Don’t forget that.
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As a traveling teacher, we often find ourselves in the middle of a juggling act: multiple schedules, multiple administrators, and multiple classroom spaces. Sometimes it can feel lonely, and others it’s nice to be able to have that change every once in a while. There are definitely ups and downs to being a traveling teacher, but I know that I still make a difference. I just happen to make a difference at two schools rather than one.

​I remember the weeks leading up to my final student teaching experiences: sitting at home over winter break feeling excited and nervous; anxious and apprehensive. After all, this was it. All of my college career was literally leading up to this point. I was finally going to be teaching! I was so excited. This was all that I had ever wanted, and it was just a few weeks away.

But something strange happened as the weeks turned into days. I started freaking out. How could I be ready? How was I supposed to know what to do? What to say? I turned to the faithful internet, and I was pretty disappointed in the lack of music-related posts I found about student teaching. While yes, some of the tips I found on non-music posts could be related to my situation, but it left a lot to be desired as I tried to mentally prepare myself to teach hundreds of students I had never met.

So here is where this lists comes in: these are the five things that I wish I would’ve been able to have known before I started my music student teaching.

1. You Won’t Know Every Students’ Name: One thing that is really hard about student teaching in music is that we have so many freaking students! And depending on how the schedule at your school works, you might only see each group of students a couple of times each week (if you’re lucky).

With that being said, its totally ok for you not to have every students’ name memorized, even by the end of your placement! This is something I still struggle with now, if I’m being completely honest!

My advice to you would be to just try your hardest. Try to remember as many names as you can, and if you make a mistake, just correct yourself and move on! I would also suggest having a seating chart with student names and photos! These can prove INCREDIBLY helpful for memorizing names, or to reference when working with a class!

2. Some People Won’t Understand Why You Are So Tired: One of the crappy things about being a student teacher is being in a weird “in-between” stage. You are on a professional schedule, but you aren’t 100% a professional. If your school is anything like mine was, you might still be forced to live on campus, which adds another facet of “awkward” to it!

I love my friends, but a lot of them (those that weren’t also student teaching) just didn’t understand why I was going to bed early, or why I wasn’t hanging out with them on the weekends like I used to. I truly don’t think they understood the magnitude of what student teaching really is.
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Just as an added bonus, I thought I would add a (cheesy) picture of me taken in the morning of my first day of student teaching, and one that a friend snapped of me that afternoon when I got home:

I love using folk songs in my classroom, for SO many reasons! There are so many fantastic songs with great games that I use in my classroom, but I also like using these folk songs to improve music literacy.

Even if it is only projecting the melodic contour of the song on my interactive whiteboard, I have found that by allowing students to have a visual representation of what they are singing helps them connect what they have been singing to what they see in front of them.

One of my favorite ways to have students practice this is by having them be the leader of our class. I give them one of my pointers and have them point to each note while the class sings all together. Not only have I seen this improve students’ abilities to track the notes, I have also seen this make it easier for students when we move onto having them notate the melodies or rhythms of the piece on their own.
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Some of my favorite resources in my classrooms are my folk song kits. I created these to give students the opportunity to have that visual representation of what they are singing, as I talked about previously. If you want to learn more about these, I have my folk song kit for Apple Tree available for free on my Teachers Pay Teachers store. You can claim your freebie by clicking the image below.

Taking The Next StepPreviously, I have shared how I like to have students do rhythmic notation in small groups using popsicle sticks and other small manipulatives, but I also frequently use a similar method for melodic notation.

As many of you can attest, the erasers from the Target Dollar Spot are perfect for melodic notation. I have personal staffs in my classroom that allow students to put the erasers (which are the PERFECT size to stand in as note heads) on the lines and spaces to show the melodic contour of the song we are working on.

I try to use erasers that have to do with the song we are singing. I’ve seen that students really buy in when using these, and I will never be going back to using standard manipulatives. Once students have notated the melody, they follow the melodic contour of the piece as we sing it as a class.

Some of my favorite folk songs in my classroom are Doggie Doggie, Mouse Mousie, Apple Tree, Wall Flowers, and sooooo many more! Not only do these songs all have easy elements to extract to reinforce musical concepts, but they have games to them that students love and ask for!
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If you are interested in learning more about the Folk Song Kits that I use in my classroom, check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

If you search “classroom management” on Pinterest, I promise you will find hundreds upon hundreds of resources and blog posts on how to improve the management of your classroom culture. In fact, that might be how you came across this blog post. To me, this screams to the fact that this is something that many of us out there struggle with. And let’s face it: sometimes getting through a lesson without losing your composure because you have a first-grader in the corner licking a Boomwhacker (even when you aren’t even using any instruments) is all you can do to survive a particularly unruly class. But for me, classroom management all comes down to the culture of my classroom.

