"Our vision is to create inquisitive and passionate problem solvers by teaching the whole child to become positive contributors to our community."
I've blogged a bit about our experience of finding a new music teacher for my campus. I was so incredibly impressed with the way in which my students were able to articulate the characteristics of what they would think of as their perfect music teacher, and I wanted to be sure to include them in the transition as much as possible.
There are certainly different philosophies about how much to involve children in an upcoming transition, and for this transition I've included them as much as possible once everything was set in stone. The decision process I used and the timing of the announcement is a topic for a completely separate blog post; maybe I'll tell you about it some day soon. :)
Back to the involvement of the students with the transition:
Building a community is serious stuff. Building a community in a performing arts setting is paramount to encourage growth through risk-taking. We do some out-of-the-box things in here that would make many members of Stout Nation very uncomfortable if we hadn't developed the true understanding that our collective creative space is a place in which it's okay to grow.
I'd like to focus your attention on our 5th grade class. Our 5th graders--just like any group of children--represent a variety of birth orders. Some are the youngest. Some are the oldest. Some are the middle-children. Some are the only children. Jennifer, our new music teacher, prepared a 5 minute video introducing herself to the kiddos. When I told the 5th graders about her video, I framed it that they had the option of not seeing it. But I also added that I understood that some of them had younger siblings and they might want to know about their teacher next year. And most all of them had seen babies and toddlers in their neighborhoods and apartment buildings and Mrs. Patterson would be the music teacher for those kiddos one day, too.
I asked them if they wanted to see the video, and every single student said, "YES!" with such enthusiasm.
Do kids like knowing things? Absolutely.
If they would have said no, would I have honored that and moved on with the lesson? Oh yes.
Did they think beyond themselves and take interest in the future of what's going to be at their school? Oh my, they sure did.
Wow, Wranglers. Wow, wow, wow. Way to be inquisitive and passionate about our community.
#JWEmusic