Hello and welcome back. I'm super excited to do our little lunch question and answer session with a couple of our speakers and myself. So if you are here in the chat, say hello. We would love to hear what are your burning questions, what are the things that you struggle with the most in the music classroom? And we'd love to give you some tips and tricks and some strategies that's that have worked for us. We have some pre submitted and pre selected questions that we came up with and that we've we've had to send in to us, and I see some hanging out in the chat as well. But I'm going to go ahead and bring up our other speakers who are going to be joining us today. So we have Alessandra and Amy, we are so excited for you or so thankful that you're joining us. So before we get started, I know Amy, we've already had your session, and Alessandra, we'll have yours in a little bit. But can you just give a brief introduction of who you are and what you do in the world of music, and why don't we go ahead and start with Alessandra, sure. So yeah, I'm Alessandra. I teach just outside of Toronto, Canada, and I teach kindergarten to grade eight. I'm technically the teacher of the arts at my school, but I mostly focus on music, but I've also taught dance and drama and kind of incorporated all of that. And we do everything at my school. We do ukulele, recorder, Bucha drumming, concert band. We do it all. So happy to help any way I can. What about you? Amy,
Hi, I'm Amy burns, and I'm at far Hills Country Day School, which is a private school in New Jersey, preschool through grade eight. I sincerely apologize. I am at event right now where you're singing the national anthem.
I'm going to try to mute myself, but I will try to answer anything I can and unmute then, but I'm going to jump into mute right now.
Perfect. And I am really excited, because I don't know, I think we got a wide, wide spectrum. So first of all, let's go ahead and address the elephant in the room, which I'm guessing, is the question that the majority of us have, which is, how do we get middle schoolers to do things right, like, I mean, to put it, to build it bluntly, how do we get kids involved? How do we get them engaged, especially when there's that social side of things that are just like, you know, too cool for music, right? Music's not a cool thing. So Alexander, do you have any tips for just keeping engagement up, especially when that base level is just really not there? Yeah. So a couple of things kind of come to mind. And like, before I get into them, I also want to say, like, your engagement can come on a spectrum. So it's not like all or nothing, right? So if you're doing things, it to improve engagement or just help you know, step it up that little bit every month, every semester, every year, like that is progress in itself. It's not going to be something that probably happens overnight,
because it takes time and relationship building and community building with your students, especially this age group. So the way that I like to do it, and you'll see this in my session later on, is one way, is through projects and projects project based learning, because through projects, that's kind of the medium for students to be able to learn about things that really interest them, and when they're doing things that really interest them, that also helps their engagement. So they're able to have a choice in what they're learning about, what they want to present on what they want to research. And that helps with engagement as well. And with that, a lot of the projects I do, this is just one strategy. A lot of the projects I do involve a lot of music listening. And so when we get into these projects, I try to give as many students tech as possible and as many individual headphones as possible. So I'm kind of looking at the chat, and even in the community, I was reading some of the questions that, like, how do you how do you engage students, especially when there's, like, this herd mentality, when, like, they all don't want to participate, and it's like, not the cool thing to do. And so when you kind of separate them from each other through their music listening experience, they put on their headphones, they can kind of zone in. That's one strategy you can use to get them involved in what they're learning. And then it kind of takes away that, that peer interaction that propels that challenging behavior that sometimes happen and happens in those big group settings? Yeah, I think up you bring up a really good point where sometimes we need to kind of break them apart, but also kind of give them their own little, their own journey, you know, so to speak, I, you know, tonight, today's keynote is going to be all about, basically this, this whole question, you know, how do we engage reluctant learners, and how do we make sure that the we're planning for that in mind? And I think, I think Amy, you you mentioned you shared a lot of really cool tech, tech tools. And, you know, I know Alessandra was talking about, like having their own headphones is a great strategy for, you know, helping with that. But I'm curious, Amy, if you have any, you know, anything to.
