New teachers, student teachers, pre-service teachers, this one's for you:
If you are pursuing a career in teaching your particular field of study, then you probably love your content. In fact, you probably love it a lot, and that passionate interest is probably a big reason why you're a teacher at all. You probably spent four(?) years of undergraduate education studying your content in great depth, becoming more and more passionate about it as time passed.
I know in music, this is especially true. (If you're not a music teacher, feel free to insert whatever content you are passionate about and view the rest of the post through that lens). Even as music education majors, we tend to spend a large percentage of our undergraduate education studying music theory and history, practicing our primary instrument, and climbing the rungs of the performance ensembles. Training in this conservatory model tends to distort our perception a bit: we often think of ourselves as capital "M" Musicians first and foremost. We are really, really excited about music (and we should be!). We are most likely quite skilled at music, and we probably have a long list of accomplishments in undergrad that feed our self-perception as "capital M Musicians."
Here's the harsh truth: your students don't care.
I have been teaching for over a decade, and never once has one of my kids asked to see my résumé. They will not be particularly interested in what operas you were in, or what countries your ensemble toured through, or what repertoire you played or sang on your recital. There's even a chance, unless they had a really great music teacher before you showed up, that they won't even come into your class caring about music in general. (Note: or at least, Music as you would like them to experience it).
WHAT? But how could they not even care at all about the most amazing thing ever? The thing to which you have just devoted years and years of study and passion?
Because they don't know yet if you care about them, and they haven't decided yet whether they should care about you.
I'm sincerely hoping that if there are experienced teachers reading this right now, that your reaction is somewhere between "no duh" and "say it again louder for the people in the back!" You know this. If you are still teaching after many years and you are having success, then I'm almost positive you've figured out that our profession is about kids and not about content.
Don't get me wrong: it's a great and necessary thing to love your content as a teacher! You should love it, and should have studied it for years, and you should probably be really really good at it! All of that is important. However, in isolation it means little, because the vast majority of students you will encounter are not inspired and motivated by content, they are inspired and motivated by teachers who care about them and who engage them.
If you approach teaching with the view that your content is the most incredible thing in the world, worthy of study by all students, without any idea of how to convince your students why they should care, you won't get far. You will also take it really personally the first time a student tells you that the piece you love and painstakingly selected for them to sing "sucks." It's not the fault of "this generation." It's not the fault of the parents or the community or smartphones. It isn't anyone's fault, it's just how kids are. So you need to figure out what to do when they don't all come flocking to you just because your content is great (they won't). It starts with relationships, it starts with caring and connection. Always. There are no exceptions.
Yes you will encounter the small percentage of kids who just inherently love the content, no matter who is standing in front of the class. You may have even been one of those kids when you were in school! But most kids are not like that. And there is a vast potential in students who don't know they love something yet because they have yet to have a teacher -a teacher that they loved- who showed them how amazing music could be.
Every semester I start two classes of brand new sixth graders. These sixth graders come into my room with a wide range of experience levels, expectations, ability, interest, you name it. Some of them sang in their elementary choir, most of them did not. Some of them like to sing but that does not mean they automatically love choral singing. Some of them have no idea how the heck they ended up in my class and are desperately hoping to change electives. One particular student in that last category comes to mind: she's a junior now and she just performed in the Colorado High School All State Choir last weekend. I am always trying to convert as many of these sixth grade students as possible into choir kids who will love it and keep doing it throughout middle school, and hopefully longer. And you know, I convince a lot of them to stick with it.
But I sure as hell don't accomplish that by selling them on the Ineffable Beauty of the Choral Art™. They don't become die-hard choir kids by eighth grade because I just love my content so much. When I am working with a group of new students who aren't bought in yet, I am selling me. I want my students to know from their first semester with me that I care about them. That I will have their back. That yes, we're going to work and learn in choir but also we're going to have tons of fun and Drozda is going to tell silly jokes and someday we're going to start feeling like a family. And that's how I hook them. I get them to value me, to care about me way before they value choral music, and I do this by being a teacher who cares about them. I show them that I care about giving them a great experience and a refuge when they walk into my room. Few pre-teens and teenagers show up to my door chock full of intrinsic motivation in something they've probably never tried before. The intrinsic motivation develops over time, and that process starts with extrinsic motivation that has often very little to do with music.
Then, and only then, when we've established this mutual caring and trust, do I start the process of getting my students to love choral music for choral music's sake, rather than just because they love me. But I firmly believe that for students to fall in love with music or any other content area, the way that you did with your content area, they need a teacher who makes them love it first. I had a teacher like that, and he's why I'm a choral director. You could be that teacher for your kids, if you embrace that idea and all that it entails.
