As with all of my blog posts, this one specifically relates to my own experiences as a public school music teacher and does not, by any means, reflect the experiences of all teachers everywhere.
Years ago, Karen Atherton, my supervising teacher for student teaching, told me that teaching music is a lonely job. While it didn't really resonate at the time, it certainly does now. I touched on it in my post, "Saying Goodbye to Music Education," but it bears repeating now- when you are in school (i.e. college) for music, you live music. You spend all (or the vast majority) of your time alongside other music majors. You might even live WITH them- my last year of undergrad, 3 of my 4 roommates were music majors, and all 5 of us were in the marching band.
OK, here we go...
Storytime!!
(reality-based with some fantasy mixed in)
Imagine living in a giant building with no windows with a bunch of other people who all like, believe in, and do what you like, believe in and do. Life is ideal. Sure there's drama, but when is there not? You get to do what you love and find the people that are like you. You live and work there for 4 or 5 years, and then it comes time to say goodbye. In the building, there is a room with a bunch of phone booths.
You go into one of them and start calling all of these schools and saying, "Hey, can I come and hang out with you?"
One elementary school says, "Sure! Things are great here! We have all of this cool stuff and want to do what is best for you and for our students!"
You're excited! This sounds great!
"Awesome!" you say.
Then, the bottom of the phone booth opens up like one of those crazy water slides, and you land with a thud in a music room at this school that is at the end a long hallway, away from any other classroom because music is too loud. You start looking around the room for all of the cool, stuff and you find a set of elementary music "textbooks" from the 1980s, some classroom instruments (shakers, sandpaper blocks, rhythm sticks... and that's all) that are as old as you are, and a set of Boomwhackers that is missing all of the"C's" and "G's."
You start wondering where the other "cool stuff" is. Then, you look around the room again trying to find it, and you see that the classroom has tiers, like for an ensemble to practice in, and there isn't enough space to do any activities in a circle with your younger students, so they have to sit in rows until you can figure something... ANYTHING else out. A little more time passes and it's almost time for school to start, then you get your class lists, and there are none that are smaller than 25. You look back at your set of classroom instruments and realize that there are only 20 instruments total.
"Uh oh," you think, so you walk down to the main office and open the door and are hit with a blast of cold air (the office is the only air conditioned room in the school). You knock on the principal's door and are invited in with a smile. You mention the issues and discrepancies with numbers and whatnot, and ask if there is a way to order some more instruments for your classroom.
The principal looks at you and says something to the effect of, "Well, we'll have to see what kind of money is available. I can tell you that there isn't much The music budget is $250 for the year. What about the instruments that are already there?"
You kindly explain what you found and ask, "Does that $250 include band instrument repairs and music for concerts?"
"Yes, it does." the principal replies.
You blink a couple of times and say, "OK," as you realize that you can't buy new instruments unless you pay for them, which isn't possible since you just graduated from college and have no money. You remember that music for chorus can cost $50 a pop (and that's necessary, since the music you found in the filing cabinet is all that yellowish-brown color that paper turns after a while and just smells like "old.") and that a single instrument repair can run you a whole lot of money.You get discouraged, and thank the principal, then walk out of the office.
You walk back to your classroom and look around a little bit more. There is a small, worn out book that has some circle games and a few other activities, and you figure you might be able to get some mileage out of that, so that's where you start planning, even though you don't have enough space for a circle on the floor, which you forgot about until just right now. You put the book back on the shelf.
You get close to the start of the year and meet some of the other people on your team, including the PE teacher, the art teacher, the library teacher, and, for some reason, someone that teaches something called "Gifted and Talented." You have very little in common with any of them. You have a meeting where you discuss the schedule and what some of the classes are like. The art teacher is later in her career and has become jaded and burned out, so her contributions are largely negative and lacking in hope, which is frustrating for you. The library teacher is in her last year before retirement and has largely checked out (pun intended), and is still using the Dewey Decimal System because, one, the school district issued computer is 12 years old, and two, she refuses to learn how to use it.