Add to that, especially when it comes to like, integrating technology in a meaningful way. Yeah, it's really important to connect with your students, and technology is really one of a great ways to to connect, even if you have limited technology. The thing is, your students are using them for their own purposes, but not so much for educational purposes. So when you can mix in what they're doing on their own into your own educational like classroom and purpose. It really is a nice balance. And like, I love podcasting for that reason, students are listening to podcasts. They know it. And then if you turn a project based learning into a podcast, it's a really cool tool for them. In addition anything that gets some making music, that's what I was showing leathers tech tools are for students who can make music but they aren't sure they don't have the musical theory foundations. And Middle School is a great way to grab some of those students who are just trying to make music at home and really bring it into here, into school, and maybe that will turn them into maybe a band, orchestra or chorus student, or maybe they will be that Music Technology student. So I think that technology is a great way to connect with them.
Yeah, I know that during COVID, one of the things that really,
really my eyes were open to were those kids that really are musical and have a lot of music inside them, but they really don't like performing, and especially performing in front of other people. So when I was able to get, you know, those active listeners, you know how to get them involved. And you know, because during COVID, we couldn't say, we couldn't play instruments, we couldn't do this then that. So we did a lot more of the responding, and we did a lot more of the like, how can we connect this to, you know, the reality of what music is in your life, I found that that's super helpful. And I think that, you know, I see a lot of people asking basically the same question, how do we get the kids to want to come to music, want to do the music, want to want to do the thing? And the answer is,
it's going to be different for every student. And you know that that's kind of what we're going to go into in tonight's keynote, is, you know, how do we kind of figure out some of the students that are in our in our classroom? But I want to shift to the gear as a little bit, because I see some questions about
So Noah says, basically she's in her second year at a K through eight schools, trying to figure out what the kids know and how to build upon that. So this is a really good question, because I think it is great for music teachers across the board. Like, how do we, especially if we're new at a school, how do we, like, how do we figure out what the students know, other than you know, just asking them, and how do we, how do we take what they know if, especially if it isn't at like, the level that you would want them at in that grade, kind of the older beginner mindset. How do we take that and move the step forward? Do either of you want to kind of take that one
so so some I I've been in this position before, so just a little backstory, because I know some people aren't from Toronto, but when I started teaching. Teaching was, like, extremely competitive to get into. So I was kind of moved around to a lot of schools. It's not quite the same like that anymore, but I was, like, put in a lot of different situations where I had to do this, I had to figure out what students knew, what their background was, see the resources I had, and kind of go from there.
And so I would always the way I kind of lesson plan, because I've seen some questions about lesson planning. I think this ties in this ties in is especially when you're in a K to eight, I kind of plan per division. So like, one to three, we're all kind of doing the same thing, but then I just modify the expectations, or I go through them a little bit quicker. As we get they get into the older grades, four to six, we're kind of doing the same thing. And then seven and eight, we're kind of doing the same thing right, and then I'm modifying based on the specific expectations. So in terms of lesson planning, that helps me streamline, especially when I'm kind of in an overwhelming situation. In terms of finding out what students know, I do some kind of, like formative assessment. So I usually do, like a written something like, Do you know what a quarter note is, do you know what a treble clef is? Do you know how to read notes, right? Like, do it based off of what they should have learned the year before? You can do something written that's quick, like half a page, just to get a sense of where they're at. And then I also try to do something playing based, performance based as well. So I'll teach them like a rhythm or a body percussion little piece. And we'll see as we go through that, I'll see, okay, which notes do we know? Do we understand time signature,
things like that, right, depending on what unit or what kind of musical concept Do you want to focus on at that time for that grade level? And so I base it off the curriculum, like what they should have learned the year before. It's not uncommon that they don't, they didn't pick up all those skills. And so you just start again, right? Like you teach them, I can't teach my grades sevens and eights band if they can't read notes on a staff, right? Like I can't teach you how to play the flute if you don't understand how to read notes on ledger line. So you have to, you have to.
