After reflecting on the level citizenship throughout my engaged citizenship pledge, I have come to the conclusion that my pledge lies in between being personally responsible and participatory. My pledge is personally responsible because I am focusing on what I can personally give and relying on my personal schedule to do so. I also think my pledge is participatory because I am physically driving to a location to donate and I am going through my cupboards to ensure that I have things to provide.
I could bump up my pledge to being justice oriented if I started looking into why people rely on the food bank. I could also be spending my time at the Regina location and interacting with those who need the donations and doing personal reflections on how I am helping them by being there. When I was in Los Angeles, I ate at The Cheesecake Factory. They were having a promotion where if customers bought a certain cheesecake, the proceeds would go to the Los Angeles Food bank to help the needy and the homeless. I was thinking about how if many businesses in Regina would do that on a regular basis, there would be less and less hunger issues arising in our own city. This restaurant was being participatory because they were putting in effort to create change within their city and the fact that it was a company extends further than just being personally responsible.
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For this week, I focused on tempo with the students. When we are singing, I've noticed that some of the students are unable to hear the beat and have difficulty singing to the correct tempo. I had the students first brainstorm with me what tempo was. I was super impressed with their responses and I was surprised when a student said beats per minute. Many of my students are not musicians, but there are a select few that take band and are interested in music. We discussed the different names for types of tempo and the BPM amounts associated with them. The students seemed very interested with the Italian words. Then we listened to some songs with slower tempo and I had them tell some to me that they liked. I was hoping to get an understanding on the music that they listen to. Then we did the same thing but with some faster tempo songs. I tried to use some Disney songs from movies that the kids like because my partner has been doing drama and they have also been discussing some aspects from movies. I was hoping to have them see the connections between the art strands since the morning was all about art.
I had the students use the song "The More We Get Together" and we sang the song all the way through as one big group instead of splitting the class into three smaller groups like I did in past weeks. The previous week we only had time to focus on perfecting the first verse. This week we went over each verse individually and then sang the song the whole way through. The students had improved so much from our first week that I insisted we give each other a round of applause. We practised the song with a slow tempo and then increased the tempo until it was very fast. When we practiced tempo, I split the students into smaller groups so that I could listen to them as they were practicing and give them advice. It is easier to find irregularities in the tempo when the students are singing when I am focusing on them in smaller groups. Some students wanted to go even faster, but I explained that the song was getting sloppier as we increased the tempo. We had a class discussion about how it made more sense to not increase the tempo anymore because not everyone could keep up with the increased pace and our goal was still to sound harmonious. We ended the class with a homework assignment that would lead the students into our next activity. The students will now be working on writing musical compositions. I asked the students to think of something that interests them and they think that they could write about. I gave some examples such as emotions, seasons, etc. and then asked them to write a one or two sentence proposition on a piece of looseleaf with their name on it so that I would know what everyone would be writing about come next class. This also ensures me that the students will have something to write about come next Friday and they will not be wasting class time thinking of a topic. The goal is to have them have completed one or two verses to read (or sing if they want) before I am done visiting them for this semester. Next class I plan to cover things that we like in music such as rhyme and repetition before we get started with our writing. I also plan to link my lesson to English Language Arts because song writing can be compared to poem writing. Before the students left for recess, I played them my song "Summer Days" because it shows good use of repetition and it was easy for me to write about summer because so many great things happen during that season. The students were so excited to hear me sing on YouTube and it was so cute to see them admire me as a singer. I think they gained a bigger appreciation for me being their music teacher. I definitely look forward to next week! For this week I was asked to expand on harmonies and rounds. The students needed lots of work on singing in harmony with each other. The students had grasped the concept of rounds, but not harmony. I first played a cahoot for the students that recapped on the music genres and terminology that we covered in the previous week and they were very excited and engaged. For the most part, the students remembered quite a bit after a week of being apart.
I then showed the students some videos of bands that sing well in harmony. I actually chose to show them some older songs because I find that older music showcases harmony better than current music. I showed them "Wouldn't it Be Nice" by The Beach Boys, "The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" a cover by Pentatonix, and "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by The Tokens. The students wanted me to write down the songs for them once the lesson was over because they liked them so much. I had the students practice the song "The More We Get Together" to work on harmonizing and the students had absolutely improved. We discussed why they felt that this song was easier and we all concluded that we sang better when there was repetition. This week was the most successful week thus far. I ended the lesson with a discussion about what acapella was because a couple of the students told me that they were interested in it and wanted to cover it. So at the end of the lesson, I had them tell me what they thought it was, I gave them the definition, and then again I showed them some videos. The videos that I showed them reflected their interests and their smiles let me know how well my song choices were. I played them an a capella version of the Star Wars theme song, an accapella version of "Good Morning Belle" from Beauty and The Beast, and an acapella cover of "Flashlight" from Pitch Perfect. I told the students that we would likely not cover acapella in our singing because it is too advanced for us a whole group, but I still wanted to be able to talk about what it was with them. My coop said that the students seemed to enjoy the lesson the whole way through and he liked it as well. I do think that I bit off more than I could chew with this (no pun intended), but I do still want to be donating to the food bank. I think that a more realistic goal for me at this time is to make a large donation at the end of the month in Regina and then a larger donation to the food bank back home closer to Christmas. I was so focused on donating frequently that I never considered just making larger donations less frequently. I think that sometimes people (including myself ) assume that in order to be engaged, you have to be doing something extremely consistently and that is not always true. I can still be an engaged citizen without feeling so much pressure to get things done.
