As the school year begins to wrap-up, I'm finding myself inspired to look back and reflect a bit. Specifically looking back at the beginning of this school year, I had five "New School Year Resolutions":
- Streamlining Chamber Music Project Ensembles
- Student-Run Fundamentals Based Warm-Ups
- Continuing to Develop Student Leadership Workshops
- Be Present in the Current Role
- Keep it Simple, Sunshine
So where have each of these taken me this year?
For our Chamber Music Project Ensembles, we definitely made some improvements: Large Chamber Ensemble sign-ups happened much earlier in the school year. Groups were formed with the pieces to be performed in mind, rather than starting with players and later trying to find music that would work, making the start-up process much easier for both students and coaches. Students forming small groups were also advised to start with finding music first and then forming their groups, so that there would be fewer issues down the road. For the HS Chamber Compositions at the MS level, HS students had to write "flex" arrangements so that their pieces could be performed by any number of players or instrument combinations at the MS level. Although this was a difficult task to navigate logistically, my hope is that next year will be easier now that many students have had to write a flex arrangement before.
Thanks to my district's partnership with George Couros and inspiration from The Innovator's Mindset, my Student-Run Warm-ups goal from earlier in the year turned into fully Student-Led Rehearsals! Here are some of the highlights:
Student Led Rehearsals Day 1: Identifying Possible Problems
Our monthly Student Leadership Workshops really took off this year when we took on the task of creating a Student Leadership Handbook for our Marching Band. The handbook helps to outline the expectations of anyone seeking to be a leader, titled or not. In its creation, we had MANY great conversations about what does good leadership look like, act like, sound like, etc. It also opened up many great talking points about the type of culture we want to cultivate in our ensembles. It's been incredibly encouraging to watch and listen to how these meetings have helped to re-shape our culture already! Looking forward to seeing how much further students take these ideas into the year to come.
As far as Being Present and Keeping it Simple, these are two mental health goals that although I feel I have made strides in over the past year, there is always room for improvement. One of the most difficult decisions I ended up in my effort to stay true to these was to step back from directing our musical this year. Although the decision was extremely difficult and I greatly missed working with our SCHS Theater group, it was the right decision for me to step back. After a very fulfilling yet incredibly busy festival season involving many 16 hour days and commitments every weekend through the month of March, keeping the month of April simple was the right thing to do. Having that time allowed me to plan better rehearsals and focus on my core teaching schedule, as well as having a little more family and rest time to prepare for the spring. (Especially necessary, as my family and I learned earlier this year that we are expecting our second daughter in August!)
Although these goals have taken me and my classroom in many great directions of growth-- it doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of all the great memories made and lessons learned. We're just getting started! Stay tuned for a bigger year summary Scrapbook post to come...
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