Just start, and whatever that looks like for your students is progress. And if you're able to stay at that school for more than one year, then you can keep building it up, and you'll notice over time, your students will come to the level that you hope they would be at. But it takes time. Yeah, one of the unique things about my previous position was I taught K through four at one of the elementary schools in my district, and then I taught five, six, all of this district. So I had these fifth graders coming to me that were coming from a different school, a different rotation, with so different, you know, contact hours, and a different teacher that had, you know, used a different teaching style. So I basically had to do this every, every year in fifth grade is figuring out, right, where are we? How do we all get in the same page. And, you know, I, for me, it was literally, like my first couple lessons were, first of all, just making music together, and, you know, beginning as we mean to go on. But then it was really, you know, alright, this is a top. You might know it as a quarter note. You might know it as a do, you might know it as this, that the other thing, they're all the same thing. We could just called and different things, and just kind of going from there and realizing that, like, hey, my fourth graders never went into fifth grade knowing. FAW, I never got to fall by fourth grade, and that's totally fine. I just by fifth grade like, Hey, this is FA cool. Moving on, right? You know, it's not perfect, but you know, we're going to move forward. Amy, do you have anything to add to that I do when I totally agree with the scaffolding, like the end and totally grouping K through one and two and four and, you know, four and six and seven and eight. Also, it's just like, it's that whole thing that we always hear it takes five years to grow your program. So even when you are trying to pre test, post test, your students, and you're trying to quickly bring them into where you feel they need to be. It's probably going to take five years to get there, and that is okay. That is just where you're at, because especially if you have students who are going but the other teacher did this, but the other teacher did this, so you're going to have to slowly scaffold in what you're trying to do, because you're going to have to graduate out the students who have learned it differently, and that's okay. I mean, that's what we do as teachers. Also, I also love using tools. If you have access to funding, like in fifth and sixth this year, we've been using practice first, which has been amazing, to get their theory better. They're listening better and they're playing better. So, like, just if you do have funding, to try to get some of those tools where you can work with the students one on one, they can work one on one, they can self assess. That's also a great way to push them and and work at their level.
Yeah, so kind of going the second half of Molas question is only she says she only has a class set of tambourines, and she's not going to be giving every single student a tambourine, which I totally get. I had a class set of triangles, I kid you not. Who would ever want that many triangles? I don't know. But that brings me to, you know, at my middle school, when I came in, I had a lot of instruments. You know, I had, you know, this drum and that drum and some rhythm sticks. But honestly, I really didn't have a class set of anything. I had boom markers, which I then a class set of boom markers. That's kind of it. So I'm curious to kind of hear what your your suggestions would be on engaging students, especially these middle school students, when you really don't have any instruments. Because I feel like I might be projecting a little bit, but I feel like at least here in the United States, we've seen a trend of fifth and sixth grade getting moved back to the elementary school, and general music kind of hanging in the middle school.
But they don't have the, you know, with that change, there haven't been, like, new instruments purchased and things like that. So I feel like there's less class sets of things at these upper grades. So I'm curious at how to, how do you do music without being so vocal heavy and only doing the vocal stuff when you really don't have a class out of anything anyone want to pick up on
that one, yeah, on this one, this is tough. I give a lot of credit to my my middle school teacher, because I do fifth and sixth instrument class, but she does fifth through eighth grade general music. And though we do have access to a lot of resources, I love going into her classroom just watching them create like with their own like they're actually writing. They would look at, like, body percussion, play alongs, bucket drumming, play alongs. And you know, she went out and she did. She went to Home Depot and got the Bucky drumming and getting them to actually start create music for that. So I've seen her do units on that. And then the other things I've seen her do is she works with the social studies history teacher. She's actually married to the history teacher, and they coordinate, so when he is working with like civil rights in his class, she does a whole unit on that. So I think like you're right, vocal heavy in the middle school, when boys are changing their voices and girls are self conscious, is probably not always the best way to go. If you're feeling their students are telling you that and maybe bringing in their curriculum and correlating things that are going on.
