Teaching info from The Music Educator

Let’s explore additional learning news, with a focus on Senior Tech Tutorials. Successful teachers give their students emotional support: There are days when your students will need your emotional support more than a piece of information. Connecting to your students on an emotional level makes it more likely that they will listen to your counsel and take your advice to heart. Students need mentors as much as they need teachers. Successful teachers are comfortable with the unknown: It’s difficult to teach in an environment where you don’t know the future of your classroom budget, the involvement of your student’s parents, or the outcome of all your hard work. On a more philosophical level, educators who teach the higher grades are tasked with teaching students principles that have a lot of unknowns (i.e. physics). How comfortable are you with not having all the answers? Good teachers are able to function without everything tied up neatly in a bow. Successful teachers are not threatened by parent advocacy: Unfortunately, parents and teachers are sometimes threatened by one another. A teacher who is insecure will see parent advocacy as a threat. While there are plenty of over-involved helicopter parents waiting to point out a teacher’s mistakes, most parents just want what’s best for their child. Successful educators are confident in their abilities and not threatened when parents want to get into the classroom and make their opinions known. Good teachers also know they don’t have to follow what the parent recommends!

Be brief. Speak less. Say more. It’s hard to hear, when you are feeling overwhelmed. When responding to behavioral challenges, be brief. When children are agitated or escalated, they are not able to process. Your goal should be to de-escalate and motivate. The more we engage in a back-and-forth with our students, the more agitated and irritated we can become. Keep interactions simple, leave no room for debate or negotiation. See extra details on Teacher Guides.

Learning is not only for young people. Technology is used in every facet of life because it can provide the speed, connectivity, and efficiency to make tasks easier. We all want things to be easier and faster and as an older adult, it’s important not to underestimate how technology can help you in your golden years. This is the information age where questions can be answered in an instant, and when we take advantage of being informed and connected then we can gain the knowledge and know-how necessary to helping ourselves and improving our lives. Getting digital literacy training can give older adults the skills and confidence to access information and services online.

It’s important to stop a lot and take time for them to ask questions. The more engaged they are, the more they will take in and learn. Celebrate the small victories. Focus on the positives and what they are doing right and they will want to continue using it. A good website for senior learning is Tech learning for seniors.

Music education is hot this days, many people try to learn music, for various reasons. There are a few podcasts that focuses on teaching people about music and one of them is The Music Educator by Bill Stevens. Once students begin to enjoy completing tasks, it is a good time to introduce creative projects. Give them a task with no wrong answer, such as a composition project. Perhaps they have been learning about a particular piece or style of music. The next stage in learning is to give them the task of composing their own piece in the same style. Devoting time to creative projects like this is very important when teaching kids music. At its heart, music is not merely theoretical but practical. The best way for your students to learn music is to be immersed in it as much as possible. Learning a foreign language is most effective through visiting the country. So the language of music is best learnt through maximum immersion. Make your music classroom the place for learning this creative language.

Tip of the day for music teachers : Speak with Other Teachers: One of the best things that young teachers can do is to speak with other teachers in the summer prior to the start of school. Veteran teachers have been either in the district or the profession (or both) for awhile so they will have a lot of valuable insight as to what young teachers can expect. Also, young teachers would be smart to build a network of teachers that they can turn to for advice. These networks can consist of local teachers or those that are in the same higher education program.

You can listen to the The Music Educator podcast by using the app from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.themusiceducatorpodcast.android.music. You can learn more about Bill Steven by checking his website at https://www.4themusiceducator.com/.