Thursday is Lesson Plan Day. Based on my week of observing, musical lessons involve a call and request singing session followed by maybe some movement or dancing and the next page in the basic piano book.
I'm bringing in some new material, so I wrote that in where appropriate and handed the stack to my supervisor.
She didn't laugh outright, but either through blatant shock or utter disbelief.
“Lesson Plans are kind of a Big Deal.”
Okay. What does that mean?
“Here, check out these art lessons while I look for music.”
Distribute materials. Paint. Cleanup.
Discuss watercolor. Distribute materials. Paint. Cleanup.
Introduce collage. Distribute materials. Point out good examples. Cleanup.
“Well, there are no musical lesson plans, but last year's were fantastic. See, our kids are extremely musically gifted and need to be challenged. [With, say, reading music? I didn't say.] So you should do stuff like making instruments and composition and theory. I'm not good with music, so I can't really help, but you know the type of stuff I'm talking about.”
Another teacher suggested eliding song-learning with science and English and math so that they know “Wheels on the Bus” before they learn the tree bark words to the same melody. It's what the music teacher did last year.
And, well, the learning outcomes are pretty much crap—in other subjects, they detail exactly what a given grade is expected to learn in a given area—so just make sure you push the students. No more Thai music, nothing by or about the king, nothing they've already done.
The catch is, last year's music teacher left because he didn't get my supervisor's job, so this makes for an awkward situation when asking for all of last year's lesson plans. Oops.
So. To separate completely from the style of instruction the students have seen thus far, incorporate completely novel material, and challenge them based upon an amorphous but not-to-be neglected standard: cake.
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