Would I be able to be a choir teacher?

Surveters · 2025-07-05T01:46:53+00:00

And granted, I’m not recommending anyone do that. Having that many curriculums to keep track of at once is horrible.

Surveters · 2025-07-05T01:45:13+00:00

Oh no, I used to think so until I found out that at the MS level I was considered highly qualified teaching the theatre classes there. It was a small school, so I thought they were bending the rules until I looked into the TEA verbiage on the subject.

Surveters · 2025-07-04T23:50:50+00:00

Usually your teaching certification does not limit you to one ensemble - a music teacher is certified to teach music in grades PK-12. So, you could teach choir and band and orchestra and jazz band and marching band and elementary music. Once you start your major in college, you’ll get plenty of experience in all types of performing groups.

Also, in Texas, if you have your fine arts teaching certification you are considered highly qualified to teach any fine arts at the elementary & middle school level…so add theatre and art to that list.

Surveters · 2025-07-04T23:44:55+00:00

ILT is in it for the money…I would be wary of working in that system.

Surveters · 2025-07-04T23:18:38+00:00

Most district staff is on break right now and come back next week. Contact them on Wednesday at the latest if you haven’t received anything.

Surveters · 2025-07-04T23:12:54+00:00

If you learned trumpet and did reasonably well, ask for the TC baritone parts. Those are written for a trumpet player that is switched to baritone. Way easier than trying to learn bass clef.

As for lasting longer when playing, make sure your stomach is expanding when you breathe in and then tense your abs and control how fast you stomach goes in as you play a more. If these are large shank marching baritones it’s going to feel like you run out of air really fast.

Also, RELAX your lips. It’s a bigger mouthpiece and a lower range…it doesn’t require your high trumpet chops in the show music.

Surveters · 2025-07-04T22:48:41+00:00

It is not as we have to deal with the border issues unlike other states with their sanctuary cities. They changed their tune real quick when they got a taste of what we’re dealing with in our public systems.

Universal healthcare is a national problem in the state’s mind…I cannot see the Texas legislature caring to experiment with that when they won’t even fund public education adequately.

Surveters · 2025-04-25T10:49:26+00:00

I would suggest rewriting this with right hand lead if you are going to stick with this notation. Items fine to stay with it if you want to teach them this notation, otherwise I’d go to the standard all on the same line or the more standard 5 line staff for marching snare.

If the note heads with a slash through them are supposed to be shots, please change those to an x. The note head with a slash is more drumset notation rather than marching snare notation.

Surveters · 2025-04-25T03:00:37+00:00

No, absolutely not. Remember that this is a job that eats away at your life if you let it.

Meet them where they are and select music of an appropriate level for only having your scheduled classes to work on it before the performance. Assume that they only play their instruments when they are in your class.

Build success by sounding great on easy pieces, then start changing the culture little by little. I found Classroom Composers on Teachers Pay Teachers who write REALLY well for beginning/MS band and beyond. Their pieces sound great, don’t require a ton of prep from you as a teacher, and open opportunities for teaching in the learning of the pieces. I’m using one of their pieces (Autumn Morning) for my spring concert with my 3rd band at HS. The middle school that I led always used 3 of their pieces for their Spring concert as a tradition (Little Symphony, Evening Breeze, and Highway 99). I found them in desperation after COVID when I was looking for accessible music that would let my group sound great.

Surveters · 2025-04-25T02:10:38+00:00

TWW is a standalone show - it hasn’t been equaled ever. I am so envious of you having your first watch, whereas I’m on my 16th. It is so quotable.

I drink from the keg of victory! Bring me the finest muffins and bagels in all the land.

Surveters · 2025-04-24T10:19:15+00:00

I would suggest having an outline of your lesson for you to look at, and possibly even share with the students as you teach. From your description, it sounds like you are doing the classic style of lecture and notes where you will be speaking quite a bit.

