Abigail Wiegand Spring 2021

Student Teaching: Placement 1 Dr. Lewis

High School in a Hybrid Format

My second student teaching placement took place in a high school in another city

school district, although this particular district covered a wider and more rural

geographical area. My first placement was a middle school entirely in an online setting,

whereas the high school was employing a hybrid model. A complex schedule had some

students in-person on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and some in-person on Wednesdays

and Fridays. Mondays were entirely asynchronous. Some students who were struggling

academically came to school four days in a week, while other students deemed

high-risk for complications from COVID remained online in their homes every day.

When I arrived, morale was relatively low. The school district was going through

a period of tragedy. Many students and teachers were caught off guard by the recent

death of a student. Others were devastated by a fire that burned down an entire family’s

home. In general, attending classes online and seeing so few peers in person was

taking its toll on the student body as well as the staff. Expectations were lower than

usual, and I feel that this is the right decision. This year has been one of tragedy, for the

school, the country, and the world, and no reasonable human being could function at

the same level they would in a regular year. My biggest takeaway from this experience

was that, right now, the students truly need love from their elective teachers. They need

to know that they are cared for and that we miss them more than they need anything
else. I spent a great deal of time focusing on developing strong student-teacher

relationships and becoming a solid pillar to lean on as well as an educator. I came to

this conclusion after I had seen an example of how important it is to build trust and

rapport with students. One girl in the Concert Choir was feeling overwhelmed, and my

cooperating teacher noticed this during lunch time. To help, she invited the other student

to sit in on our third block class, and later had a conversation with her about her troubles

before directing her to the guidance office. Because of her relationship to the student,

the cooperating teacher was able to determine what was wrong and provide a solution

that worked for everyone involved.

I found I truly enjoyed developing my relationships with the students; in class one

Thursday, a girl turned out her pockets to reveal her rock collection. Another student

who has barely spoken since I’ve been in this student teaching placement jumped at the

chance to describe the plot of Hercules (the choir is currently learning “Go the Distance”

from the Disney film). She told the story with such sass and exuberance, it was

wonderful to see. I was able to curtail the conversation before it wandered into territory

that would be inappropriate for school (a discussion of how, exactly, one becomes a

demigod). One student approached me after class to ask me about my Mandarin

language skills, and we ended up talking for about ten minutes. I learned about his life

and how many places he’s lived with his family, from the Philippines to the UAE to

Virginia. I shared a bit about my childhood, and we discussed our experience with and

relationship to languages other than our own. From these moments on, I found that the

students with whom I’d directly interacted and shown interest in were the ones striving
to do their best work and learn as much as possible in class. Students value learning

when they feel valued.

Part of my planning in the later weeks of my student teaching experience

involved allowing the students time to work on and submit recordings of the pieces we

have been learning for virtual choir. This put me in a difficult position, because it can be

quite challenging to hold the students accountable when they are online. I could not

force them to use their time wisely when they are in their own homes; I could only tell

them what needs to be done and hope they do it, checking in with them regularly to

confirm that they are indeed working on their assignments. I could ask them to turn their

cameras on while they are working, but I believe this would have made many of them

uncomfortable and eroded the trust I had worked to build. I had considered asking them

to complete assignments entirely on their own time, but my worry there is that they

simply will not. COVID seems to have changed and/or worsened attitudes about

schoolwork. I have been guilty of this as well; when I was a student in online college,

there were many occasions when I found the idea of class participation exhausting. I did

my best to keep the students engaged and helped them to care about their work, but I

understand that Zoom fatigue can be destructive to someone’s motivation. What I have

learned is that as teachers, we have to pick our battles. I have to push my students to

be the best they can be, and I absolutely cannot take it personally if a student refuses to

meet me in the middle. I can only meet them where they’re at.

