Wednesday, 25 November 2009

Jobs and Playing

As I sit here writing (and enjoying the fact that I'm blogging on a more regular basis again, regardless of who reads or doesn't read it), I have a number of thoughts bubbling in my head.

I'm eagerly anticipating sending off a REAL job application to an institution here in town. Like the kind doing what I want to do-teaching music to young bright minds. That sounds like so much fun to me that I can barely contain my excitement at just the thought of printing a résumé, cover letter, application, having references together, packing it up in an envelope, putting the postage on it, and sending it away and having someone even think about all that. It gets to be a drag after a short time (especially if you have to do it lots of times), but there's a certain sense of exhilaration the first time you're doing it for real. Especially now that I'm really starting to get that restless feeling of wanting to teach MY students. MY kids.

The second thought I had spinning around had to do with practice tonight. Bob had mentioned with a certain degree of irony I think on Sunday how strange or ironic that the youth are leading music on the very first Sunday of Advent and on Communion Sunday. I personally don't understand why there is a certain taboo with Advent, Communion, or why the youth would be "banned" from playing on any particular day if needed or the calendar was arranged so. If we played and sang to the Lord, with joy, as skillfully as we can (and don't sell the youth at our church short-it sounded great tonight), why isn't THAT really good enough? Isn't that what worship through music really is?

I really don't understand it myself.

Monday, 23 November 2009

DON'T PUNISH EDUCATION!

I want to be a teacher. And it's been a dream of mine for a long time.

Right now I'm working on becoming one again and hopefully that'll happen. But I've been reminded how current events rarely seem to be in favor of teachers. There's always plenty of demands placed on them, like lesson planning, grading, conferences, and all the needs of the students that aren't always so obvious, such as when parents aren't there and they rely on a teacher they trust for guidance. It seems like the work never ends.

And one of the most obvious points is how glaringly low pay has stayed for teachers. Despite costs of living continuing to increase, pay for teachers just isn't going up and with school districts everywhere having to make sacrifices, teachers are never paid well. The one potent counterweight is that teachers have great benefits.

But now Congress would love to tax the daylights out of them in order to raise money for the public health plan. How on Earth is this the right option in a recession, especially in states (like Michigan) where school districts are facing record-setting losses and trying to shield students from the losses year after year?

Thursday, 08 October 2009

What's Come Over Our Schools?

So at dinner tonight, I heard about one of my friends who has a teaching job down in Indiana. As I heard how she's doing, I wanted to throw my fork in the wall (and visualize it sticking to the stud and vibrating like in the movies).

My poor friend graduated from Bethel College with a major in Elementary Education and probably had high hopes for her own classroom and dreamed of all kinds amazing things she'd do once she was on her own as a teacher. Instead, she's scrambling to write curriculum while her students have NO TEXTBOOKS and what, for all practical purposes, sound like bare-bones resources to work with. Meanwhile, she's barely keeping her head above water with lesson planning, correcting papers, quizzes, tests, and the like, managing the classroom, and let's not forget that with being married, she has to be a wife too. Coming home through a half-hour commute from school to my house at 9:30 sounds AWFUL.

"Well, Tyler, surely it gets better with experience in larger districts and when you're a veteran."

WRONG. I was just talking with Dr. Richmond while I was down at Hope College during a visit after seeing Jeremy Camp in concert in GR and deciding to stick around for a short visit with friends. Needless to say, I was dismayed to hear how Mr. De Boer has been treated.

For starters, he's now in the last two schools he can picture himself possibly teach in that he hadn't already worked in the district. I know I find that ridiculous that the district has shuffled its music specialists that much and never let them settle with their resources/establish themselves in their own space. But what really gets my goat is what he has to work with in one school in particular.

My host teacher is a loyal employee. I'm not sure how many years he's worked in Holland, but in his time, he started the elementary choirs, the Ensemble (which has sung for the Detroit Pistons), established a friendly working relationship with the Hope College Department of Music, and there's more. Now, my teacher (who taught ME so much as well as a teacher-in-training) is now forced to work off a small cart in each teacher's room for music class. He doesn't even HAVE a classroom in one school.

I can't imagine how I'd feel. I always had at least a ROOM to work with during field placements and student teaching. If I didn't have a space... what to do? How do you TEACH music when the students can't even move from their seats and do anything besides listen?

I think of my friend's plight and being almost in over her head with planning and my mentor's plight of not even having ample space to work with. As much as I want to start teaching (and I was recently reminded how much happiness it can bring me), those kinds of prospects REALLY frightens me. If all I'm doing is staying up late working on lessons and cramming myself/students into tiny spaces that don't teach much, I'm not sure how much I want to be involved.

Currently MMHMM By Relient K Be My Escape see related

Tuesday, 18 November 2008

Grad Schools... Time to Hunt

I had almost forgotten. But then a Facebook wall rant/exchange or whatever word you'd like to call it reminded me I'd like to look at graduate schools. Because, as much as it warmed my heart to teach children about music... and to see middle school and high schoolers learn to sing well (or at least improve), I'm still thinking about something else.

Dr. Randel planted an idea in my brain that I haven't shaken. "My life isn't THAT much different from when I was in graduate school. I focus more on teaching now, obviously, but I still do my research and go to musicology conferences. And I like it!"

That sounds kind of fun.

