I have recently taken a position as elementary music teacher at a Title 1 school. I have limited experience with the grade level, and while I have some experience with students experiencing rural poverty, this is my first immersion into the urban poverty experience. This provides communication challenges.
I believe at this point the most considerable challenge (opportunity!) is in the area of overlapping experience. My lack of familiarity with the culture my students are experiencing can create perceived lack of overlapping experiences, diminishing the effectiveness of our communication with each other. As we discover and create shared experiences, I may find that some of the elements I interpret as noise (impediments to communication) may in reality be feedback (continuing the communication loop). Currently, when students leap from their chairs and shout, I feel the "noise" disrupts communication. I may grow to interpret that overt reaction as feedback communicating to me the students' continuing interest, or perhaps their lack of understanding regarding the scintillating classroom activity being presented. I can use digital technology to grow through these challenges. I see PreK-4th grade, and, as a sequential, standards based music class has been absent from the building for several years, the classes will be exploring objectives concurrently (at different levels) . This week we are discovering steady beat through bucket drumming. I will give fourth grade students the opportunity to help me teach the youngers by videoing their performance and explanation of steady beat through bucket drumming. I will then use that video in teaching the youngers. As the youngers have shared cultural experience with the 4th graders, communication of the lesson elements will be enhanced. The shared video creation experience will improve the communication loop for the 4th graders and I, as well as demonstrate our shared experience (and thus create one) for the youngers and I. Additionally, as all of the families in the building have signed forms agreeing their children's images may be shared, I can post the videos in the school FB page, thus creating a shared experience between the community families, their students, and me.
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