Ethan Neal

Student Teaching
Dr. Martina Vasil
22 January, 2023

Week 3 - Student Responses

1. Describe how you spent your time each week. Write about your interactions with students, the
cooperating teacher, and school personnel.

What a week… Monday and Tuesday, I solo taught - Mrs. Wells was out sick and so
there was a retired music teacher as the sub, but I taught all week. That was a struggle. While I
understand it came with the best intentions, the sub-teacher would frequently interrupt me
mid-sentence and attempt to take control of the classroom or the situation particularly when it
came to classroom management. I come from the more “gentle parenting” approach of classroom
management which gives the students the latitude to make mistakes, reflect, and self-regulate.
She did not and was very adamant about that… It was the dichotomy between “Children should
be seen and not heard” and “Children should be seen, heard, loved, and nurtured”. Very much an
“Ok, boomer” first few days, but we got along and I made light of the situation.

2. Reflect on how these experiences have helped you grow as a teacher.

This small tiff reminded me of a session I attended during a conference of the American
Camp Association - “Dealing with Difficult People: They too are people”. It is a hard pill to
swallow sometimes that the people who are frustrating you are people too, not just situations to
deal with or simply irritants - they have their own complex lives, feelings, motivations, and
values and when those are in conflict with your own, it may be hard to see past the conflict and
see the life deserving of grace and love. This reigns true for the disruptive students and the
old-school sub. At the moment, I fully wanted to stop and look at this woman like I do kids
having conversations and say “I’ll wait.” HOWEVER, that would only be taking in mind my
own wants and desires for how the class should run and deny and invalidate the years of
experience she has on me. I know I am far from a bad teacher, but 35 years of teaching is nothing
compared to my 4 years of teacher education and 9 years of camp educating. The big lesson of
the week is that everyone deserves some grace, don’t just think of yourself at the moment. When
people are being disruptive, there is always a deeper reason than just your general annoyance.
They might be acting from a place of caring with the best of intentions, perhaps just not in the
way best suited for you. So this coming week, I want to dig a little deeper and seek the truth
behind any of my general annoyance and seek the humanity in every person.
3. Focus on one or two students this week in particular. What are students learning about music
and social interaction? How are they learning? How do you know (what is the evidence of their
learning)? How do students’ personalities affect or influence their learning styles?

The students I focused on this week were two very different students. One is an
elementary major and the other is a middle school major. The elementary major is a perfect little
angel who is 110% on top of things at all times and is constantly ready and attentive - a teacher’s
dream. It was nice to watch her learn - she’s self-directed most of the time and has more than
adequate self-discipline and displays exemplary musicianship skills and attention to detail. It is
easy to understand that she is learning because she is eager to share with the teachers as well as
help other students when she can and she always does this in a tactful and tasteful manner. She’s
a very type-A student - organized and on top of everything. Her solfege is written in far faster
than some of the other students and she will constantly challenge herself by filling in all the other
solfege. I see a lot of elementary Ethan in her.

The second student… While an exemplary musician, he is a disciplinary nightmare. It

seems every class is redirecting this student. He is a standard class clown that is eager to disrupt
and often lacks an understanding of truly how disruptive (and just how loud…) he is being. He is
a harder nut to crack to see how much he is actually learning. He is much more casual about his
learning, HOWEVER, he seems to be on top of everything. I have tried challenging him even
further to see if the behavior issues arise from a lack of challenge. Next week, I’m going to try
and talk with the students who are feeding into this behavior and ask them to not react. They
have acknowledged and expressed that it is frustrating that the class cannot get anything done if
he’s being a clown, but I don’t think they realize they are contributing to it. He seems very
nonchalant about his learning, but he’s learning still - an enigma truly.