If you're listening to that music podcast with Bryson Tarbet, the curriculum designer and educational consultant behind that music teacher at the elementary music summit each week, Bryson and his guests will dive into the reality of being an elementary music teacher, and how music can truly be transformative in the lives of the students you serve. Show Notes and resources mentioned in this episode can be found at that music teacher.com.
Hello, and welcome back to that music podcast. I am super excited today to go and talk about something that actually really makes our life a lot simpler, which is reusing and refreshing lesson plans from previous years. So I'm going to start off by saying first year teachers sorry, this isn't going to be super helpful. But what I will do is I will share some tips for what you can do in your first year to really make sure that you are set up for success. So at least you don't have to spend complete scratch when you get into here, too. So anyway, me and when I'm talking about reusing and refreshing lesson plans. So first of all, I really don't think that you should be reading brand new lesson plans every single day, every single year. I think that when you're reinventing the wheel constantly, you're never able to iterate and really make it kind of in your secret sauce and really make it that like perfect, exactly what you want. But on the flip side of that, I don't think that we should be doing the same lesson plans, like exactly as written every single year, because as in the Leschi says, teaching is situational time bound and ever changing. So we really can't do last year's lesson plan and expect it to go exactly how it did last year. So how do we find that middle point? How do we find the perfect balance between reusing and refreshing? And that's what we're going to be talking about today. So I want to start off by saying my first year of teaching, I did a lot of things wrong. But I definitely did some things right. I've talked about this before. But one of the biggest things I did my first year of teaching to help second year teacher, Bryson was to just simply keep a list of songs that the kids knew. So that, you know, if we did mouse mouse in kindergarten, I would write it down and said, kindergarten mouse mousy. That way I know that when I'm going into not only what I'm doing my kindergarten lesson plans that year. But when I start making lesson plans in first grade, I know what repertoire they already know. Because if there's nothing worse than saying, Are you ever gonna learn a brand new song, and it's a song they already know. So that's something that I think that you can start off even if you're just starting off. Now it's January, you know, doing exactly what you need to do, and just write down what you're working on. And that'll make it easier when you go back next year to see what repertoire you've done. So what do you what do you do if you have a little bit of a, let's call it a backlog of lesson plans. And you're really thinking, Alright, I definitely want to refresh these, I don't want to just, you know, do them again, exactly the way they are. But I also want to get the most bang for my buck with my time. And what I would urge you to do is first, take a step back, when you're writing lesson plans, think about future self, think about your future self and make them specific, I'm not saying write out like one of the four or five page lesson plans like we had to do in college that no one ever does in the real world. But I want you to be specific in what you're using, how you're using it and what what materials. For instance, if you have a book in your lesson plan, don't just put book or Prague book, put the name of the book, put the author that way you can find it the next year. But I think it's also important for you to even if you if the way your brain works, lesson plans, that's fine. But I would also number your lesson plans. Because we all know that lesson plans can get off and you know, we might have one class that's ahead of the other. So I find rather than doing date lesson plans like alright, this is what we're going to do on October 30 or whatever is alright, this is the seventh time you see these kids, we're going to do this and I what so when I do is I go in when I'm lesson planning and I have my new lesson plans. I also have a binder of previous years lesson plans. Usually I only look at the the previous years, the other ones there there somewhere. But I don't really go in and look at them. So what I do is alright, I'm worried. Let's say I'm working on my 10th lesson plan for kindergarten. I go in and I see Alright, where are what did we do last year in kindergarten during the temptation. That is always where I start somewhere. Well we did last year.