The question is... where would I want to go? And the short answer is, I don't know. But the following list is where's I'm thinking, at least at the present.

• Bowling Green State University
• University of Wisconsin - Madison
• University of Kentucky
• University of Georgia
  

If you know anything about these places, I'd love to hear any feedback. And I don't mean that you hate or love their sports team(s). I want real, honest-to-goodness feedback on if you've had a good experience or know someone who did. Or if you or someone you know DIDN'T. And oh yeah... why is a good thing. Because an unsubstantiated claim isn't cool.

This prospect excites me. And scares me. It's not Hope College anymore. And it means going away from Michigan. Cool stuff. And just a little scary.

Update: my brother's looking at graduate school now, too. Ph.D. time for him, just as I'm thinking about my M.M. I've thought University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (where he's considering) and it's a place I've kept in the back of my mind, too. And after talking to my uncle while he visited here, I'm officially considering it now, too. Wouldn't it be weird to go to school with my brother? We haven't really had that since I was in 7th grade... weird.

Tuesday, 28 October 2008

Thank you, Hope.

It was good to visit Hope. I needed to visit people. I needed to goof around with Ross. I needed to meet with Dr. Randel. I needed to have her answer some questions for me. I needed to see the campus. I needed to laugh at the shuttle bus. Yes, Hope College now has a bus (for real). I'm still in shock. I needed to take care of some business and have a little closure on some things. And as usual, I needed to have someone be rude to me so the whole thing wouldn't be a bed of thornless roses. And to make the whole experience complete, I needed to get rained on.

But there's definitely a sense of... the place has moved on. Hope College and Holland, Michigan, while they are special to me, aren't my home anymore. Unless I were to move there for a job, or for Western Theological Seminary, or back to Hope for another baccalaureate degree (umm, no?), I know that those places aren't home anymore. It just ISN'T. It's another place, where I marked out a valuable four years of my life and I've now closed the book and opened a new chapter somewhere else.

I think Dr. Randel made it a bit clearer to me where my path lies, though. "Can we talk about graduate school, please?" And the thought that kept sticking in my mind is what she said about what her life is like now. "My life now as a professor isn't all that different. It focuses more now on teaching, but I still do my research when I'm not doing things related to teaching. It's not that different from graduate school."

Music education, while it is something that I will always advocate for, and value, has slowly changed for me. That sounds, more and more, like something that I want. In fact, I think that's probably more what I've always wanted all along. I've wanted to teach at a higher level. And in fact, I think the preparation in the music education program at Hope may come back to be the most helpful thing for teaching if I do in fact want to teach at the collegiate level. I remember ranting about professors who have no teaching ability because they have no idea how teaching works or qualities of a teacher. I know if I want to be a professor, I don't want to be one of them.

The question is now... where to begin? Where would I like to go? What do I want to study? And... how do I reach Dr. Randel's elusive goal that she laid for me: NOT PAYING FOR GRADUATE SCHOOL? Is this the next step? Or does God have something else for me first?

Comments(1)

Just keep following God's lead! sounds like an interesting visit to hope!

Buhcaw

Tuesday, 24 January 2006

"Whatever you did for the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."
Well, here I am in the second semester of my sophomore year and I have kicked off my second field placement in the sequence of Department of Education
I'm back at Jefferson 2-3 Focus School in the Holland Public School system. Just down the hallway from Mr. DeBoer, actually. This time, I'm with a wonderful teacher named Mrs. Donna Wehrmeyer. There I'm learning how to work with exceptional children. In my particular placement, I'm working with SXI students, which means "severely multiply impaired" students. Mr. DeBoer said on Monday before Middle School Methods that these students, who come from all over Ottawa County, are blessed to have Mrs. Wehrmeyer, who is an excellent SXI instructor.
Special education takes a special breed of teacher. These students, depending on the degree of impairment, need assistance with the simplest of tasks and sometimes need reminders for things that may seem so unimportant that people without impairments give no thought to them. An example may be looking at what you're doing with your hands. Ordinarily, we don't think about that.
"So what's the point?" some may ask. "Why should we bother to educate people with special needs? They might never function independently and always require advanced care from birth until the day they die. So why spend the money towards them?"
I looked closely at these students and I watched how much all the aides, the visiting therapists, and Mrs. Wehrmeyer personally and deeply care for these students. I looked deep into the students' eyes as they smiled brightly back at me. And the answer became obviously clear as several passages from the Bible flashed through my mind.
"So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." Genesis 1:27-28
"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;" Psalm 139:13-14a
"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you visited me.' Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go visit you?' The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'" Matthew 25:34-40
God made each of these students, too. He loves them, they matter to Him, and He has a plan for them just like everyone else. If we were to exclude them from receiving an education, it'd be like telling Jesus that He wasn't worthy. These children are worthy of being educated and having a chance to live life.

Comments(3)

loving the verses Tyler! I know this field placement will be absolutely amazing.

you ROCK!

in HIM-

Amy
amydncer
Special Education is difficult, challenging, exhausting and frustrating- that said it is also rewarding, gratifying and fun. My mom is a special education teacher at South Hamlin- for every rough day she has she has just as many good stories.
chickenlittle27

Wow. I have been thinking about special education in strictly political terms for a long time...special education getting the special laser printer, how it costs the school district more money because aides have to be hired etc.
Those are some amazing verses which hit home...
dorothygale27