Storybooks Saved My Music Teacher Life
by Guest Blogger Kateri Swavely
Hey Music Teachers! Let me start with a thank you to Jeanette for letting me write a guest post for her blog! I’m excited to be here and share my story.
My name is Kateri Swavely, and I’m currently Jeanette’s social media manager – but that’s not how my story started. I graduated in 2009 and landed my dream job right out of college as a middle school band director for a small school district about 20 minutes from my home. The first year of teaching was a challenge, because it always is, as I rebuilt a struggling program. I distinctly remember the first time one of my saxophone students who had been playing for two years asked me what tonguing meant. But we learned about articulation and the first year was as successful as it could be.
Then the district made some changes. They took away the band class period and moved my band practices into the 20-minute “activity period” where I had to share my students between a million other clubs, tutoring, test make up time, and they just needing a break in their day. Year two was rough, but we held it together and made it work.
Cue two days before year three, when I got my usual letter from my school district letting me know what classes I would be teaching. And the list for me, the middle school band director said: Kindergarten, first, third, fourth and fifth grade general music. In addition to my current responsibilities.
Excuse me, what?
I hadn’t even seen a kindergartener since student teaching. And here’s the thing. At the risk of sounding like a bad human/teacher/female, I don’t like little kids. I don’t really know what to do with anyone under the age of ten. So there I was standing in my parent’s living room utterly panicking because I had TWO DAYS to figure out what I was going to do with these children with, by the way, no curriculum, no resources, and no time.
Did I mention the elementary specials classes were 60 MINUTES LONG!
My one saving grace was having a mom who taught kindergarten for 25 years. I very clearly remember her saying, “It’s the first day of school so…probably a bunch of them will be crying.” Awesome.
A lot of that first year teaching 60-minute kindergarten classes of 20 students is a blur. I remember tearful calls with friends asking what I was supposed to do. The other district music teacher was so glad to not be teaching all the elementary classes on her own she basically handed me her teacher guides and ran. But once I calmed down and decided giving it all up and moving to Japan was probably not a really realistic option, I got to work.
I learned hello songs. I found YouTube videos of kid’s songs with guided movement. I opened the piano for the first time in three years and valiantly pretended I knew what I was doing as I plunked out melodies and taught by rote.
Behavior management was fun. Keeping kindergarteners engaged for 60 minutes is challenging at the best of times. For a still new teacher that never planned to teach kindergarten – let’s just say I was constantly shocked at how slow the clock was moving. “You mean that whole activity only took 4 minutes?!”
I’ll tell you what genuinely saved my life – and I swear Jeanette didn’t pay me to say this: storybooks.
Those kids LOVED being read to. They would literally be running around my classroom touching EVERYTHING, my lesson would be utterly failing, I would be contemplating a quick escape out the window (they were ground level, it would have been so easy…), and then I would say “ok story time!” They would rush to their spots on the carpet and go silent. Silent! For me, it was like a little miracle.
I read about composers. I read about instruments. I read stories written to accompany classical music. I sang through every song in “Take Me Out of the Bathtub” by Alan Katz until I heard them in my nightmares. If the book had anything to do with music, you bet I read them. The students would ask what I would be reading that day. OK, maybe I would have preferred they ask what song they would be singing, but I was just glad they were excited to come to my class. I was doing something right.
This was especially helpful because if God forbid I had students color a picture of Beethoven, or draw a picture to go along with music, the parents would complain that “coloring wasn’t learning.” (cue dramatic eye roll) Seriously. But that’s a rant for another day.
I’ll be honest – I never loved teaching kindergarten the way I loved my middle school band. But I stopped dreading it. I did get better at it. I was never a piano player, but I managed some chords along with simple melodies. I brought in every instrument I owned and lugged some over from middle school and had instrument petting zoos (RIP $17 bassoon reed from college). And when all else failed, I was armed with my storybooks.