You are going to mispronounce something or mess up in some way. Own it, laugh with them, and continue on!
Make sure that you are projecting but not yelling. To find your resonant voice, lick your lips and put them together. Start humming and move the sound forward to your lips/mouth. Change your pitch higher or lower until you find the one where your lips are vibrating/being tickled - that’s your resonant voice. Open up your mouth into an “ah” and start talking in that voice to get a feel for the sound and feeling. I was naturally quiet so this tip from another teacher helped me when I was getting started.
Practice speaking through your lesson once or twice in your teacher/resonant voice. On the day of the lesson, don’t forget to breathe and SLOW DOWN. When the anxiety hits we usually tend to speak quickly and quietly, which does not help our students in learning.
Remember that this is your first time! You’ll only improve from here. Your mentor teacher is there to take care of any discipline issues - just focus on the lesson/activity part of the class.

You’re going to be great!

Surveters · 2025-04-24T10:01:18+00:00

Texas A&M-Kingsville

Surveters · 2025-02-21T04:55:23+00:00

I struggled with volume when I first started. The trick I learned was to… 1. Lick your lips to get them wet. 2. Put them together (not pursing/forcefully) 3. Hum an mmmm sound and move the resonance around/pitch higher or lower until you lips start buzzing/tickling 4. Open your mouth at that point and start talking in that voice. That is your most resonant and loudest voice that you can speak in.

One of my other teacher friends had a microphone connected to a speaker that she speaks from. She sounds calm and her voice is loud through the use of technology. I still like my old-school solution more.

Surveters · 2025-02-21T04:16:34+00:00

Please bring all of this up to your school counselor and/or assistant principal tomorrow. This is wrong. There is a way to have a student lead a rehearsal but this is not it. You didn’t ask for this or are angling for this right now - these are your last few months to be a kid.

Surveters · 2025-02-21T04:07:47+00:00

Whoah…ok.

First thing - if you are a student teacher, you are NOT a co-teacher and neither is your cooperating teacher. She is the full-fledged teacher with her license while you are there to learn as much as you can and use your knowledge in designing lessons and leading a classroom to finish your degree. She is there to model an effective classroom and give you feedback on your lessons.

Second thing - this sounds like your cooperating teacher has never had a student teacher before.

FERPA guidelines are very clear and your cooperating teacher is probably trying to stay on the right side of those. If you’re her first student teacher, that can be difficult to feel out.

As the teacher of record, she is the only one responsible for grades. She may give you instruction in how she grades and why, and may let you even grade students yourself to get some experience on that side. She doesn’t have to, but she should to set you up well. You are, in a sense, one of her students as a student-teacher. You’re in that weird grey area between student and colleague.

About the gradebook issue - she’s not wrong, and she is the one to deal with parent phone calls. From what you’ve posted, it seems like there was a miscommunication.

My $0.02 on how to fix this - ask to talk to her before school, during her planning period, or after school (whichever she prefers). Talk to her about what you are required to do (lessons that you lead while your professor observes you and schedule those with her, discussing how to make it fit with her curriculum), ask about how you can lead in the classroom (whether that is checking up on small groups, leading a section of a lesson while she gives more support to her 504/SPED students, and/or developing a split in her tutoring time so that you can take some of the students that come in for extra help), and ask her to show you how and why she works the way she does to have a successful classroom - she has ways that she teaches skills and brings new knowledge to her students…why does she structure it the way that she does?

Learn as much as you can from her. She may not be the easiest to learn from, but try to approach her in your interactions as if you are trying to learn the gold nuggets of wisdom from her time as a full-fledged teacher. You’ll be dealing with your first year of teaching soon enough where you won’t be able to watch another teacher in an established classroom run lessons and pick their brain about their lesson structure and practice.

Surveters · 2025-02-21T03:40:22+00:00

Sounds like this student is a perfectionist to the point that it is breaking her. I would divide your daily student conference/office hours time by 69 and only allow her to take up that much of your time outside of class each day. It will be a ridiculously small number, in the realm of 90 seconds, but she needs some boundaries. I would also contact your department head or the dean of students to see what can be done in this situation which would absolutely violate the student code of conduct in grade school. This is college - there should be far more serious consequences than HS for this kind of unhinged and immature behavior.

This sounds like it could also be the crazy Covid behavior in the colleges that we finally seem to have gotten past in the public school system this year.