I had previously noted that teaching online was an exercise in radical empathy. I

have found that in-person teaching requires a similar empathetic practice. While

engaging in a few observations in non-music classes, I observed one particular student

in one particular class who I initially perceived as antagonistic to the teacher. However,

he later told me that this student has PTSD and that this was the first time in weeks she

had so much as looked him in the eye. What I thought might be disruptive was in fact

encouraging. In terms of the disruptive behavior, the teacher noted that she was simply

“playing a part, on a stage called my classroom,” and that the best thing was to make

her feel safe while making sure it didn’t affect other students’ learning. Mulling over what

he meant by that, I thought about how difficult the day to day routine must be for

someone so young with a comorbidity of mental illness. If it helps her escape to play a

certain role in the classroom, feed into the stereotype of a “problem student,” then she

has chosen this teacher’s elective classroom as a safe place of escape. She feels

comfortable trying on different hats in that room. Behaviors are just ways students try to

cope.

In addition to relationships with the students, I took advantage of the fact that I

was in a physical building to form relationships with some of the other faculty. I truly

enjoyed the first faculty meeting, which is not something I imagine most people would

expect. This was the first faculty meeting that took place in-person since the start of the

pandemic. Teachers organized in the cafeteria and sat six feet apart, feeling quite

comfortable as we were all vaccinated. The meeting began with some bonding,

including a competition to guess which teachers had submitted which songs to the

ongoing faculty playlist. Obviously, I did poorly on the guessing portion, but I had a great

time dancing to everyone’s favorite songs. I also found it helpful to engage in healthy

commiseration. In one exercise at a faculty meeting, teachers were paired up and asked

to share frustrating experiences with one another before offering advice. By chance, I
was paired with the principal, and although I’m not sure I had the experience needed to

offer him life-changing advice, I felt better as I talked to him about my frustrations, and

he stated that he felt the same. Knowing we are not alone goes a long way. As a

teacher, it is critically important to take time for effective, healthy self-care. Many of my

friends and colleagues are facing burnout, especially now, at the tail end of the global

pandemic. It is a comfort to know that we are there for each other.

The classes I was required to teach at this high school were as follows: Concert

Choir, a non-auditioned choir; Treble Choir, a chorus of sopranos and altos; Chamber

Singers, an auditioned choir made up mostly of juniors and seniors; and two guitar

classes at various stages in the learning process.

At the beginning of my time in this placement, I had played very little guitar. I had

to learn quickly in order to assist the students in their own learning. However, I did find

that my existing skills were helpful. The process of learning a musical instrument is one

I have undergone many times, and thus I do have wisdom to share that can apply to the

guitar. Additionally, my knowledge of music theory was easily transferable to the music

the students were learning. I also led the students through a songwriting unit, which I

developed independently with occasional feedback from my cooperating teacher. As an

introduction to songwriting, I gave the students a Google form to fill out, listing three

songs and three artists they enjoyed. I included questions about how the songs made

them feel. For our first in-class, synchronous experience, I used some of the appropriate

songs that were submitted as examples. The two goals for the class period were to be
able to identify the emotional center of a given song and to be able to map out song

structure using terminology such as “verse” and “chorus.” The students were quickly

able to identify specific musical characteristics that contributed to the emotional effect of

various listening examples. One student even noted that a particular song had

melancholy lyrics, but upbeat music, and remarked on the effects of that contrast. The

class was also able to grasp the process for mapping out a song’s structure after

performing a kinesthetic exercise that involved sitting when they heard a chorus and

standing when they heard a verse. Overall, I was pleased with my delivery of the lesson

as well as the lesson itself. I went through it twice that day, for the two different guitar

classes, and I was able to make improvements in between those two experiences. One

area that ran more smoothly the second time around was in the technology used.

Between keeping track of the students on Zoom, demonstrating the mapping of song

structures, and playing the music for the class, quite a bit of technology was utilized for

this lesson. It was a delicate balancing act, and I was proud that I managed to navigate

the process. I was able to lean on the thorough plan I had written for the lesson in order

to stay on track. Being fully prepared gave me the confidence I needed to lead the

classroom.