The school year begins and you realize that you barely have time to leave your room, since there are only four minutes in between classes, and there are two days per week that you don't have a prep period, even though, contractually, you're supposed to have one every day. You don't realize this because the Teachers Union presentation was labeled as "optional" and at the end of the day during orientation and you didn't even know what a union was, so you went home instead. You don't know the difference because it's your first year. You also realize that your schedule doesn't let you meet with the other team members, except before or after school, while other teachers have scheduled collaboration time within their grade levels.
Over the course of the first two months, you see your team members a total of two times during staff meetings. You see them in passing in the hallway, but otherwise, you're on your own to figure everything out. Your district-assigned mentor teacher is a 2nd grade teacher who, while kind and helpful, doesn't understand a thing that you do. You're supposed to meet a 20 times during the school year, but you're at the end of October almost and you've met twice.
You continue to try your best with almost no materials, and your students seem to be getting bored. Teachers Pay Teachers is helpful, but you also don't have a projector in your classroom.
Now it's past Veteran's Day and you're already holding on by a thread. You're working on lesson plans until 10pm and getting up at 5:30 for your hour-long commute. You haven't seen your college friends (the ones who went into the other phone booths a few months back) since you graduated, and you're terribly, terribly lonely. Everything you have experienced so far tells you that the school is just trying to scrape by, and that "doing what's best for you and the students" is not really the number one priority.
How on Earth are you going to make it all the way to the end of the year? It seems like *every* class is horrible on purpose. You're starting to feel like this whole teaching music thing might not have been the best idea.
Then, your stomach drops.
You remember that you're supposed to put on a holiday concert. You have no idea what you're doing- you've never done an elementary school concert before. The person before you took all of their stuff with them... which makes sense now that you think about it.. You have virtually no budget and they must have purchased most (all) of their own materials. There aren't even any programs to look at. Then you remembered one of the more recent conversations with your assistant principal where he said that there's a "tradition" to the concert- certain songs and whatnot, followed by a glib horror story that set you off last Tuesday about a year where the previous teacher tried to do other songs and they got nasty emails from community members about abandoning tradition and whatnot...
When you asked him what songs you should prepare, he said, "I'm not sure- I don't usually go. Someone told me that story a couple of years ago."
You're still angry about that conversation, but you're more angry with yourself for not remembering. The 6 weeks until Winter Break seem like an unclimbable mountain.
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(the previous story is a work of fiction and is not specifically based in one school district or town. it is a summation of the writer's experiences and feelings. the end.)
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Teaching music is a lonely job. I remember teaching at one school with a couple of other music teachers, but it was still lonely, because our schedules made it so we were like ships passing in the night.
The real connection came with the students, not with other adults. That has been the case, with few exceptions, in every school I have taught. Often, any adult interaction you might have comes in the form of people complaining about students or talking about how they dealt with this discipline problem or that discipline problem, who got written up/suspended, and the like.
It is this loneliness, in part, that has contributed to my anxiety and frustration with music education, and I am no longer interested in feeling by myself in a building full of 450 other people. It's not right, and it's not normal. People need connection, even introverts like myself, with other people their own age and experience levels. As much as I love my kindergarten students, I can't connect with them the way I might be able to with a colleague, and along the way, that has rarely happened. Perhaps some of this is my own fault- I fully acknowledge that, but thinking back on my experiences, the schedules, and the small amount of free time, and often being the only person who teaches my subject in a school, it has been hard to find someone to relate to; someone who can understand when I tell them what I need for my classroom; someone who will sympathize when I try to explain how lonely I have been at work.
This isn't a "feel bad for me" post. This is a this is how it is post.
Something that has really helped these last months has been realizing that some things are out of my power to change at this point. As I hit the reset button, I realize what I need to change for the next chapter so the story will be different.
Thanks for reading.
-jms
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