In their own classroom, or having them create and develop their own songs, even if it's just the basic of just writing down rhythms and doing body percussion songs or bucket drumming songs, and writing rhythms and doing it to a really cool backbeat would be something that would at least connect to them and catch them,
I think, bring up. Go ahead. Go ahead. Sorry. What you said was verbatim. What I was thinking like I was thinking back again to my COVID days where, like, we couldn't sing, couldn't play instruments. We did a ton of body percussion. I sent my letter to, you know, Home Depot, or here it's Canadian Tire, right? And a lot of times they will donate, like, the buckets for you too. Um, so a lot of things with Rida. And then what you said earlier, too, with the technology piece, right? Like even creating things online, I know there's a couple sessions today on how to do that, and how to compose music. Using technology is another great avenue as well. And then I also want to remind or encourage you. I know, like in my school, I always forget about this. We have in my school board, we have a big resource center where we can borrow things from, and then sometimes they're available, sometimes they're not, but it's always a good place to check too, especially if you're a newer teacher, you might not know that these resources might might exist where you teach, so it's always good to ask as well. But yeah, and then just tying into some of the cross curricular things, like even for me too, what they're learning in class is so important to help apply their learning through the arts, but even within the arts, right? Like, I've had students create a stomp dance piece and in that they're doing body percussion. So there's a few different ways that you can integrate some of the different curriculum areas to help them create and still experience the process, process of music making and creating also, let's not, you know, there's definitely music for the music sake is a whole thing. I'm not negating that, but what administrator is not going to love you taking their other curriculum and weaving it into your own, let's be honest. That's going to win you some points on an evaluation, which isn't the whole thing, but, you know, it's we're going to we're going to talk about it.
So another thing that I see with and Amy, this is probably gonna be, you know, something that you can give us started with is, all right, I love the idea of technology. Maybe they went to Amy's session and they got all these new ideas. But, like, I don't have a class set, or I only have, like, 10 or five, or even just one. How would you suggest interacting or engaging and weaving in technology? Because, let's be honest, it's not going anywhere, and it is very involved in music. So how do we use that and incorporate that when we don't, when you might not necessarily be one
to one? I'll start.
I do want to say, like, do check first with your it. You never know what they're throwing out. And you're like, I will take those classes. The first thing I ever started out with with these iPads that the classroom teachers were done with, and I grabbed them. I'm like, Just give them to me. But as I said in this session, I think one of the one of the things I gave because I really try to be cognizant of that not everyone is one to one. It did become more like apparent during COVID, but not everyone is. And some of the things I was doing, like, if you put one on the screen, I think it was the accordion that I showed love that from music ed lab. And like, if you put up the Beyonce video, maybe not that one, but you put up a YouTube video, they can go and bring out the instruments like you can bring out the bucket drums while someone is running the the whole program up on the screen. Other things I've done like you, studio is fantastic. Let's say, Let's go free. All right. Let's say no budget, because I do try to start there. Let's go band lab, Edu. I loved reading my comments. I wasn't there today when the session went on. But I loved reading the band lab, like the people supporting band lab edu, it's nice to hear that. So I hadn't always heard that. Band lab edu absolutely free. Make sure your school, it permits it. But even with one, you can have a group up there. Think of it as a station. A group is doing it while others are doing it, tactile on the floor. And for some of your middle schoolers, that's probably a better thing is to be tactile. I have middle schoolers who are just better hands on. Put the instrument in their hand. They're so much better. Do something like Soundslice, put something up there on Soundslice, ask your kids to bring in their band and orchestra instruments. Did you see in Soundslice, there was a transpose button. When you do that, you can actually put in, like Beethoven's out to joy, which is written in a C instrument, and transpose it for your E flat instruments. Have your band, have your kids bring in their instruments. I always find that to be so great to connect with them. Do they play guitars? Bring them in and just start using some of these, just one on tools on the board, and make the whole class acoustically create, maybe tactile create, and just join in.
