CLIP 1: "Bad Teacher"
Rationale for choosing the clip: Without a doubt, teachers will see their students struggle with the material they are attempting to teach them. In severe cases, students will fail academically, putting significant stress on the teacher; they will fear that their students’ failure is a result of their inability to teach the content correctly. I chose this selection because it is a challenge that most educators will face. In particular, it serves as an example of the wrong reaction to student failure: explosive anger towards one’s students. The repercussions of this behaviour are also demonstrated — that are — frightened and unmotivated students.
Context of the clip: Elizabeth Halsey, played by Cameron Diaz, does not teach her students any educational material or be kind to them. After realizing she will receive a financial incentive for having a class with the best test scores, she decides to make an effort to teach her students. When giving feedback on these tests, she makes very non-specific and hurtful remarks. After noticing her students’ scores are mediocre, she states that they are not working hard enough.
Relation to concepts taught in class and evaluation: This attitude relates to Bridget Sweet’s discussion about working with adolescents. She expresses that educators must not blame developing students for their changing voices; hence, teachers must modify their teaching methods to work around these uncontrollable circumstances. Ms. Halsey takes a contrasting approach: she believes that her lecture style is perfect and it is the students’ fault for not comprehending the material. Sweet’s lesson also provides positive ways to deal with these issues — an angle different from Ms. Halsey’s aggressive, insulting model.
Ms. Halsey fails to realize that her students’ failure is a result of her teaching style — not laziness. Therefore, this clip is an example of inferior teaching. As her students were accustomed to a laid-back classroom environment (i.e., she played non-educational movies and did not teach them anything), they were shocked by her new fast-paced, strict attitude. As this produced significant frustration among her students, Ms. Halsey should have changed the classroom’s culture gradually. Ultimately, this demonstrates one key concept: the teacher must look at their attitude to determine whether it is allowing student success, and if it is not (e.g., poor test scores, emotionally distressed children), changes must be phased in slowly. This may be challenging as educators will ask: how does one achieve such a gradual change? Teachers must implement these small changes (extra readings, a more strict attitude) and gauge the reaction of their students. After that, educators should continue with similar adjustments if students are not offended by them.
Her aggressive statements also create a toxic classroom environment — that is — one that supports hurtful language between students. As students see their teachers as role models, they will mimic their behaviour; students will feel it is acceptable to insult anyone that does not give them what they want. Ms. Halsey’s attitude also has a detrimental effect on her students’ development; if these students are verbally abused for putting forth their best effort, they will be reluctant to take risks in the future. This could be especially problematic in the music classroom, as students will be scared of performing in front of others. Overall, similar to Sweet’s discussion, this negative language does not allow students to flourish into well-rounded musicians as it does not encourage students to improve (rather, it makes them feel too incompetent to grow).
CLIP 2: live video from a real music classroom
The rationale for choosing the clip: This clip highlights the importance of a teacher’s approach to managing a classroom of children — that is — one that carefully considers childrens’ behaviour to create a lesson plan that ensures student focus and engagement. Considering that most children have a shorter attention span than adults, focusing on a given topic for a long duration of time can be challenging for them. This problem can be amplified within a large classroom setting; as one child gets bored, they may start to distract other children, causing the whole class to be unfocused. Given that this is a complex challenge that a music educator will have to overcome in their career, I thought this clip was appropriate to analyze.
Context of the clip: This video is from a Grade 5 music classroom in what I assume to be North America. The situation described previously happens exactly in this video: a large group of children is disengaged in the teacher’s lesson. As a consequence, they are running around the classroom, fighting over objects, knocking over chairs, and screaming statements that have nothing to do with music. There are a couple of children participating in the singing exercise. However, their sloppy singing seems to be them mocking the instructor’s lesson rather than a lack of skill in this case. Undoubtedly, this classroom is in complete disarray.
Relation to concepts taught in class and evaluation: The fact that the instructor failed to capture his students’ attention should illustrate one idea to him: his current lesson plan is not suited to children. Similar to our discussion about working with children on March 11, children need their learning to be more of an experience rather than a static lecture. In other words, the learning objectives within the lessons should not be explicit; the teacher cannot say: “we are going to do a singing exercise, boys and girls! Everyone must pay close attention to the special properties of this musical pattern that I’m playing.”
The teacher in this video failed to take a proper approach: he played a typical arpeggio exercise and expected the students to sing along. For this reason, this clip is an example of poor teaching. If the educator really wanted to execute this exercise, he should have made it more engaging. He could have had them stand in a circle to dismantle the sense of the student-teacher hierarchy (the students do not respect the teacher’s authority, so a new paradigm is necessary). He also could have compared the ascending motion of the song to climbing up a ladder on a playground and incorporate that concept into the lyrics of the exercise (this will make the children feel more connected to the activity, increasing overall interest).
Furthermore, I theorize that the teacher thought it would be wiser to focus on the children that are somewhat participating rather than disciplining the misbehaving ones. However, how are children supposed to focus when other children are wreaking havoc around the classroom? This is probably why the children had an unfocused sound. To summarize, one observes an approach that is not conducive to a productive learning environment. This is due to the educator’s lackluster lesson plan and his choice to ignore the misbehaving children. As a side note, I do sympathize with the teacher as the failure of the lesson can also be attributed to the childrens’ restlessness generally. It is still up to the educator however to prevent such restlessness from happening in the first place through the methods outlined above.