Grand Ledge Visit 1

Doug Armstead – 7^th grade women’s chorus

Josh Gronlund – student teacher

Doug, as expected by his reputation, has great control over his classroom through true student engagement. The beginning of rehearsal starts with no spoken instruction. Students take their cues visually and repeat vocalises and/or movements of various kinds. Doug uses this as a classroom management tool as well, either repeating the noise/movement until everyone is repeating it back, or waiting quietly for the attention to direct itself where it should be. The students respond well to this, probably because they’re usually not just expected to sit quiet, but they’re able to do something to engage in the expectations.

Doug had the girls doing a lot of activities (a dance to a country song, another game with switching chairs) that didn’t necessarily have an immediate “impact” on their choral repertoire, but he talked to us after and explained that it’s so worth it to take the time to do those sort of bonding activities. Choirs that are happy together, sing better together!

I’m looking forward to working with Doug and his girls chorus this semester! He’s given us the task of leading sectionals already, which I think will be an awesome experience and an opportunity to get his real-time feedback!

Structure in the Classroom

Thinking back to the first day when we drew our ideal classrooms, I remember discussing structure as being in my dream classroom...obviously structure is something that is important to me.
Structure is important to me for a lot of reasons. It benefits the students because it allows them to really know their environment, therefore allowing for them to hold expectations. Hopefully, the knowledge, experience, and expectations they gain from this structure produces a safe and open environment between students and with the teacher.
Structure also benefits the teacher. We all posses strengths and weaknesses in our skill set, and I think things such as structured, thought out, detailed lesson plans can help the teacher feel secure in some of those skill areas that are lacking in comparison to the others (certainly this is not to say we shouldn't prepare in our comfortable skill areas). I think structure can be a teacher's friend in fortifying ideas, concepts, and rules. This could exist, for example, in the fortification of skills we have learned by doing multiple short activities over a period of time focusing specifically on those recently learned skills, or (unfortunately) in our classroom/school disciplinary structure.
I would agree with many of colleagues in the thought that teaching is improvisation and that flexibility in a classroom is so very valuable. However, even improvisation usually happens within some constructs - and those constructs (structures) are going to be the foundation for classroom operations.