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Music Teachers Chatboard

Professional Development

by Anita

Sep 15, 2015

I am longing to collaborate and share ideas and learn with fellow Music Educators. Trouble is, the last several years, our district has required that the entire district participates in all the same training. We have not been allowed to participate in training with educators in our subject area. Last year the entire elementary staff, including me and the other Specialists, attended a Math Conference with the classroom teachers. The 2 years before we all attended the same classroom management training - intensive week long training in the summer and/or district wide inservice training throughout the school year. I miss working with other Music teachers. Anyone else in the same situation? I have been a team player and went along with the others, and I can see the value of incorporating Math in Music classes. But please, I need to see and hear what other Music teachers are doing. The administration might let me take time off, but I have to use either personal time off, or the 1 profession...See More

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DonnaR/CA On 9/15/15, Anita wrote:

> participates in all the same training. We have not been > allowed to participate in training with educators in our > subject area. Last year the entire elementary staff, > including me and the other Specialists, attended a Math > Conference with the classroom teachers. The 2 years before > we al...See MoreOn 9/15/15, Anita wrote:

> participates in all the same training. We have not been > allowed to participate in training with educators in our > subject area. Last year the entire elementary staff, > including me and the other Specialists, attended a Math > Conference with the classroom teachers. The 2 years before > we all attended the same classroom management training - > intensive week long training in the summer and/or district > wide inservice training throughout the school year. I miss > working with other Music teachers

I feel your pain. A few years back, I was doing the same thing: sitting in the back during professional learning seminars that were about the Math, Science, Language, curriculum. Classroom management, okay, that would have been good for anybody. Mostly, I sat in the back with my own materials, present in case anyone questioned it, but usually combing through books, scores, etc, that I'd toted down to the PD room.

I found local organizations for Orff and Kodaly, that held Saturday workshops. I felt that if I came away with ONE workable idea, ONE beautiful piece of music/arrangement, or had a reasonable conversation about teaching music with other teachers, it was worth the drive. (One drive was 32 miles one way, the other was 125 miles one way.) Another time, all of our district vocal teachers went to Fullerton for a workshop with Henry Leck. It was on that day, the breakthrough was made.

We had petitioned the district: if we could prove that we had done 7 hours on our own time, attending workshops, seminars, other MUSIC-related professional development (that didn't involve college credits), could we be excused from the January in-service? Or, if that in-service was on the same day as the local CMEA-SBS conference, could we attend that instead of sitting through our site's/district's non-applicable professional learning? With a lot of help from our teacher association, we won this right.

We were still supposed to attend any schoolwide PD held after school or during Compact Days, but with a brief chat with my principal, I no longer had to do that. I usually was with kids, either a choir rehearsal or the all-school musical had a rehearsal. If I was free of either one, tho, I was to attend -- and did. And sat in the back.

Now I'm teaching regular ed. So much of the stuff has changed that I'm glad I didn't have to sit through all that stuff.

Donna

Sep 18, 2015

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