Music education, in my opinion, is often overlooked at the elementary level. While I am a strong advocate for music education (obviously), most parents don't even know I exist. Through the discussion this week, I've had a chance to really think about ways to inform people about the importance of music education.
- One of the first things I had in mind would include setting up various stations in my classroom during meet and greet. At each station, students would work with their families in a variety of ways. One way could be instrument exploration with a "name-that-tune" game, another could be an "Are you my family?" scavenger hunt - where students and parents have to use the resources in the classroom to figure out which family certain instruments belong in, and another station could be a creative station using the app "Tune Train." While these are all simple, it would get the families into the classroom and I could give families a ticket out the door with curriculum information and a link to my website.
- This is my first year at the high school since student teaching. While I'm only there for one class, I'm amazed to see that EVERY student has a smartphone. I'm assuming that if the students are constantly connected than the parents are as well. I've started using Twitter to give my high school students important information, but I've also started using it to document some of the things we are working on in the elementary classroom. My hope is that parents will being "following" me and have an easy way to see what their students are learning about in music. Here's an example of one of my tweets:
- Finally, I love the idea of inviting families and administrators/teachers into the music classroom for a student-led lesson. I'd work with the students and together we would decide what they want to teach their families about. On the day of the lesson, I'd ask the students to explain what the guests would be learning and then have them divide into small groups to being working.
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