Alexander, anything to add to that. I love that. And even what you're saying too, like, let them bring in, even if the instruments aren't all the same, let them bring them in, because, again, it's an opportunity for them to be an expert in that thing that they're that they're learning, or that they are good at. Um.
Yeah, and then that, in itself, will increase engagement and hopefully address some of these other challenges that we were talking about at the beginning of this Q and A, right? So it all kind of works hand in hand.
So here is a really good question that Shannon just posed that I'll be honest, I don't really have an answer for so I'm curious if you have, if either of you are able to share, you know, like, how would you manage AI exposure for your students? And how are you kind of navigating the world of AI? Because it just like, jumped in and Amy's like, ready to go with this answer. So why don't we go ahead and start
with Amy the I'm at a horse race, so I apologize. The horse races just started, and you will see people walking on the cars behind me. It's a crazy event here in this town today. Ai, it's a really good thing. I would highly recommend you look at what James Frankel is doing. You can put in James frankel.com he has researched hard on this, and your students are in it. They're already in it, and they have been for years. AI, isn't new. It's been there the writing tools, everything. If you are using noises that I showed, you're using AI. If you're using Canva, you're using AI. It obviously chat. GPT is AI. Your students are starting to use it. And I would suggest always working with it first on anything. But I would suggest not to ignore it. Magic School. AI is a great place to start. It's absolutely school like you know, it's Copa, it's fairpa. It's all made for school. It's made for teachers, but they even have a student part in it creating music. [email protected]
think and udio. If you have shy singers. Have them create Well, check with it first. Have you create music with them. You use it, and it will sing for them. This is really good. Like we have students who don't want to sing in front of you, and they don't want to sing in front of their classmates, especially at 13 years old. And these like AI tools, they're probably already using them, but again, working with your IT, maybe you using it, showing it to them, making sure they agree with it. But it's here, they're using it. And for prompting, for making up, like creative stories, creative lyrics, creative songs. It's there. It's not going away, and it's great to get to know it, and to add, sorry, I keep jumping in. And to add to that too, like, I think when, when our first, or at least mine, like, the first exposure idea I had of AI is, like, whoa. Like, How is school going to look like you kind of take a step back, but I think what you're saying, Amy is so important. Like, it's not going anywhere. And this is, might be just the shift that education takes in all subject areas is, how do we learn to work with this? Because in reality, when our students enter the workplace in you know, 15 years, 20 years, this is their reality too. And so giving them the tools to utilize and use these resources appropriately is a skill that's important for them to learn, right? So even just that framework around it might be helpful for some people.
Alejandra is completely right. I have, I was at an innovation conference, and most of your careers are looking to see if you know how to use these AI tools. And people are worried that it's going to take care of teaching. It's going to take us over. Actually, really too challenging for to take the human side out of teaching. AI isn't going to do that. Now, if you were a coder, AI is going to take your job like you could go into chat GPT say, Please code me an Excel sheet that will randomly choose students, and it will all it will code the program for you like coders are looking at this is going to put them out, but not as teachers. It cannot replace your human, human side and ask an AI tool to draw an orchestra. There's some really interesting instruments that show up, like pop out of people's heads, like they just don't know music. They don't know it that well. But our employers, our kids, were sending them out to this job world, they expect they will know this, yeah, and I'm even seeing like in the chat Shannon, like, how do you get teachers to understand it's a tool that students can use, and not the easy way out, right? The way I we kind of framework it, like at my school and with some of the staff that are working on this, it's kind of like when Google came out, right? Like, what's the difference between looking something up and and just taking it right, like you have to teach the sense of, like, pulling the jaw notes, pulling the main ideas, reframing it in your own words, like it's a starting point, and then you build off of that. And so with all the work I do with my students, I do as much as I can with them in class, I continue to like monitor them and evaluate even as they go through the steps in class to see what their ideas are. So I'm getting a sense of that I don't get just like one final product at the end, but it, you know, it's a shift, like it's a big mental shift in our world right now, and so it's, it's a big shift to turn it probably won't happen overnight, but just doing in these small ways will help.