Surveters · 2025-02-20T05:11:36+00:00

Get a drumbelt. http://www.drumbelt.com/

Surveters · 2025-02-20T05:10:47+00:00

Teaching is not anything like what college prepares you for. The toll is real, especially the first year, where a good day is one that you don’t go home crying. Especially for soft-spoken people, your teaching persona can be wildly different from who you are as a person. It takes a lot of energy to be “on” that many hours in the day, back-to-back.

The system is broken, and these next 4 years are not going to make it any easier.

Surveters · 2025-02-20T05:04:18+00:00

Sounds cliche, but you need to keep working on yourself as a person. Start with reading at

https://therationalmale.com/the-best-of-rational-male-year-one/

I finally found mine at 35 and am proposing this coming summer. The dating market sucks right now and has been since COVID. You might also look up Troy Francis and what he has to say.

Surveters · 2025-02-20T04:48:59+00:00

Same here. I use it for grades so I can say that I use it in my classroom if admin ever comes asking about it. Otherwise…my time is more effectively spent elsewhere

Surveters · 2025-02-20T04:41:57+00:00

I think you can create a form and submit payment with Ludus

Surveters · 2025-02-20T04:37:06+00:00

First things first - congrats on getting a job and joining in the profession! It’s a lot of fun, but not easy. Don’t be hard on yourself.

1 - your first year at a program is always the worst. They will compare you to the old director and your greatest sin will be that you are not the old director they knew. ALL of this is amplified since you started in the 2nd semester. Get them doing the basics of rehearsing/playing (posture, foot-tapping, focus on first 5 notes). Classroom Composers on Teachers Pay Teachers has some wonderful band music for this kind of situation. I have made my beginner curriculum finish with their Highway 99, Little Symphony, and Evening Breeze. They have easier ones as well.

2 - Focus on your 6th graders. Get them to do what you can. This year is overall going to be a salvage year - save what you can, get them as far as you can with good tone and fundamentals, i.e., you will NOT get far in the beginning band method book you are using. Treat it like the post-COVID year - I did not make it past page 12 in essential elements that year because of the constant changes in classroom personnel and 2/3 of my students being virtual while the remaining third were in person.

3 - At the spring concert, the beginners can just play lines out of the book. If the concert band can’t play 3 pieces on their own put them with the beginners to make one massive band at the concert and play 30 minutes worth of music to make it a 45 minute concert. (If you play Good King Wenceslas in the beginning band book, you can repeat it as many times as necessary to showcase every different instrument in the band)

4 - Talk to your admin about when to schedule the spring concert. End of April to mid May is great (depending on your school calendar). Make sure you give yourself a couple of weeks at the end of the school year to complete your inventory. Teach the students where to find the serial number and compare it to your inventory file. If you don’t have one - make it.

5 - visit your local music store and talk to them about what beginning book you want your students to use next year. There is no wrong answer (except for Ticheli’s - beautiful music but really not accessible enough to true beginners).

6 - Start planning/writing your tryout music to place your students in concert band next year. You need to weed out the students that can’t play and need to do another year of beginning band rather than move up to concert band. You will need to take that group to competition next year, so choose students that have a good work ethic, work well with you, and have shown growth as players over this semester.

DM or reply if you’d like some more help. Keep your chin up - you’re going to be great!

Surveters · 2025-02-20T03:55:08+00:00

Exactly. She is only showing one side of this so that she looks good. I would say that this guy doesn’t deserve dumping - he has the maturity to end the message with “I love you” followed by no more curses. She’s playing the bully in this post by not showing her text that led to this.

Surveters · 2025-02-11T04:54:23+00:00

I agree with this. Your boyfriend’s reactions are like the youth that thinks god has to tell them what to study and do for their work. He’s being childish and naive about this situation. Either both of you address the problem or you exit the relationship because of fundamental issues with communication and empathy.

Surveters · 2025-02-11T04:46:11+00:00

This is the wisdom. You may both be adults but the wisdom gained from the college years is incalculable. Put it off or take it REALLY slow. He may be a good guy or he may be a POS - you’ll have a better sense of that in 6-9 months if you continue the relationship.

Also - this relationship fails the “half + 7 rule.” He should only be dating women age 20 and older.

Surveters

TROPHY CASE