The second songwriting lesson involved the students co-creating the first verse

and chorus of a song, from scratch, in about forty minutes. This experience was

absolutely excellent for me and, I believe, for them. They were able to express their

feelings in a comfortable environment, and engagement was higher than it has been for

me since online/hybrid teaching began. After the second block class, two students

continued to talk through their advisory time (which is a sort of study hall before lunch)
about how they were going to take the song and use it to develop a career as

successful alt musicians. Though they were joking, it was wonderful to see them being

affected by the lesson. In the fourth block class, when I asked the students how they

were feeling, one said “everything feels like an endless void.” Rather than dwelling in

the darkness, I made that the first line of our song. It turned out that going with the flow

was the right strategy, because the song quickly became extremely silly. A student

suggested we make every other line relate back to a hamster named Lloyd, who

eventually became the narrator of our chorus. This kind of joyful, slightly ridiculous but

well-regulated class environment is exactly what I want for myself and my students in

the future.

Later in the semester, the choirs finished up their learning and recording of songs

for their virtual choir project. My cooperating teacher suggested that we introduce

songwriting to the choir classes, as it had been an incredibly meaningful experience for

the guitar students. Having been working on songwriting with the guitar classes, I was

excited for the chance to start over and adjust my lessons for this new class. Instead of

focusing on song structure, anatomy, and chord progressions, Concert Choir will be

focusing more on what musical techniques to use in order to incite a specific emotional

response. In our first lesson on Thursday, we had a longer discussion of our favorite

songs and how they make us feel. Then we did deep dives into two of the songs

brought up by students and made educated guesses as to their emotional content. The

students were quite engaged in the process, and were able to make complicated

statements about a song’s emotional intention versus the song’s actual emotional

effects. I believe that asking the students for their opinions and input is one major
reason they stay engaged during class. One particular student stated that she has a

large number of siblings at home and often feels ignored as a result. I do not know to

what extent that is valid and I am in no position to judge her family life, but I have no

reason not to believe her, and I am glad to provide a space in which she feels seen and

heard.

As part of their final project, each student wrote and created accompaniment for

an independent song. The guitar students, of course, wrote strumming patterns and

chord progressions for guitar, while the choir students were introduced to a technology

called BandLab. The songs each student created helped me to learn even more about

them as people, and helped to develop a psychologically safe class environment, as

everyone was experimenting with emotional vulnerability.

Teaching frequently at this high school was extremely valuable for my

professional development, because it has exposed my habits for their strengths and

weaknesses. I believe myself to be quite capable of enthusiastic delivery that keeps the

students engaged, and this is a great strength. There are a few vocal tics, however, that

I will have to work to get rid of. For example, I sometimes say “do you want to say this”

instead of “please tell me this.” This can cause misunderstandings and lead to students

not answering questions or politely refusing to follow directions that weren’t actually

optional. My biggest point of potential improvement is to get away from the piano more.

As a piano major, the piano is my safety zone. I feel comfortable behind it and I feel less

comfortable getting up, moving around, and relying on my ear to teach parts. This is a

matter of confidence for me, rather than a matter of ability. In general, I am growing
more comfortable leading rehearsals. When I feel more comfortable, the students feel

more comfortable following me.

I am still working on stepping away from the piano and leading rehearsals with a

heavier reliance on my ear and my voice. This proved challenging one Friday, when I

led a rehearsal on an a cappella part song. I made a few mistakes in the process, but it

was ultimately a successful learning experience for both myself and the students. In

better news, I have added a new aspect to their warm-up in which I teach the choirs a

popular song entirely on solfege. One day, we sang the Star Wars theme, and the next

day, we sang “All Star” by Smash Mouth. They were very responsive to this solfege

game, and many of them were able to recognize these songs without words being

added. In this way, I’m practicing using my ear and my voice, while simultaneously

helping them develop their ears and their voices. It also helps them realize that solfege

can be applied to most of the music they listen to. Perhaps they will even start to hear it

without prompting from a teacher.

My experience at his high school was altogether lovely. I feel more confident in

my teaching abilities than I ever have. A wise professor once said (while riding a

unicycle), “People say, ‘Isn’t that hard?’ (referring, presumably, to riding the unicycle),

and I say, ‘No, it’s not hard, but it was hard to learn. Then once you learn, it’s not hard

anymore.’” I believe that applies to teaching as well as the unicycle. One will go through

difficult experiences as a part of professional development, but over time, one improves

and gets better to the point where one cannot remember why they felt so overwhelmed

in the first place.

 I will miss these children. These were the first kids I got to see in a classroom,

live and in person, every day. I will miss them very much. I hope I gave them enough

love.