When kids resist going to music or leave a music class saying they were bored, it can mean several things.
Aside from the music just sucking, it could be this.
A Bad Case
There's a good chance that the prior 45 minutes were devoid of age appropriate mental, physical, or artistic challenges.
It also means there's a good chance they hadn’t laughed or felt joy.
It's also pretty good bet that there were significant discipline and classroom management issues going on that aren’t being resolved and diminishing the impact of the lesson.
The pace of the class could be too fast, too slow, have too many topics, or not enough variety.
It can be a question of antecedents. The students may have developed a comfort level concerning management and flow of activities by the previous music teacher that is contrary to the current teacher’s approach.
Students have to feel as if they have skin in the game. If the structure of the lessons is always driven by the teacher’s agenda and leaves no opportunity for student input, kids will tune out.
Thankfully, all these problems have easy fixes through data collection – that is, analyzing tapes of classes, identifying the problem or problems, making course corrections, and starting over.
A Worse Case
When kids use the word “boredom”, it can be shorthand for some other more layered shortcoming in the relationship between the teacher and the student. When teachers think their authority and title will supersede a student’s sense of lack of power, lack of attention, desire for revenge, or feelings of anxiety or inadequacy, they are setting up their classes for failure.
Before the teacher can change the class’s behavior or attitude, they have to change theirs first.
The best agent for change can be the person who hears about rough music classes right after the fact: namely, the classroom teacher.
Kids spill their guts to their classroom teacher. They can be candid with the music teacher concerning a negative consensus brewing among their students and suggest effective strategies, phrases, and classroom management techniques that they have embedded in their own classrooms.
The Worst Case
The worst case scenario is when the teacher is just flat-out bored.
Bored with their themselves, bored with their job, bored with their placement, bored with their life, bored with their skill-set, bored with their plans, bored with their prospects.
When a music teacher is bored, it's like a poison that seeps into the school’s well water. It sickens all the kids in the school to the degree that those children turn off music completely in their lives.
In this day and age, many teachers are burning out way too soon, primarily because of the pressures of the job.
It is understandable – especially given Covid-19.
What is unacceptable is for the bored/burned out teacher to do nothing about it.
If a teacher has lost their spark for their old love music, they need to renew their career vows, make a retreat and a sculpt a revisiting of why they are doing what they were doing in the first place.
Maybe it's time for a change of venue. Or maybe it's time to teach at a different level.
The thing is that often times, these changes are only surface attempts and don't really address the core issue: that the teacher has simply played out their hand, feel they’ve lost, and the result is boredom and lack of interest in what they're doing.
Burnout happens in all fields and music teachers are not exempt.
If you feel that you are as burned out as a charred wooden match, examine why you got into this 7.5 hour job in the first place. Try to ignite some of those old passions. Know that your career/job exists within four walls, a ceiling, and a floor and try to knock out the negative elements outside of those six boundaries.
And most of all, make sure you have your one year, two year, five year, ten year, twenty year, and retirement plan in your windshield window, not in your rear-view mirror.
After you've looked back at what got you into this game in the first place, look forward to the future. Reignite that pilot light and find ways to reinvent your career.
If after all of that, you determine it's time to go, then go.
But if there is a way to retool and restock the shelves with fresh supplies, do it.
Take action, if for only one reason: people who are busy, active, and re-inventing themselves don’t have the time or energy to be bored.
With all that being said, I can attest that I have never – ever – been bored for a single minute in my life.
Captive? Yes.
Kept? Yes.
But never bored.
I believe that only boring people can ever be bored.
Aside from the music just sucking, it could be this.
A Bad Case
There's a good chance that the prior 45 minutes were devoid of age appropriate mental, physical, or artistic challenges.
It also means there's a good chance they hadn’t laughed or felt joy.
It's also pretty good bet that there were significant discipline and classroom management issues going on that aren’t being resolved and diminishing the impact of the lesson.
The pace of the class could be too fast, too slow, have too many topics, or not enough variety.
It can be a question of antecedents. The students may have developed a comfort level concerning management and flow of activities by the previous music teacher that is contrary to the current teacher’s approach.
Students have to feel as if they have skin in the game. If the structure of the lessons is always driven by the teacher’s agenda and leaves no opportunity for student input, kids will tune out.
Thankfully, all these problems have easy fixes through data collection – that is, analyzing tapes of classes, identifying the problem or problems, making course corrections, and starting over.
A Worse Case
When kids use the word “boredom”, it can be shorthand for some other more layered shortcoming in the relationship between the teacher and the student. When teachers think their authority and title will supersede a student’s sense of lack of power, lack of attention, desire for revenge, or feelings of anxiety or inadequacy, they are setting up their classes for failure.
Before the teacher can change the class’s behavior or attitude, they have to change theirs first.
The best agent for change can be the person who hears about rough music classes right after the fact: namely, the classroom teacher.
Kids spill their guts to their classroom teacher. They can be candid with the music teacher concerning a negative consensus brewing among their students and suggest effective strategies, phrases, and classroom management techniques that they have embedded in their own classrooms.
The Worst Case
The worst case scenario is when the teacher is just flat-out bored.
Bored with their themselves, bored with their job, bored with their placement, bored with their life, bored with their skill-set, bored with their plans, bored with their prospects.
When a music teacher is bored, it's like a poison that seeps into the school’s well water. It sickens all the kids in the school to the degree that those children turn off music completely in their lives.
In this day and age, many teachers are burning out way too soon, primarily because of the pressures of the job.
It is understandable – especially given Covid-19.
What is unacceptable is for the bored/burned out teacher to do nothing about it.
If a teacher has lost their spark for their old love music, they need to renew their career vows, make a retreat and a sculpt a revisiting of why they are doing what they were doing in the first place.
Maybe it's time for a change of venue. Or maybe it's time to teach at a different level.
The thing is that often times, these changes are only surface attempts and don't really address the core issue: that the teacher has simply played out their hand, feel they’ve lost, and the result is boredom and lack of interest in what they're doing.
Burnout happens in all fields and music teachers are not exempt.
If you feel that you are as burned out as a charred wooden match, examine why you got into this 7.5 hour job in the first place. Try to ignite some of those old passions. Know that your career/job exists within four walls, a ceiling, and a floor and try to knock out the negative elements outside of those six boundaries.
And most of all, make sure you have your one year, two year, five year, ten year, twenty year, and retirement plan in your windshield window, not in your rear-view mirror.
After you've looked back at what got you into this game in the first place, look forward to the future. Reignite that pilot light and find ways to reinvent your career.
If after all of that, you determine it's time to go, then go.
But if there is a way to retool and restock the shelves with fresh supplies, do it.
Take action, if for only one reason: people who are busy, active, and re-inventing themselves don’t have the time or energy to be bored.
With all that being said, I can attest that I have never – ever – been bored for a single minute in my life.
Captive? Yes.
Kept? Yes.
But never bored.
I believe that only boring people can ever be bored.
RSS Feed