Saxophone Prep Lesson

I observed Millikin Professor Perry Rask when teaching a prep lesson to a freshman in highschool. A lot of the things he had her doing were almost the same to what he has students in his studio do. He had her play scale exercises out of the Le Gamme book. She was having troubles because he was asking a lot from her but she eventually got it down with some help including slowing it down and going through rhythm exercises with the scales.
After scales, she worked on an etude she was doing for an upcoming Solo and Ensemble contest. Before working on that, Perry had her do a few vibrato exercises to warm her embouchure up for the etude. When doing this, he explained to her why she was doing the exercise. One thing that is consistent with Perry's teachings is that he always tells you why you do the things he has you do in lessons. Whether it is jazz, classical, or scales, there is always a reason for the exercises covered. After she was done with the vibrato exercise, she started playing her etude. She was still having trouble with getting her vibrato up to where it needed to be so she had her visualize it. She is also a bass player so her had her act as if she was doing vibrato on bass. When she got back on her instrument, her vibrato was instantly better because she had the visualization in her head.
After working through the etude for a while, she began to have problems with fumbling her fingers on faster notes so Perry had her do rhythmic exercises on the passage. What this includes is doing different rhythms through the passage to get her fingers use to the notes.
Overall, the lesson was very productive and it can be seen that Perry changes his lessons according the nature and ability of each of his students. There is consistency with the exercises used in each of his lessons but he adapts to what each student is able to accomplish and makes the lesson specialized for that specific student.

Oswego High School Choirs/ Music Theory

I had the privilege of observing at my high school, Oswego High School, and it's choirs under the direction of Frank Tieri. Although it is not a choir, Mr. Tieri also teaches an AP Music Theory course as his first class of the day. In this class, they were studying for an upcoming test so he decided to play a game where the class was divided into three teams and once asked a question, a member of the team must rush to sit in a chair before answering the question. Whichever team sat in the chair first and gave the correct answer, they would win.
This was a very good game to play because it got the students up, moving, and thinking early in the morning. The competitive nature of the game riled up the students which gave them a more positive energy when leaving the class. Not to mention the game was a great study tool for thinking on the fly because the students were forced into thinking quickly if they wanted to win the game.
The next class was combined choir. Being the biggest choir in OHS made up of around 80 students, combined choir can be a challenge for most teachers. Along with having many students, Mr. Tieri also opens this choir up to students with learning disabilities so there were 5 student that fit that category. The wonderful thing about Mr. Tieri is that he opens up his class to these students and makes it an inclusive environment where they can be themselves, yell, and scream. Mr. Tieri just moves along and works with them the best he can while also including them in with the rest of the students in the choir. The students spent most of their time in sectionals because they just had a concert and had just recently received new music. By giving them sectional time, Mr. Tieri allowed the students to work through their own parts with people that had the same part as them on the piano. All of the students in his choirs are required to know basic skills on the piano so they know how to practice effectively.
One problem with sending students out to sectionals in such a big choir is that there is more of a chance of students goofing around and not getting things done. By putting certain students in each section in charge, they have accountability for one another and thus get more things done.
Most of the choirs throughout the day were on a similar schedule with running sectionals aside from the school's top choir, A Cappella Choir. A Cappella Choir was working on music because the next day, 8th graders from two neighboring junior high schools would be coming and doing a concert with the members of the choir. AC was working on the 8th graders' music and making sure they had al of the parts down in preparation for the next day so they would have the ability to help if needed.
Overall, it was a very productive day at OHS and I could definitely tell why Mr. Tieri is so widely admired for his teaching. His teaching styles and how he adapts to each class according to the certain abilities of the students was wonderful to see. A lot of new teachers are so focused on what they are doing instead of thinking about the students and it was refreshing to see an older teacher truly caring for the well being of his students.

