Innovation in the Music Classroom: Where My Innovation Plan is Today and What I Hope it Becomes in t
When Dr. Thibodeaux first introduced me to the phrase Disruptive Innovation, I had never heard of it before. My school considers itself a school of innovation, but what does that really mean anyway? After watching the videos and beginning to read Horn's book, Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools, I understood Disruptive Innovation to be a tool to change up an area of work that may not be working as well as it could.
Years ago, I never would have considered taking a college class on-line, and I honestly didn't quite jump on the bandwagon when we began using programs like Blackboard or Schoology in our classrooms. It seemed like one more thing to manage in a classroom, one more thing for teachers, students, and parents to learn. But, there was a need. There was a reason to disrupt our norms. Learners were no longer doing paper and pencil work at home, parents were sending in note after note about how their child didn't finish their work because of ALL of their extracurricular activities. In my school, learners were missing a week or more of school to go on once in a lifetime vacations. How could a teacher give them that much make up work and have the student still learning? Blended classrooms were the answer. If lessons were available on Schoology, kids could learn at any time of day. They could get the same quality of education as their peers even though they had to do it in a different way.
Fourth grade recorder is one of those necessary evils in the world of elementary music. The recorder is a fairly simple wind instrument that can be used to assist in teaching music reading, writing, and performing skills. But over the last 16 years of teaching, my learners have changed and the excitement of getting to play this new instrument isn't enough to motivate and challenge my learners. A need for change was becoming obvious.
Traditionally, recorder class would consist of learners coming into music with their recorder, folder or music, and a pencil. They must not forget that pencil. (Why? I don't know. I have a million they can borrow, but it was a traditional rule of responsibility that could not be let up on.) The teacher would have selected the music for the week, and have a full group lesson ready to go. This would typically consist of reading through the rhythms, reading note names, reviewing fingerings, and then playing the piece until it was solid enough to move one. Learners would be asked to write notes into their music to remind them of what was "taught." The teacher would have to have learners play one at a time to check for skill mastery or to record an assessment grade. This individual playing time would take up to 15 minutes for class-time on its own. By the time this teacher led recorder instruction was over, it left little to no time for singing, games, listening activities or dance.
In my opinion, and the opinion of many of my learners, something had to change. For me that change was to design and implement Blended Learning in the Elementary Recorder Classroom. This was a huge undertaking for me as the only music educator in my building, but it would hopefully be worth it in the end. Besides, my students deserved the best plan, and I truly believe the a blended classroom can be that plan.
Researching, developing and implementing a plan for Blended Learning in the Music Classroom became my focus for the remainder of my journey throughout the DLL program as well as my focus and goal for my classroom for the 2018-2019 school year.
The first Literature Review that I created as part of my research for Blended Learning did not turn up a whole lot of information in terms of the music classroom. But there were tons of articles, interviews, and data that showed the success of blended learning in classrooms in many different subjects at every age level. Why wouldn't this also help in the music classroom? The Prezi below shares a few more of my findings on Blended Learning in the Music Room.
In my Implementation Plan, I gave myself almost a year to plan, prepare, and potentially pilot the blended music room. I had a baby in February, and was out of my classroom for the remainder of the school year. This gave me time to get a lot of the thinking and planning done, but the actual implementation has just begun.
My district uses Understand by Design (UbD) for all of our lesson planning and curriculum documents. Dr. Harupnik's course on Significant Learning Environments helped better my understanding of this extremely thorough plan for my classroom. The UbD for my innovation plan can be found here. It is still not my favorite design for the music classroom. As the only music teacher, writing that much detail for every class I teach (24) is overwhelming.
Designing the online portions of the class was probably the most surprising, but enjoyable part of my innovation plan. I am not putting a link to the course here on my blog, because I am currently using the course with my students. In the beginning of this process, I thought it would be the easiest thing to do. It was definitely not difficult, but it was and still is extremely time consuming. Hopefully once this year's course is completed, there will only be tweaks and minor changes.
Where My Plan is Today:
I introduced my plan for a blended classroom to my principal this fall. She LOVES the idea and will support me in any way that she can. I am also using my plan to flip instruction as part of my evaluation goals this year. I figured that would keep me from bailing out if things got difficult and give me a way to truly evaluate what works and doesn't work as the year goes on.
Fourth Grade recorder students are currently in the beginning lessons of my on-line course. They are excited about the idea of working at their own speed, but they are reluctant to begin. I feel like I am having to drag them along in order to get anything done. In a district where homework is highly discouraged, getting the kids to do anything at home can be difficult. We can definitely still create a blended environment, I just have to include more of the technology side of the plans during class-time instead of relying on all of the kids to do it at home.
