I’m back! I have realized that the best way to get myself to write is to come to Panera, or somewhere outside of my home and outside of school so that I am not distracted by the millions of other things that I need to do…
I am so excited to write about the amazing Future Music Educators Camp! Dr. Wuttke, my professor, said that this is the most unique thing he has ever seen. In a really good way! And that I should write an article on it and try to present at SMTE. I am so on this one!
So a few updates and observations first of all:
The need for a more scaffolded approach to classroom management is needed, but in the short period of time with my students, this may be difficult. Either way though, I need to make it work and make it count. I am thinking that perhaps I add some time to the camp and have it run from 8 am – 2 pm but we’ll see. I think I will survey my FMEC students on this to see how they feel about that.
The practicum seem to be going well! I have heard from all of the “supervisors” and they seem to approve of the FMEC students. It seems that there may also be a need to add more rehearsal techniques into our FMEC week 1 next year. I would really like to do this for next year and saw myself that there is a need for this. One of our students was really having a hard time when students couldn’t seem to rest on time and he didn’t know how to fix the problem when he tried multiple ways. It can be challenging and is definitely something that I need to address with the FMEC students.
MONTICELLO! So on the last day of the camp, we were kicked out of school… I didn’t realize that July 3rd was a national holiday, and so I decided to take them to Thomas Jefferson’s home: Monticello. This was an incredible decision for many reasons:
Jefferson’s view on education is still relevant to our students and may help to inspire them to be strong leaders in the movements to improve our own education system.
We took the tour of Monticello, and our guide told us about Jefferson’s hatred of slavery, but that even he wasn’t able to abolish it. In all reality, because so much of his income came from the work of his slaves, he would have been destitute surely without their labor. So, even though Jefferson believed it to be a true evil, he even was not able to pull himself out of the system. We discussed how long it took after our Declaration of Independence for slavery to be abolished and to have (at least on paper) equality within our country… But we weren’t really equal after the Civil War were we? We still forced our dominance over another race in spite of naming them as “free” men. It wasn’t until the Civil Rights Movement, so long after, that things started to turn around for our country. I explained to the students how slowly things move in our country, but that these changes have been good and essential. We then discussed the segregation that exists today within our own schools…
Economic Segregation – It exists. It reminds me of slavery. Children have no control over which family they are born into, and yet… They are forced into schools which perfectly reflect society’s value of their community. And so the children of the poor have a poor school with poor educators, poor equipment and materials, and they receive a significantly poorer education than the rest. I don’t believe I will see universal equality within our schools in my entire lifetime, but I am on the movement. These students, perhaps they will get to see it. Perhaps they will join me in the charge against economic segregation in American public schools. I hope that our visit to Monticello, to the slave quarters, and our discussion on economic segregation will make an impact. Even if just one of them is moved to do something it will be worth it.