Rochester High School

When our Into to Music Education class visited Rochester High School on April 11th, I didn't know what to expect. My high school band program was very big having 2 freshman bands, 3 upperclassmen bands, 3 jazz bands, and a marching band. Walking into the Rochester band, it was easy to tell that there was a very big mix of talent within the group. There were a few students that were very engaged with everything that the band director was saying, but it was apparent that some students were distracted by their phones or the homework on their stands. The students did not even try to hide their distractions and it was apparent that the band director was okay with them. After the rehearsal, Mr. Jones said that he knew about all of the distractions but did not do anything about them because he realized that there was no point taking the students away from their priorities when it wasn't for the good of the class.
Another thing I observed was the fact that Mr. Jones is a very hands off teacher. The entire saxophone section was reading a repeated rhythm wrong and he didn't do anything to change it. There was no real teaching involved because there was no whiteboard or visual aid for the students to learn from. The class seemed like more of a rehearsal more than an actual class for learning. It would be understandable if it were close to the concert, but there was no concert near.
This was kind of disheartening to see because there was so much potential in the room if only the kids had the motivation to apply themselves. Without having the motivation of learning and getting better, they found their distractions more appealing.
Mr. Jones revealed to us that the percussion section is very elite and hard to get into. Most of the time, there were one to two players that were sitting on chairs in the back doing nothing. The talents of the students were not being used to their full extent and instead they were forced to sit there and do nothing for most of the rehearsal. So the kids that are having difficulties are not being worked with and the kids that are talented are not being used to the best of their ability. It was a very strange sight to see when the class was only dedicated to rehearsing and not teaching.

Observation for 3/22

Over Winter Break, I had the opportunity to observe at Prairie Point Elementary School in Oswego, Illinois with Clint Hafenrichter as the teacher. Mr. Hafenrichter was my elementary school general music teacher so it was interesting to be on a different side of his teaching.
The day started off with fourth graders in which they were learning about ship shanties. This had been their second or third lesson about ship shanties so they already knew the cultural aspects of them and the structure behind all of them. The children had also already learned an example of a song called "Across the Rio Grande." After a brief overview of the concepts already learned, all of the children were put into 3 different groups and their goal was to sing the song they already know while doing "ship work." This included moving a stack of books from one side of the room to another in a long train. Mr. Hafenrichter sat at the piano and played while the children had to figure out an effective way to get the books across the room. Naturally, the students saw it as a competition and decided to hastily and messily throw the books down to try to beat the two other groups instead of doing it effectively and in rhythm. After this happened, Mr. Hafenrichter instructed the students that in order to achieve the task, they need to work together and pass the books in rhythm with each other. After this, the students changed and it seemed a lot more organized as if they were all actually on a ship together.
After the fourth graders, there were the third graders and they were working on their third grade musical. First, they listened to the song they were supposed to sing and then they tried to sing it. The different thing than most musicals is that the students did not get any music; they only got lyrics to the song. This allowed to students to focus on listening to the musical and memorizing the words instead of actually having to read music on the page. This also made the process a lot more fun for them because they got to freestyle with one another how they thought the song should sound.
The last group of the day were the second graders. This class was particularly interesting because there were students within the class that were hearing impaired as well as visually impaired and cognitively impaired. They were mixed with regular students which created a welcoming, all-inclusive environment for all of the students. Mr. Hafenrichter wore an FM system which allowed all of the hearing impaired students the ability to hear him and there was also a sign language interpreter in the room. The topic of the day were instruments of the orchestra. Most of the students already knew the instruments so he tested their knowledge by asking them a series of questions to test their knowledge.
Overall, Mr. Hafenrichter dealt with behavior by introducing the "plus one" system in which students who exhibited exceptional behavior and went above and beyond for the day received plus ones in their grade book which boosted their grades. Students who were acting up in class or were not participating could receive "minus ones" in which they would lose points for the day. Since I went fairly late in the school year, all of the students seemed to be on their best behavior earning their plus ones and there was only one instance in which a student received a minus one. In order to get the entire class to keep each other accountable, they also had the "smiley" system. Each class would start out with one smiley on the board, if the class as a whole was exceptional for the day, the class could receive a second smiley. If the class was overall not focused or participating, their smiley could be taken away. However many smileys were on the board reflected the amount of smiley face stickers the class would get for the day. If the class got reaches certain checkpoints on their smiley face board, they would get rewards such as pick-your-own-seat day or class-without-shoes day. This motivates the class, overall to do well to earn their rewards