Help make things move forward. Yeah, and let's be honest, there is an entire ethical side of this that I don't think we are anywhere near the end of that conversation, especially when it has to do with how AI is trained, especially in the arts. That is a whole thing that I think we will see for quite some time. But I also want to bring up the point that, like, AI has been around for a while, exactly like, you know, like you were saying, like, it wasn't really until chat GPT came out that we just started sticking an AI label on everything. And, you know, I think it's important for us to realize that it's been around for a long time and, and it's been included and things like, I think of like, Grammarly, like, that's the thing that, you know, I think even in college, like that was a thing that I had on my computer to help, like, basically, spell check and things like that. And kind of going through the idea of, Oh, I lost my kind of kind of thought there, don't, don't, don't. That's the worst. Well, we're gonna go ahead and leave it there
with that conversation, with that answer, because I'm not sure where I was going with that, but oh yes, I'm back. We are so back. So back when I think about like, when I was doing when I was in school, like they're like, don't use Wikipedia for research. And while you shouldn't cite Wikipedia, if you go to Wikipedia and go to their sources like that can be a really good place to start. And I think we that that. I think that's kind of the shift that we're going to make in AI as educators. And I think I might have frozen, but hopefully you can still see me or hear me,
but we have, you know, we're going to go from that shift of having, you know, don't use Wikipedia to you. Can use Wikipedia in this way to get you started. And I think that's really where AI is going to go. So without kind of shifting this conversation fully on AI, because I'm over here writing AI training,
I would love to kind of get back to some other questions, because we still, we just have a few minutes left. So if you're live in the chat, and you have a specific question that you would love to hear our opinion on, please go ahead and put in there. But I would love to to ask a question that is such a a bias, not bias such like million dollar question, which is, how do you differentiate instruction at the middle school level? I think one thing that I really struggled with, especially as we started to see the COVID push, those students that were really mostly affected in their formative years during COVID, just reading levels being really rough. You know, fifth, sixth, seventh grade. You know, kids that you know really can't read instructions. How beyond just, you know, reading. How would you recommend that we
How would you recommend that we keep
people going with, how do we differentiate in the middle school classroom, I guess, is where, where I'd love to bring this question. So feel free. Alessandra, do you have anything to get us started? Yeah, and I actually, like, I find I did the most differentiation with my middle schoolers, right? Like, if there are any big gaps, like, I find, like, there's so much they're so present as they get older. And so I, I pretty much accommodate for everyone, right? Like, we have IEPs, we have everything, like, all the things we're supposed to do for particular students, but I have options and accommodations, pretty much for the whole class so that they can showcase their best selves. So especially with the reading levels, right? Like, that's a big one. So using AI, like there's there's speech to text, there's things they can do to hear instructions. You can explain it working in smaller groups. Of course, are all some of the strategies we learn as teachers. But I think in music, it really lends itself to doing a lot of things and showcasing learning that's not necessarily like a typical academic sense. So like recording them do a podcast about something that they're really passionate about, is one strategy, right, or creating movement, or getting tactile and using an instrument, right? Like there's, there's a lot of opportunities for that in that
but yeah, it can, it can be challenging. That's just kind of my initial thoughts. Amy, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, I agree with Alessandra. It's meeting them where they're at, especially in music class, in in middle school. So like for me, it's that choices, giving them choices. Do you want to do this project as a podcast? Do you want to create music? Do you want, like, those choices are really great. The downside is it, it's going to make your very loud classroom. So you're trying to, like, figure out ways headphones really help. If you know you can trust a kid. Sometimes they throw them in the hallway. If it's not too bad to do that, just but those options, I noticed, like my middle school teachers do, that the science teacher gives options on do you want to write this assignment? Do you want to record this assignment? Do you want to make art to this assignment? Like I see her really using multiple modalities to reach all her students, and I do the same thing, because even though I'll show.