And there are going to be some things that really resonate with me like Oh, I totally felt that sorry, I totally forgot What about that game or who I forgot I have those manipulatives in the back of my closet. But there's also a lot of times where I'm like, Oh my God, that game was the nobody liked it, or, you know that song just would never die. So I'm going to basically keep the same framework of my lesson from the previous year, and really build upon it. So take out things that I think we could really improve on. And then add things in that maybe I found that a PD or some new repertoire that I found or something like that. So basically kind of supplement rather than start from scratch. So how do you know when you're when you should start from scratch, I will be very honest, in my first year of teaching, like I said, I was I was surviving, I did exam, I did what I could to survive, and I did what I could to set myself up next year, my second year of teaching, I really did not like my lesson plans. Part of that was is my first year of teaching, I started my master's degree and my code I levels. So I had a little bit of a different understanding going into my second year. But I also just realized that a lot of the lessons just weren't good. And like, I have no problem saying that, because I was still learning how to develop curriculum. And so that specific time, I use the lessons kind of as a more of a collection of repertoire and ideas rather than we're going to recreate and and and refresh the sequence. Once I had a couple of years and and I was really able to feel like I at least that I was on the right path, at least, that's when I started using the kind of working on refreshing a little bit rather than completely starting from scratch. Alright, so you're listening to this podcast on the way to where you're ready to some things into act? How do you get it, I would. First if you have old lesson plans from previous years, take them out, take a look at them and see if you can figure out at least where you were in the year. So if you haven't necessarily labeled or dated your lesson plans. So you can do to kind of figure out where those you know where you are Kind of similar between the two years and see if at least there are some ideas that you can use. You don't necessarily need to start from scratch, like I said, and you definitely you definitely don't need to completely reuse a lesson plan from previous years. But the first thing I want you to do your first kind of little action item is to just give it a shot and look at what you have. And to see how much that can save you. One of the things that I do and when I talk to especially newer teachers, they say I feel like I'm spending all of my time lesson planning, I don't have enough time to develop curriculum for all of these grades. And yes, that is a very real thing that we have to deal with as music educators, specifically elementary music educators, because in my case, I'm developing curriculum for first grade kindergarten to second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade choir, all of those things, I am developing this curriculum. And that is not an uncommon thing. Now don't get me wrong, I love the double edged sword where we get to develop our own curriculum. But it does take a lot of time. So when I'm talking with teachers, when I'm coaching teachers about how to reclaim your time and make your instruction better without making your brain go explosion is how can we save time lesson planning, one thing you can do is reusing and refreshing rather than starting from scratch, another thing that you can do is really reutilizing figuring out how you can build upon not only the previous year's lesson, but the previous lesson in general, you don't need to refresh or not everything needs to be new. You can repeat things, you can use a piece of repertoire in a different way, you can use something from a previous year, use it in the same way or you going a different way or use them in the same manipulatives or a different song and things like that. And when you start allowing parts of your curriculum to do double duty, that is where you get to reclaim your time. So when you're able to reclaim your time by doing all sorts of different things, including reusing and refreshing your lesson plans from previous year, previous years, that's really where you get to choose how to how to spend your time. And for me, I've spent that time well first of all, making this make doing that music teacher and creating this this wonderful community that I get to be a part of. But also I've been able to I haven't written a lesson plan outside of school hours and years. And I I know that's not common necessarily. But the reason it's been able to work for me is because I put that time in in the first few years of my careers, so my career so that he didn't have to put the time in now. Because for me, what I want to do spending my time outside of the school day is helping other music teachers like you make their instruction better and help reclaim their time. But also spend time with my family. I have a foster kid sitting or sleeping upstairs, as I'm recording this and something that I really wouldn't have been to do if I didn't if I had to create and bring a lot of lessons home. Or you know if I was just kind of, you know how to spend all of my time reinventing the wheel, rather than using bits and pieces and parts and ideas from previous lesson plans. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of that music podcast. If you haven't already, I would love to invite you to join us inside that music teacher community. You'll find the link in the show notes wherever you're listening. But that music teacher community is a one of a kind of music education community specifically for elementary music teachers. On top of the actual community aspect, like where we get to post questions and help each other out, you'll receive a monthly professional development masterclass, that gets added to our growing library of content specific professional development for elementary music teachers. Again, you can find that link in the description or the show notes wherever you're listening. And I would love to have you inside if you haven't already. If you enjoyed this week's episode, it would mean the world to us if you would leave a review wherever you're listening, that really helps us understand what types of episodes are resonating with you, and really helps us grow the podcast and find more music educators just like you that are trying to take back some of their outside of the music classroom without sacrificing the instruction that's happening inside it. Like always, I want to be the person that if in case nobody has told you that and I want to thank you for making a difference in the lives of the students you teach because you truly are doing that for hundreds of students every single day.
