Once again, if you didn't negotiate your schedule when you were hired, you're out of luck.
Unless you have a clause in your contract that says you are only going to teach elementary music for so many minutes a day, your administrative team can have you do just about anything they want.
They need an extra gym teacher? Congratulations, you might be the one. Be prepared to fire up your lanyard whistle.
They need extra coverage in the cafeteria and feel it's better to take you out of a classroom and put you in a lunch line? It's time to adjust your hairnet because that's where you're going to be.
You thought you were going to do chorus but now you are going to do band every other week?
Say hello to sweet smell of valve oil as well as your new schedule.
I totally understand it that you could walk into a gig thinking that you were going to get a fantastic recorder, chorus, guitar, and piano program rolling and they tell you, “Oh by the way, your classroom was needed by a reading specialist who will be working with one kid at a time. You're going to have to teach music on a cart this year.”
That means no piano, no guitar, maybe recorders.
I know. Some years, these schedules make no sense. Like the year after I received my schedule, I realized I had no classes at all on Monday.
Nothing. Nada.
I showed it to my principal. Was this a mistake? Nope.
He said he would get back to me with a change.
I wrote up ideas for small teaching cadres for composing and recorder ensembles. Nope.
I reminded him twice. When he didn’t change anything and I could tell I was beginning to tick him off, I shut up.
Proactively, I offered to cover my co-teachers’ lunch duties or fill in if they needed to leave to room to make photocopies.
But that year, I literally worked only four out of five days every week.
Concerning performance ensemble groups
If your responsibilities include staging a performance of any kind, you will need time to prepare the students. Should there be an issue with your schedule and there isn't at least a weekly rehearsal, or that the rehearsal is before or after school hours necessitating transportation for members, make sure you bring that to the attention of your administrator in a school email.
Specialist schedules vary notoriously from school to school. Check with your peers in other schools and determine how much time they have slotted in preparation for concerts. If it's similar to yours, you have discovered the mindset of your school district. Good luck.
If they have much more time then you are allotted, document it again in an email to your administrator, and enumerate the reasons why the schedule should provide more time during your 7.5 job day.
If, after checking with your peers, you determine that you have more time than they do to rehearse your ensembles, and in your mind you still feel it is not enough, be quiet and do the job to the best of your abilities. Thant might mean instead of a one-hour concert that you only have time to prepare a 30-minute concert. Document that in an email to your principal.
If it's required that you do a sixty-minute concert, pick easier music and go back and forth between an ensemble pieces and a solo arrangements for individual kids.
Suppose you are doing band lessons and they don't give you enough time to split up your groups. Consider contacting a retired music teacher you know. Ask if they'd be willing to volunteer a few hours a week to come in and help out with your thirty flute player class at 10 a.m. Wednesdays.
Complaining about a bad schedule never gets it changed. Documenting imperfections in the schedule and collecting data on the encumbrances placed on your musicians will have a better shot of changing things. And every email you send should start and end with “thank you”.
Always ask at any scheduling meeting if you can meet again with admin in three months to review the data you will collect about the schedule.
When it comes to talking about principals and schedule assignments, I feel like a priest in a confessional: I've heard every sin and the variation on that sin.
There were the years when I was on a cart, schlepping a guitar and a push mobile from room to room.
There were the years where I had to drive to three different schools every day.
There was the year when I team-taught gym on Wednesday mornings with two classes at a time.
They were the years where I did three days in one school two days in another.
There were years where my duty-free planning evaporated and I had no planning at all.
There were the years when my lunch duty stopped at 12:55, my 200-member chorus started at 1:00, and my kindergarten class started at 1:50. Talk about helter skelter.
If you are in a school and the schedule is bad and you don't see it changing in the next decade, feel free to check around and find schools and districts where your peers work that have good schedules. If they are planning on leaving or there is an opening, put it an application. There is no law saying you have to stay in one school for the rest of your life.
Just like your asset allotment in your 401k and your Roth IRAs, nothing is forever. Everything is subject to change.
Last Point: Don't beat yourself up if you feel you're not making the progress you could with a better schedule. We play the hand that is dealt us. When you are meeting with your principal concerning your cumulative review for the year, don't hesitate bringing up the topic of your schedule and how you have tried to work with it. Keep your descriptors unemotional and facts organized. It's one more piece of documentation that paints a picture of what your schedule was like the past year and what you were unable to attempt, let alone, accomplish.
A little story about schedules
Two years before I retired, the specialists in our 2,500 student school were assembled in a morning meeting and presented with a new schedule where we were told that we would now see students five consecutive days and then not meet with those students for 30 days. Chorus and band would remain weekly.
It's not hard to imagine what thirty days away from music class will do to a child’s skill retention and knowledge acquisition.
There were several administrators in the room when the schedule was initially presented to the specialists. It was clear that there was no wiggle room and their schedule was not a proposal but rather a pre-determined conclusion. As specialists, we weren't there to suggest changes or give advice. The deal was done and the schedule was in stone.