After winter break, I will be sending a detailed letter to parents explaining what their kids are doing in music class. Originally, I was going to send this letter home before I talked to the students, but opted to wait due to scheduling issues at school. I'm not sure if I made the right decision on not. Hopefully, the students will know enough about our blended course that they can help explain and show their parents what they are learning. This is one way I can give my learners ownership and voice. I want them to share with their parents. I don't want parents to tell the kids what to do. Parents, just like a teacher, need to be there to encourage and support, but not dictate the learning.
One aspect of my innovation plan that I seemed to abandon over time was the ePortfolio section. I began focussing on the blended learning aspect because I felt it was the most important thing for my learners at this point in time. However, my district actually launched an innovation plan that will lead to every learner in our district having their own ePortfolio that will stay with them from Kindergarten through 12th Grade. Learners will then be able to download and save their material to use in any way they need it. My learners will have a music section in this portfolio that I can use to document their progress in music. The district's portfolio might not be exactly what I had in my, but it will definitely work.
Take Aways:
At this point, my innovation plan has not changed much since I created it. This is mainIy because I was out of school the entire Spring with a new baby. As I begin to implement the plan this school year, I know that I will learn a lot and go back and refine my plan. I will keep detailed notes of what things go well and what parts of my plan were a total flop. I accept that parts of my plan will probably not work as I planned. Before this program, I would have never tried. Failure has always been a fear of mine. I think it controlled my decisions more than I even realized. My principal had the entire staff go through several trainings on growth mindset before I began my time with Lamar. I listened. I agreed. I repeated the phrases to my kids and I even made posters of growth mindset sayings to hang all over my classroom. I didn't put that knowledge to use on myself.
My mindset has changed throughout my time in the DLL program and through creation of this innovation plan. I know that I will have bumps in the road. Those bumps are opportunities to learn and grow. In the past, in order to avoid the bump, I would often avoid the road all together. This isn't fair to myself or my students. I recently took on a coding class at my school. I didn't know ANYTHING about coding, but it sounded fun and somebody needed to do it. Eight courses lessons later and I still have no clue what I'm doing, but the lesson my learners and I have taken to heart is that when coding, you often fail a hundred times before you succeed. It forces the growth mindset upon all of us.
My innovation plan is currently in its very beginning stages of implementation, but I can already see the amazing effects it has had on me as a person and as a teacher. I am no longer afraid to sit down and think of something new. When faced with a problem, I can find a solution. It might take 100 failures. I might get extremely frustrated and want to give up, but I CAN do it! My learners are on the journey to change with me and it really is fun! We are trying out new activities, new learning styles, and having a blast doing it. I have taught my kids that it is okay to make mistakes. They know that they will always have somewhere around to help them pick up the pieces and try again. We believe in the power of yet in my classroom, and we repeat that phrase daily.
I never thought that I would ever write an article for any publication and I honestly had no intent of submitting the article that I had written based on my innovation plan. But, I did it and I actually kind of enjoyed it! Writing about something you are passionate is totally different than being forced to write about a topic. No, I haven't been published, but I did write an article and have sent it off to be reviewed. I can't post it here, just in case it does goes published, but you can watch my short video commercial for it.
Once I have fully implemented the remaining portions of my innovation plan with my own students, I would like to share the plan with my colleagues around the district. Many of them will not be eager to jump aboard the blended learning ship, so I will need fairly solid data and plan of influence in place before meeting with them. My goal is to get one or two teachers to collaborate with me in year two and then pitch the plan to the team of 11 elementary music teachers. If my ultimate goal of becoming a Digital Learning Coach becomes a reality, I'd like to take my plan and adapt it to meet the needs of teachers in all subject areas across the district, especially in the fine arts.
A Few Quotes to Remember:
“When it comes to innovation, an ounce of execution is worth more than a ton of theory.” ~ Phil McKinney
“Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” ~ William Pollard
References:
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY: Random House ISBN 0345472322
Grenny, J., Patterson, K., Maxfield, D., McMillan, R., Switzler, A. (2013). Influencer: The new science of leading change: 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
Mims, C. (2003). Authentic Learning: A Practical Introduction & Guide for Implementation. Retrieved December 03, 2017, from https://projects.ncsu.edu/meridian/win2003/authentic_learning/
TED. (2010, May 24). Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution! [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9LelXa3U_I&feature=youtu.be
Thomas, D., & Brown J. S. (2011). A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. (Vol 219) Lexington, KY:
Wiggins G. P. & J. McTighe. (2005). Understanding by Design, Expanded 2nd Edition. Pearson. ISBN 0131950843