I feel that organizations such as MENC, or Silver Burdett put out simple lessons in hopes to inspire and spark bigger and better ideas in teachers. I feel that the hope of organizations is that teachers will take a simple plan, change and adapt it to their students/class and make it a valuable learning experience. The simple pop lessons on the MENC website are basic, teachers could go so much farther with them, and we discussed a few ways to do that in class. What I feel is the problem is the teachers. Teachers who rely on the book or website and don’t think critically are the ones who need to be reminded that lessons can go further than just what’s in the book. Possibly the book or website could suggest ways to go further, along with the simple lesson so that teachers know they have more options.
posted by Anonymous @ 9:32 AM
4 Comments:
Dr. Schmidt asked the question, why do organizations feel that lessons need to be so simplistic, and what can we as teachers do to counteract that? This lesson is a perfect example, and from such a prominent music education organization. To be honest, that idea really does anger me. Why should such an organization make such low expectations for teachers? I understand that making it simplistic allows for other teachers to use their own judgement and add things to make it unique for their classroom. However, we all know many teachers who would not do that and would use it simply as is. If an organization is going to give out a lesson plan, AND suggest that teachers "download it and use it," then they should at least make it a meaningful, and complete lesson rather than an activity that takes 20 minutes of class time. I guess, as future teachers, the only thing we can do to counteract this is to prove to our fellow teachers in the near future that value added lesson plans really do "add value" to students' lives. There is no one way to teach, and no one methodology, no one philosophy that is the end all and be all of teaching. Teachers must use their knowledge or their students and the knowledge that they themselves have acquired in their reading, research, and just in their experiences to create a long lasting educational experience for students.
In regards to Kate's original post, would placing suggestions on the website for teachers to build off of really encourage them to be critical thinkers? What would keep them from simply taking those suggestions and creating an equally simple lesson. I agree with Liz that we need to expect more from ourselves and other teachers to use their better judgement when creating a lesson and especially when taking a lesson from a book or website. Lessons taken from these sources should not, in good conscience, be used exactly as found and should be molded to fit the class in which they are to be used.
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I agree with Kate on this one. In fact Kate, Julie Dowell and myself can all attest to this because we have worked with such material at our Elementary Practicum site. When given songs to teach from such music books, we would often try to teach our own lesson plans that we felt best suited the class we were teaching. Of course, there were probably a few times where we took ideas straight from the material, because lets face it, there are some good things being taught in the books.
Regardless of what a lesson plan might look like on paper, there is no doubt that a good teacher can take such materials that are given and adapt them well enough that students grow and develop the need to learn and understand whatever concept it is that is being taught. MENC and Silver Burdett realize this I'm sure, and know that their lessons must be general enough to accommodate all different types of students from various backgrounds. If they didn't, then they wouldn't be making any money because schools wouldn't buy the texts.
Along with that statement, music education companies realize that there are bad teachers out there who have no idea what they are doing and must rely on such material to earn a paycheck at the end of the day. They get by using spoon-fed material which, in many cases, does not allow for a meaningful learning experience for the students.
We as teachers know that if teaching were this easy, we wouldn't be education majors because to some extent, we enjoy the challenges that come with teaching. It allows us to become better at what we do and builds upon our own personal teaching character.
Simply put, these materials are there because they act as reference. We read all the different philosophies behind teaching not because we use and retain everything that there is on the subject, but that they help shape what we do in praxis. Simple lesson plans act as hints at what we might form as the foundations for what we teach, acting as a supplement, not the entire lesson. In order to make a difference in the classroom and in the way teachers are presenting the material, we as educators must continue to think on our feet and continue to learn about our students.
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