In college, I had a methods professor who would always talk about the fact that we as teachers set the culture of our classrooms. While I didn’t realize it at the time, I would come to embody those words. While I doubt any of the information I will be sharing today will be utterly mind-blowing, or cause you to completely rethink your classroom management structure, I think it can be important for us to take some time to look through the culture of our own classrooms through the lens of our students.

1. Set Clear Expectations: I know, I know- this is one of those things that you hear people say allllll the time! But that doesn’t change the fact that this is where you can start to get yourself in trouble. How can we expect our students to live up to our expectations if we don’t make sure that they know what we expect of them? This year, I took the first three or four lessons to make sure that I had my expectations solidly explained and understood by my students. Now this doesn’t mean that I only worked on expectations for the first month or so of school! What it does mean is that I was incredibly conscious and purposeful about the activities that I selected.

It is much easier to have students experience your expectations, rather than simply repeating these expectations over and over again until you are blue in the face. Especially at the elementary level, I choose games and activities that allow for students to engage in self-regulation from day one! I have found that this has allowed me to reinforce my expectations instead of just repeating them, or referring to posted rules on my wall.
So what are the expectations that I have for my students? It doesn’t matter if I am working with kindergartners or sixth graders, I expect all of my students to be safe, responsible, and respectful.

I once got into a debate in college with a general education major when working together to brainstorm classroom rules as part of a seminar activity. He argued that my rules were not specific enough, and allowed students to get away with too much. I, on the other hand, thought the exact opposite! I believe that my expectations allow anything that hasn’t been explicitly stated to be absorbed into one of my three expectations, and eliminates that possibility of students being able to argue that their actions and behavior had not broken a more specific ‘rule.’ To this day I believe that having expectations set up like I stated above requires students to think more critically about their own behavior, and make necessary adjustments!


2. Be Consistent: It doesn’t matter if you have the most inclusive, all-encompassing, amazing expectations for your students if you aren’t consistent in your upholding of these standards. My students know that I have high expectations of them in everything they do, and that I am not one to let these expectations go by the wayside when things get rough.

I want to be very clear, I am not advocating for a one-size-fits-all classroom management model. To the contrary, I believe that redirections and responses to student behavior should be as appropriate to each student as possible. But this doesn’t mean that you have to let your expectations slide. Even with students that need a little extra support or redirection, we need to be consistent in making our expectations known, and how these expectations may lead to both positive and negative consequences.

What I am striving for in my classroom is for students to know that there will be a certain level of accountability for their actions. I want all of my students to know that my high expectations come from a place of love rather than a place of “being in charge.” I am fairly explicit with notion, particularly when redirecting students or discussing needed changes in behavior.


3. Let Them Know You Care: This brings me to what I believe is the most important part of establishing a positive classroom culture: making sure students know that you care for them on a individual basis. The often-repeated saying of “they won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” pops into my mind as I write this, and I can’t think of a more eloquent way to describe this. Students, especially those experiencing any variety of hardships, need to know that they matter to you.

Sometimes this is hard, especially when we as music teachers see hundreds of students each week for an increasingly limited amount of time. However, I firmly believe that not only is this in the best interest of your students, it will also pay out dividends for you as well. If students know you care, they are less-likely to want to disappoint you. They will work harder and longer and strive to make you proud, all saving you time spent on classroom management. Now I’m not saying to pretend to care so you have a smoother class. That would just be stupid. Let’s think of this as more of an added benefit rather than a reason to improve your student-teacher relationships.

Take a few seconds and think back to your favorite teachers from when you were in school. Why did you think of them? Why have they stayed with you all these years? Was it because they knew a lot about the subject they taught? Or was your admiration of them more centered on the relationships they fostered? I am willing to take a wager that the majority of the teachers you remember as your favorites had a good relationship with you, even though they still might have been incredibly knowledgable teachers.

Now What? 

Classroom culture is something that is incredibly important. What makes it difficult is that its something that we as educators need to be increasingly purposeful and aware of  in how we plan, implement, and nurture the culture in our classrooms. It’s also hard to change, and can take time to create the kinds of lasting and meaningful changes to create an improved culture within our classrooms. But I promise you that it is worth it.
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I urge you to answer these questions on your own, thinking about your current classroom culture: How do you foster community in your classroom? What strategies and methods have you used for classroom management? What has worked? What didn’t? What is something that you would like to try in your classrooms to foster positive relationships? Use the answers you have come up with to inform your next steps moving forward to foster a more inclusive, inviting, and positive classroom culture.