I think that because I initially thought donating every two weeks was realistic, I have been stressing myself out with school and homework and feeling bad that I have brushed my pledge to the side. I think that the pledge is almost less meaningful when we start to see it as more of a burden compared to an act of kindness or something positive. My new goal is to make larger donations less frequently before Christmas. This way I can finish my assignments and make sure that I am donating before the holiday season. I can collect throughout the month what I want to donate and then take it all at once. The peer feedback that I received was mostly positive. The advice that I was given was to reconsider whether donating in both Regina and Allan is realistic for me because I have an easier time donating back home and writing about two different locations back and forth can get confusing. The other main piece of feedback that I received was to not post my pre-internship posts on the same blog page because they are mixed in with my ESST blogs and can cause people to have to scroll back further.
In response to these, I think that donating in two places is less of a problem for me compared to the obligation I created for myself to donate every two weeks. I think that it would have been more realistic for me to make a large donation once a month. School assignments toward the end of the semester have taken over and they take priority. I know that I should be spending my time thinking of how I can help others, but sometimes I just need to put myself first. As for the organization of my blog, I just found it unnecessary to separate my blogs because they are all apart of my university experience. Yes it would be more organized to have them separate, but the blogs are only occurring every one or two weeks and the amount of scrolling really is not that much. I only have a couple more pre-internship weeks to blog about until the three week block and maybe then I will consider making a new tab regarding my field experience blogs. I appreciated that the majority of my feedback was positive and the constructive criticism was realistic for me to consider. So this is my sixth time reflecting on my pledge and I have noticed that I almost seem to be avoiding donating in Regina because I have not been spending a lot of weekends in Regina. I find my week days to be jam packed with homework. This upcoming weekend I will be in Los Angeles doing some music related things, so I will likely have to postpone my donation to the Regina Food bank until next weekend. I will be spending the weekend of the 17th, 18th, 19th and the weekend of the 24th, 25th, 26th in Regina and that will make it so much easier for me to donate.
I was concerned about driving to donate because winter has come to Saskatchewan in full swing and I am not the most confident winter driver, but I was doing some research on the Regina food bank website and I found out that most Safeways have food bank collection buckets. I do my grocery shopping at Safeway and that will make it very convenient for me to be able to donate. I've been thinking of ways to connect my pledge to being a better teacher. I've been noticing that my ability to provide for others just simply makes me feel so much better. I feel good knowing that I can help someone in need. As a teacher, I want to help my students as much as I possibly can with whatever they need. Donating food to the food bank might seem like such a simple task, but I feel so good after I do it because I know that the food I am donating is going to go to someone that truly needs it and will appreciate it. I've also been thinking about how right now the food bank might be needing more donations simply because of the season. When it is super cold, families with no means of personal transportation might need to be stocking up for their families because they are unable to make frequent trips. This pledge has allowed me to to become more aware of why being active in a community is so important and sometimes extremely difficult. We all like to think of ourselves as active citizens in our communities, but sometimes after some personal reflection we realize that we have not been nearly as engaged as we could have been. For this week, I created a lesson on rounds and harmony in the Arts Education curriculum. I created a google slide presentation with some musical terminology for the students to copy down on looseleaf (only one sentence each) and then we watched some sample videos together.
The students were so excited to sing and I created singing groups ahead of time. There were three groups. My coop took one, my partner took one, and I took one. I printed copies of the song lyrics for all students so that they could follow along. We first practiced singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" because it is repetitive and common. The students really enjoyed the song, but we could all tell that we had some tempo and pitch issues amongst the students while we were singing. I would ask the students each time after we sang if they thought it sounded good and then I asked them what we could work on. The second song we sang was "Bottle Pop." The students really struggled with this song. They were great at knowing when to jump in when it was their turn, but keeping a steady rhythm was hard. Most of the EAL students seemed to do quite well with the tempo, but some really struggled. We alternated verses amongst the students so that each group had the opportunity to try a different verse. This song is quite good for introducing rounds, but the students could have used an even slower song. My coop asked me to continue working with music and so this upcoming week I am going to try and find a slower song to practice rounds with. We did not have enough time to cover harmony, so I plan to cover that as well. I am happy that my coop is letting me build off of each week with music from now on. This will make it easier to see the students progress in music and I can build off of my previous lessons. My coop has mostly focused on visual arts in the classroom thus far, and so I am excited to be the one that is introducing music. I have a strong musical background and this topic interests me and I am excited to teach it. For this week, I did a mini lesson on how to create a bibliography. The grade 6 and 7 students had been taught early on in the year how to create one, but their teacher had assigned an essay assignment and the due date was coming up. I wanted to go over one more time the proper way to create a bibliography so that the students were refreshed on the topic.
I started off with a ten minute PowerPoint presentation and I had a fill-in-the-blank handout for the students to complete as I was presenting. This allowed the students to work on note-taking, but it also let me know that they were on task and engaged. Many students in the classroom are EAL and taking long sets of notes right now is too difficult and then they focus more on writing and less on the topic that is being presented. After that, I provided the students with a mini research assignment to do. I am fortunate to be placed in a classroom that has one-to-one laptops for all the students. The students were excited to be able to use technology. They were asked to research five topics (which I provided) and then record the title of the page, the author if they could find it, the link, and record the date they accessed the information. This task was used to help them remember to record the data from their source before they move on to another source. The students were provided 40 minutes for the activity and if they finished it, they were allowed to work on their essays. The task was assigned for homework and only four students were unable to finish in the time provided. My coop asked me if I would feel comfortable grading them and I said yes. The majority of the students did extremely well and I was happy to see that they were excited about their marks. Some students who usually do not do as well did quite well with some help on the assignment I created. I was happy to be able to grade my first set of assignments. I found the system of Enriched Understanding, Meeting, Beginning, and Not Yet a little bit confusing, but I discussed my concerns with my coop and he explained them in detail afterward for future assignments that I will be grading. |