Writing if they need me to show a writing sample. But honestly, in music, it's great that we can actually give them those options. Yeah, one of the if you know anything about me, you'll know that differentiation inclusion is like my whole jam. That's my graduate research line. And then I just went down this whole rabbit hole, and I will always do it. And the reality is is it's just figuring out what is getting in the way, and then figuring out what to do to break it down. And I know that's super simplified, but that it's just kind of understanding of, you know, what are we actually trying to get? Do we want kids to write an essay, or do we want them to understand a composer or whatever? You know, are there different ways that they can choose? Maybe they make a movie, maybe they make a skit, maybe they make a post, or whatever, like kind of seeing what ways that we can just make it, make it more accessible for that. So we have a really good question that I would I think we're going to use this as our last question today. So Chloe's question is, I teach general music at a K school, and all of her seventh graders want to learn how to sing. That's amazing, but her background is in band. How would you suggest starting a singing unit, salvage or something else?
Ooh, I have one idea. Um, this might be a little crazy and out of the box, but it is seventh grade so and they want to sing. Find out. Why is it? Because they're watching the voice. Are they loving karaoke? And start them there again, start at their level. And then as you do that, start to be like, okay, so you, let's say they love the voice. Maybe that's what's, what's what, what it's connecting. So then go, Okay, so let's go to different styles of music, and then start to just do vocal warm ups. Like, meet them where they are. They're not little kids, where we can start in kindergarten and do so me and and warm ups. This is all like, you know, they want to sing. Find out why, what's what's inspiring them start there and then be like, okay, where else can I go with this? Do we start two part singing? Are they? Are they listening well enough to be able to do that? Do we try to match pitch more? Can we get more head voice? Are they all Broadway Bound? Are they like wanting to belt out the melody, find out where they are, and then I would work with that music and then start refining that's that's where I would go with it. Yeah, I think that the reality is, is, however you can get them singing, is, is good. I mean, like you said, like you have seventh graders that want to sing. Do it like, jump, jump right in. And I want you to remind you that, like,
I, I am certified to teach band. I play band in high school, but I haven't picked up an instrument in a hot minute. So, like, if I were to start teaching band, I would have the same struggle that you're going through, and I want you to realize that I know it feels so much more personal, because it is your voice, and like, this is what you got, and it's going to be there forever. But the reality is, is music making is so much more than just being, you know, having the best vocal production and this that and the other thing, it's about the act of doing, and it's the act of, you know, showing students how to kind of unlock their instruments. So, like, don't feel like you have to have it all together. Don't feel like you have to be perfect. And just, you know, you're going to be in a room full of seventh graders singing. They're going to be so worried about how they sound. I promise you, they are not going to
be worrying about how you sound. Alessandra, anything to add to that, like taking the words out of my mouth, how I was going to say the same thing. Like, find out why they're so interested. Like you got them, this is the hardest part, right? Like they're in it. So find out why give them that autonomy, give them that that voice in your classroom, they're right there. You just have to ask and see. And then from there, you'll start to get ideas on where to go next, where their areas are of learning are, where their strengths are. And then you can build from there, right? Like, don't think you have to have it all figured out yet. Just just start.
I love that. Alright. So Amy. Alessandra, thank you so much for joining us for this panel. Quite frankly, we've never done a panel like this, and I think they might be here to stay. We wanted to give it a little test. So I love this. Thank you so much for for hanging out and answering some questions. For those of you that are in the chat, thank you for joining us. We have our next session starting in just about 15 minutes, which is Rachel Ammons all about scaffolds and crutches, which, if you've been wanting to know about differentiation, and how do we know if we're making it too easy? Quote, unquote, this is going to be for you. So with that being said, Go ahead, grab some coffee, grab some extra food, and we will see you here in just about 15 minutes. You.
