There is a lot that's broken in education right now, and I have been reflecting all summer- actually, since the spring- on what it is that we need most to start to move forward. The word I keep coming back to is agency, and I really believe that, as we come out of the pandemic, agency is what both students and teachers need. But what does that really mean, and how do we make that happen? Ownership in the classroom is one of the biggest keys to fostering agency for students- today I'm sharing 3 ways I encourage students to have a sense of ownership in my elementary music classroom.
Agency is a bit difficult to define, but here is one definition I found helpful:
"The sense of agency refers to the subjective feeling of controlling one's own actions, and through them, external events." (source)
So agency is control. Giving elementary students a sense of control can be challenging, especially when we know kids need structure and boundaries to learn what is and is not appropriate, and even more so when we have so little class time in elementary music that we have to maintain a fast pace to make sure we get through everything we want our students to learn! In fact maintaining "control" of the classroom is the number one goal most teachers are striving for when behaviors are OUT of control, right?
What students need to have a greater sense of control is ownership. They need to feel that they are involved in what's happening rather than just doing what they're told, or having things happen to them. Yes, the teacher needs to ultimately be "in control", but students need to have a say in what's happening. Here are 3 concrete ways I foster a sense of ownership in my elementary music classroom.
1. student jobs
The single biggest change I made in my classroom almost a decade ago now to give students more ownership in my classroom was giving them all jobs. Every single student has a job in my class at all times, and everyone takes turns doing each of the student jobs at some point during the school year. Even just knowing that they have a job immediately gives students a sense of ownership, but when they have the opportunity to control a task, and they see their peers doing so, on a constant basis throughout the year, that has the biggest impact on ownership and responsibility- ultimately leading to a greater sense of agency.
The basic structure for my jobs is I have 6 general jobs that can be shared by a small group of students. I split my classes up into 6 color teams (read more about that here) based on their seating arrangement (which stays permanent throughout the year, partially for this reason). Each team is assigned a job that they keep for 30 school days (dividing the school year into 6) and then they rotate.
I have gone through a few iterations with different jobs over the years, but the ones I have landed on that I find work best are:
- Supplies (handing things out)
- Clean up (collecting/ putting things away)
- Warmup leader (more on that below)
- Line leader (they go to the door first at the end of class)
- Compliment (each student gives a specific compliment to a classmate at the end of class)
- Teacher helper (the catch-all for things like turning off the lights, running errands, etc)
It may not seem like a big deal, but even having students be the ones to hand out pencils to the class when they need it, or be the ones to lead the line to the door, gives students the sense that they are involved in leading, guiding, and controlling what's happening. They are involved in all of the processes, day in and day out. That is powerful.
It can test your patience as a teacher in the beginning because in some ways it would be so much easier and faster to just do it yourself, but like everything else with teaching if you put in the initial time and energy to teach them how to do it themselves, not only will it give students a sense of ownership but it will genuinely make the classroom run more smoothly and speed up the process (especially over time as the younger students get older and have done the jobs for a few years).
2. warmups
Out of all the student jobs in my classroom, I think the most powerful one for fostering agency and ownership (among other things) is the job of warmup leader. A few years ago I started a new procedure for the beginning of class, having a sort of student-led "do now" activity at the beginning of every lesson. These are very simple activities and I have just a handful of warmups that I cycle through during the year, but they immediately require students to control what happens, to lead the class in an activity, to physically be at the front of the room- that has been huge.
You can read more about how I run them and the full list of warmups I use in this post, but honestly over the years I have really narrowed my list of commonly-used warmups down to a few categories:
- mirroring steady beat movement
- echoing body percussion rhythm patterns
- identifying music symbols/ notes on the staff/ note values
3. accessible supplies/ instruments
It really makes me cringe every time I hear music teachers say they "had to" put away their instruments, hide their pencils, etc because the students "weren't being responsible enough". Sometimes teachers will stop allowing students to use these things entirely, and sometimes they will hide them so they can't touch them or use them independently. How are students ever going to learn to be responsible with the instruments and supplies if they are never given the opportunity to practice?
As with everything else, teaching students to take responsibility for something requires a lot of patience, and yes, sometimes things will get lost or broken in the learning process. But just like parents talk about the importance of letting our kids fall sometimes to learn how to be safe, students will learn how to treat things responsibly by trying, and sometimes failing.
I think the key is to make the smaller "failures" with supplies both acceptable and understood to be part of the learning process, and also definitely a failure that needs to be learned from. I teach students the expectation that every pencil should be put back facing eraser side up in the corresponding color team's cup in the corresponding color team's supply caddy. If a blue pencil ends up in the orange cup, I don't berate them, but I do correct them. If I set the bar high for the "line" I draw for what is acceptable, and I put in the time and energy to empower them be successful in reaching that bar, I am not only teaching them how to be responsible but I am significantly reducing the chance that when a student "fails" to do something correctly it ends up being something truly damaging, like breaking the pencil or letting it fall between the bars of a xylophone.
Making instruments and supplies accessible is more than just putting them within the reach of the students, although that is a big part of it! I use open shelving, rolling carts, and caddies to put everything students use regularly visible and within their reach. But what I've learned is even more important is to make sure the way things are stored is easy for students to understand and maintain. Color coding supplies like pencils, erasers, and clipboards makes it easier for students to distribute those things and put them back (and make sure they're all accounted for). Labeling shelves with the names of instruments makes it easier for students to find what they are supposed to get and put things back where they belong. It's important to make it as easy as possible for students, no matter their age or their height, to be able to safely and quickly get, use, and put away everything.
There is so much more I could continue to say about each of these 3 points, more ways to foster ownership, and certainly more facets to fostering agency besides ownership- more thoughts to come! But I would love to hear your questions and thoughts on this in the comments.
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