During the meeting, I respectfully asked the administrators if they could cite me another school where this schedule was being used so I could talk to their teachers concerning implementing this type of a schedule in our school.
They didn't know of any. That did not bode will in my mind.
I had a question for the administrators as we were breaking up the meeting and leaving the room.
“Do any of you know how many elementary schools there are in the United States of America?”
None of them knew. I continued.
“The last time I checked there were 87,572 elementary schools in the United States, give or take a couple.
Now, I may be just an old country music teacher, but I have taught in quite a few schools over the past four decades and visited even more, and known hundreds of music teachers, and I'm not aware of any school or teacher that has ever encountered a specialist’s schedule like this new one.
For the sake of discussion, do you think 10% of the schools in the United States use the schedule like the one you are proposing? That would be approximately 8,757 schools.
10%? That number seems just way too high. Let's go down in powers of 10.
Let’s think 1%.”
The admin are beginning to squirm a bit at this point.
“One percent. Do you think 875 schools use a similar schedule? I still think that numbers high.
Sticking with powers of 10 let's go down to 0.1%.
That would be 87 of the over 87 thousand elementary schools in the United States.
Are there 87 elementary schools that use a similar schedule? Five days on and thirty off?
Possibly. But I still think the number is high.
But for the sake of discussion, let's stick with 0.1%.
That leads me to the question: What do the other 99.9% of elementary schools in the United States value in a traditional weekly schedule that we don't?
What are we willing to jettison by adopting a schedule that keeps children out of a special’s room for 30 days at a time?
Would a schedule like this enhance or diminish skills in, say, a Spanish emersion program? A math program?
If it wouldn’t be appropriate for math, why is it appropriate for music?
I know you said you don't know of any other schools that use a schedule similar to this but I still want you to find me a few - like 87 schools or 0.1% of the elementary schools in the United States - and I'm going to ask again in an email.”
Definitely not what they wanted to hear.
“I hope as a school community we are willing to look at data that will be collected from the schedule’s first four months and modify it should need arises.”
Needless to say, I didn't get that email. And the schedule didn't change. It required that I make significant adjustments to what and how I taught my last two years.
Despite the schedule, I made certain that were going to be two of my BEST years teaching. And they were.
Once you make your case concerning a schedule, it's time to get quiet and teach.
The die is cast and kids will forget about the schedule once they start making music and having fun.
My recommendation?
You should, too.
Unless you have a clause in your contract that says you are only going to teach elementary music for so many minutes a day, your administrative team can have you do just about anything they want.
They need an extra gym teacher? Congratulations, you might be the one. Be prepared to fire up your lanyard whistle.
They need extra coverage in the cafeteria and feel it's better to take you out of a classroom and put you in a lunch line? It's time to adjust your hairnet because that's where you're going to be.
You thought you were going to do chorus but now you are going to do band every other week?
Say hello to sweet smell of valve oil as well as your new schedule.
I totally understand it that you could walk into a gig thinking that you were going to get a fantastic recorder, chorus, guitar, and piano program rolling and they tell you, “Oh by the way, your classroom was needed by a reading specialist who will be working with one kid at a time. You're going to have to teach music on a cart this year.”
That means no piano, no guitar, maybe recorders.
I know. Some years, these schedules make no sense. Like the year after I received my schedule, I realized I had no classes at all on Monday.
Nothing. Nada.
I showed it to my principal. Was this a mistake? Nope.
He said he would get back to me with a change.
I wrote up ideas for small teaching cadres for composing and recorder ensembles. Nope.
I reminded him twice. When he didn’t change anything and I could tell I was beginning to tick him off, I shut up.
Proactively, I offered to cover my co-teachers’ lunch duties or fill in if they needed to leave to room to make photocopies.
But that year, I literally worked only four out of five days every week.
Concerning performance ensemble groups
If your responsibilities include staging a performance of any kind, you will need time to prepare the students. Should there be an issue with your schedule and there isn't at least a weekly rehearsal, or that the rehearsal is before or after school hours necessitating transportation for members, make sure you bring that to the attention of your administrator in a school email.
Specialist schedules vary notoriously from school to school. Check with your peers in other schools and determine how much time they have slotted in preparation for concerts. If it's similar to yours, you have discovered the mindset of your school district. Good luck.
If they have much more time then you are allotted, document it again in an email to your administrator, and enumerate the reasons why the schedule should provide more time during your 7.5 job day.
If, after checking with your peers, you determine that you have more time than they do to rehearse your ensembles, and in your mind you still feel it is not enough, be quiet and do the job to the best of your abilities. Thant might mean instead of a one-hour concert that you only have time to prepare a 30-minute concert. Document that in an email to your principal.
If it's required that you do a sixty-minute concert, pick easier music and go back and forth between an ensemble pieces and a solo arrangements for individual kids.
