Students are a Reflection of their Peers

During my teaching career I have been curious why people who were capable of performing music well would self sabotage their efforts toward success. I had a student this past year who had potential to become a very solid player. He was talking about challenging the first chair player one year ago. When the school year progressed, I had noticed that he was hanging with peers who were not motivated to improve their playing. While still capable, his playing started to suffer, as he would not practice his instrument at home. He missed performances just as this group of peers he was friends with would do as well. This student reinforces for me how he constructed his meaning in musical performance through his friends versus his abiity on the instrument.

In the cooperative learning chapter of Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works, the author shares the five ways to group students. With every student at a different level of development, technological tools can help even some of the disparity among the students. In my experience, some of the students come to me with poor reading and writing skills, yet their computer skills are well developed. This helps the student feel important in his or her group and contribute toward the groups success. I had not thought of the “group processing” aspect for student groupings. I can apply a Facilitative Leadership tool called a “plus delta chart” for this type of grouping, When they finish working each day, they list the things that went well, as well as the things that need changing at the next meeting. Giving the kids the responsibility to share and save their reflections on a blog, wikipage, or drop box is one way in which technological tools will help these students. Currently, my school system uses the web as a reference only tool. Using citrix, the kids were unable to upload anything due to restrictions issued by the system. I did finally find that creating a drop.io box worked great, and it forced the students to use their citrix account to upload their work. When they went to the drop box outside of Citrix, they could not find their work. The students were surprised how easy it was to turn in their work. Voicethread looks like a really excellent interactive tool for me and my students. I thought that the teachers differentiation plan was excellent, and could see how it can make any teachers day easier.

In many years of teaching, I have observed that excellent organizations grew out of postive interactions with one another. When the students were able to rely on each other to perform well, the performance level was higher than when problems eclipsed the purpose for being there. Students develop their sense of worth in many of these instances based upon these associations. In many cases that is why a band student will do what is neccessary to participate in a high performing ensemble as it builds both the ensemble as well as the student.

Reference:

Interactive Associates, Facilitative Leadership, 1997, Boston, MA

Pitner, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M.,Malensonski, K., Using technology with Classroom Instruction that Works. 2007 Mcrel Publishing, Denver, CO

Voicethread retreived from voicethread.com on June 1, 2010.