If you are pursuing a career in teaching your particular field of study, then you probably love your content. In fact, you probably love it a lot, and that passionate interest is probably a big reason why you're a teacher at all. You probably spent four(?) years of undergraduate education studying your content in great depth, becoming more and more passionate about it as time passed.
I know in music, this is especially true. (If you're not a music teacher, feel free to insert whatever content you are passionate about and view the rest of the post through that lens). Even as music education majors, we tend to spend a large percentage of our undergraduate education studying music theory and history, practicing our primary instrument, and climbing the rungs of the performance ensembles. Training in this conservatory model tends to distort our perception a bit: we often think of ourselves as capital "M" Musicians first and foremost. We are really, really excited about music (and we should be!). We are most likely quite skilled at music, and we probably have a long list of accomplishments in undergrad that feed our self-perception as "capital M Musicians."
Here's the harsh truth: your students don't care.
I have been teaching for over a decade, and never once has one of my kids asked to see my résumé. They will not be particularly interested in what operas you were in, or what countries your ensemble toured through, or what repertoire you played or sang on your recital. There's even a chance, unless they had a really great music teacher before you showed up, that they won't even come into your class caring about music in general. (Note: or at least, Music as you would like them to experience it).
WHAT? But how could they not even care at all about the most amazing thing ever? The thing to which you have just devoted years and years of study and passion?
Because they don't know yet if you care about them, and they haven't decided yet whether they should care about you.
I'm sincerely hoping that if there are experienced teachers reading this right now, that your reaction is somewhere between "no duh" and "say it again louder for the people in the back!" You know this. If you are still teaching after many years and you are having success, then I'm almost positive you've figured out that our profession is about kids and not about content.
Don't get me wrong: it's a great and necessary thing to love your content as a teacher! You should love it, and should have studied it for years, and you should probably be really really good at it! All of that is important. However, in isolation it means little, because the vast majority of students you will encounter are not inspired and motivated by content, they are inspired and motivated by teachers who care about them and who engage them.
If you approach teaching with the view that your content is the most incredible thing in the world, worthy of study by all students, without any idea of how to convince your students why they should care, you won't get far. You will also take it really personally the first time a student tells you that the piece you love and painstakingly selected for them to sing "sucks." It's not the fault of "this generation." It's not the fault of the parents or the community or smartphones. It isn't anyone's fault, it's just how kids are. So you need to figure out what to do when they don't all come flocking to you just because your content is great (they won't). It starts with relationships, it starts with caring and connection. Always. There are no exceptions.
Yes you will encounter the small percentage of kids who just inherently love the content, no matter who is standing in front of the class. You may have even been one of those kids when you were in school! But most kids are not like that. And there is a vast potential in students who don't know they love something yet because they have yet to have a teacher -a teacher that they loved- who showed them how amazing music could be.
Every semester I start two classes of brand new sixth graders. These sixth graders come into my room with a wide range of experience levels, expectations, ability, interest, you name it. Some of them sang in their elementary choir, most of them did not. Some of them like to sing but that does not mean they automatically love choral singing. Some of them have no idea how the heck they ended up in my class and are desperately hoping to change electives. One particular student in that last category comes to mind: she's a junior now and she just performed in the Colorado High School All State Choir last weekend. I am always trying to convert as many of these sixth grade students as possible into choir kids who will love it and keep doing it throughout middle school, and hopefully longer. And you know, I convince a lot of them to stick with it.
But I sure as hell don't accomplish that by selling them on the Ineffable Beauty of the Choral Art™. They don't become die-hard choir kids by eighth grade because I just love my content so much. When I am working with a group of new students who aren't bought in yet, I am selling me. I want my students to know from their first semester with me that I care about them. That I will have their back. That yes, we're going to work and learn in choir but also we're going to have tons of fun and Drozda is going to tell silly jokes and someday we're going to start feeling like a family. And that's how I hook them. I get them to value me, to care about me way before they value choral music, and I do this by being a teacher who cares about them. I show them that I care about giving them a great experience and a refuge when they walk into my room. Few pre-teens and teenagers show up to my door chock full of intrinsic motivation in something they've probably never tried before. The intrinsic motivation develops over time, and that process starts with extrinsic motivation that has often very little to do with music.
Then, and only then, when we've established this mutual caring and trust, do I start the process of getting my students to love choral music for choral music's sake, rather than just because they love me. But I firmly believe that for students to fall in love with music or any other content area, the way that you did with your content area, they need a teacher who makes them love it first. I had a teacher like that, and he's why I'm a choral director. You could be that teacher for your kids, if you embrace that idea and all that it entails.
Comments