Suppose you are doing band lessons and they don't give you enough time to split up your groups. Consider contacting a retired music teacher you know. Ask if they'd be willing to volunteer a few hours a week to come in and help out with your thirty flute player class at 10 a.m. Wednesdays.
Complaining about a bad schedule never gets it changed. Documenting imperfections in the schedule and collecting data on the encumbrances placed on your musicians will have a better shot of changing things. And every email you send should start and end with “thank you”.
Always ask at any scheduling meeting if you can meet again with admin in three months to review the data you will collect about the schedule.
When it comes to talking about principals and schedule assignments, I feel like a priest in a confessional: I've heard every sin and the variation on that sin.
There were the years when I was on a cart, schlepping a guitar and a push mobile from room to room.
There were the years where I had to drive to three different schools every day.
There was the year when I team-taught gym on Wednesday mornings with two classes at a time.
They were the years where I did three days in one school two days in another.
There were years where my duty-free planning evaporated and I had no planning at all.
There were the years when my lunch duty stopped at 12:55, my 200-member chorus started at 1:00, and my kindergarten class started at 1:50. Talk about helter skelter.
If you are in a school and the schedule is bad and you don't see it changing in the next decade, feel free to check around and find schools and districts where your peers work that have good schedules. If they are planning on leaving or there is an opening, put it an application. There is no law saying you have to stay in one school for the rest of your life.
Just like your asset allotment in your 401k and your Roth IRAs, nothing is forever. Everything is subject to change.
Last Point: Don't beat yourself up if you feel you're not making the progress you could with a better schedule. We play the hand that is dealt us. When you are meeting with your principal concerning your cumulative review for the year, don't hesitate bringing up the topic of your schedule and how you have tried to work with it. Keep your descriptors unemotional and facts organized. It's one more piece of documentation that paints a picture of what your schedule was like the past year and what you were unable to attempt, let alone, accomplish.
A little story about schedules
Two years before I retired, the specialists in our 2,500 student school were assembled in a morning meeting and presented with a new schedule where we were told that we would now see students five consecutive days and then not meet with those students for 30 days. Chorus and band would remain weekly.
It's not hard to imagine what thirty days away from music class will do to a child’s skill retention and knowledge acquisition.
There were several administrators in the room when the schedule was initially presented to the specialists. It was clear that there was no wiggle room and their schedule was not a proposal but rather a pre-determined conclusion. As specialists, we weren't there to suggest changes or give advice. The deal was done and the schedule was in stone.
During the meeting, I respectfully asked the administrators if they could cite me another school where this schedule was being used so I could talk to their teachers concerning implementing this type of a schedule in our school.
They didn't know of any. That did not bode will in my mind.
I had a question for the administrators as we were breaking up the meeting and leaving the room.
“Do any of you know how many elementary schools there are in the United States of America?”
None of them knew. I continued.
“The last time I checked there were 87,572 elementary schools in the United States, give or take a couple.
Now, I may be just an old country music teacher, but I have taught in quite a few schools over the past four decades and visited even more, and known hundreds of music teachers, and I'm not aware of any school or teacher that has ever encountered a specialist’s schedule like this new one.
For the sake of discussion, do you think 10% of the schools in the United States use the schedule like the one you are proposing? That would be approximately 8,757 schools.
10%? That number seems just way too high. Let's go down in powers of 10.
Let’s think 1%.”
The admin are beginning to squirm a bit at this point.
“One percent. Do you think 875 schools use a similar schedule? I still think that numbers high.
Sticking with powers of 10 let's go down to 0.1%.
That would be 87 of the over 87 thousand elementary schools in the United States.
Are there 87 elementary schools that use a similar schedule? Five days on and thirty off?
Possibly. But I still think the number is high.
But for the sake of discussion, let's stick with 0.1%.
That leads me to the question: What do the other 99.9% of elementary schools in the United States value in a traditional weekly schedule that we don't?
What are we willing to jettison by adopting a schedule that keeps children out of a special’s room for 30 days at a time?
Would a schedule like this enhance or diminish skills in, say, a Spanish emersion program? A math program?
If it wouldn’t be appropriate for math, why is it appropriate for music?
I know you said you don't know of any other schools that use a schedule similar to this but I still want you to find me a few - like 87 schools or 0.1% of the elementary schools in the United States - and I'm going to ask again in an email.”
Definitely not what they wanted to hear.
“I hope as a school community we are willing to look at data that will be collected from the schedule’s first four months and modify it should need arises.”
Needless to say, I didn't get that email. And the schedule didn't change. It required that I make significant adjustments to what and how I taught my last two years.
Despite the schedule, I made certain that were going to be two of my BEST years teaching. And they were.
Once you make your case concerning a schedule, it's time to get quiet and teach.
The die is cast and kids will forget about the schedule once they start making music and having fun.
My recommendation?
You should, too.
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