Collaboration in the Music Faculty

Collaboration

In my district, we have five band teachers. While we all work separately, we could not possibly achieve at the level we do without some sense of collaboration. During each concert cycle, we all discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the student musicians in our respective instrument groups before choosing music for performance. Sometimes this means we will specifically select music that will provide a challenge for a certain group of students. Typically in lower grade levels we are careful to press too hard on any one group in hopes of giving student the opportunity to have more immediate success.

Integrating technology

Our district offers “one-to-one” access for students and this extends to the teachers here as well. We all have access to at least one chromebook which leads us to make use of the calendar and keep apps in order to communicate schedules and progress. We otherwise do not have a lot of “traditional tech” but we use a select amount quite a bit. Since we are a small to medium size school system with a lot of high powered programs, facilities use can be quite a struggle and having centralized calendars is a powerful tool.

The Keep app is something that is used for our class time management. If there is something that will be important for all the students to have prepared, the task can be placed in a checklist within the app. This checklist can be shared so that all of us can stay informed about the other teachers’ progress. Another use for this app would be to make sure that announcements are made. It is important to make sure information gets out in person so having a reminder in the keep app can help us make sure to announce concert dates, information for parades in class.

Observation

Observation has two meanings in this sense. A 2021 study notes that “teachers and student teachers experienced great learning benefits from one another. Through co-teaching, working relationships, knowledge, skill sets, and teaching styles were shared” (Thomas 2021) Team teaching or co-teaching is probably the most immersive way for teachers to collaborate. In this style of class management multiple teachers occupy the same space and are essentially working from different sides of the same task. This is a good way for teachers to observe one another and decide what may be working well or not so well. By doing this observation, a teacher could potentially pick up on new ways to problem solve.

Additionally, team teaching gives the teacher at the head of the class an additional set of eyes to make sure that students are not only staying on task, but if a student is struggling and it goes unnoticed, the second teacher could pick up on this detail and bring it up to the head teacher. Following this initial conversation the teachers can come up with a plan to better support this student who is struggling. One of the hardest parts of being a solo teacher is knowing what is going on at all times everywhere in the classroom. Co-teaching is a way to aid with this difficulty

Rare Circumstance

The traditional music class does not have co-teaching. Also, in most circumstances, there is only one music teacher in a school. Because of this, there is not a dearth of information available regarding collaboration between teachers in music departments. “Often, a music teacher is the only music teacher in a school and lacks access to resource colleagues in music with whom to discuss their practice” (Kim 2019) As stated previously, we are lucky to have, in my district, specialized instructors for the various instrument groups. While our instructors are coming from various backgrounds, it would be possible for all or any of us to run a program on our own. It is however, a much stronger program because of our ability to collaborate when we choose to.

Kim, J. (2019). Implementing a Co-Teaching Model in Music Student Teaching: A Literature Review. Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, 38(1), 18–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/8755123319843169

Thomas, A. Z. (2021) "An exploration of team teaching in the school band setting. MSU

Graduate Theses. 3697. https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/theses/3697