The beginning of the school year is full of excitement and stress. You'll have a lot of paperwork and training for your district that will eat up a lot of your time (medical/emergency training, state mandated training, district/school initiatives, not to mention all the first-year teaching items like healthcare, retirement, and the joys of living on your own for perhaps the first time). As soon as you have a job, work on the following items so they are ready to go for your year!
Want to talk beginning of the year music-making? Check out the companion post to this: Starting the School Year: Rehearsals. Handbooks/Syllabi Create a document explaining your program and have students and families "sign-off" that they understand your expectations. A quick Google search will provide you many examples of Choir Handbooks from around the country (here's mine from 2017-2018). If your predecessor had a handbook, adapt it to fit your needs. If not, ask your peers and friends (or look at similar programs in your area) to start you off. Some potential items to consider including:
If you're not sure whether or not to include something, just remember that each year you'll get to edit the handbook as you desire! FYI my district has 1:1 student technology so I do not print my handbook for students. I have part of my website devoted to all the back-to-school info and show students this and email the links home. If a student needs it printed I have a handful printed off but otherwise I do everything digitally! Calendars Make a 1-page calendar and print it off for your students. Include all important dates for the school year. Share this calendar in paper form with your administrators, administrative assistants, athletic/activity directors, and your music colleagues in your district. Post the calendar in your classroom and make physical copies to hand to each student. I also generally make extras so I can give them to students added to the choirs throughout the year, to have out at parent meetings/conferences, and to hand to any guests in our classroom. You can also make a digital version of the calendar (such as a pdf) or a Google Calendar. On my paper calendar I include day of the week, date, time, description of the event, location, and who is expected to be there (i.e. which choirs, if it is optional or required, etc.) Check out my choir website for how I link multiple versions to my site. If you have a website link all of the versions of your calendar so that NO ONE has an excuse to miss your events for the year! If you're new make sure you have filled out building reservation forms for the dates you are reserving spaces for your events. Ask your colleagues and administrative assistants what the protocol is for this. If you're lucky, your predecessor will have already taken care of this for you! If not, get this done right away for all of your events for the year so no one double-books anything for the dates you need. Check out all the other school activities around your performance dates to make sure you are proactive about any conflicts that might come up. The earlier you communicate the more people will realize you are organized, flexible, and on top of things! Parent/Family Communication I have students and parents "sign-off" that they have read the handbook and know the calendar dates by means of a Google form. I also ask them to sign up for www.remind.com and our Music Booster organization has a parent volunteer survey we also send out. Once I have my class rosters I build my parent email list for ease in communication. Your grading/student information programs might have an easy way to do this so check with your colleagues/administrators about the best way to reach out to parents digitally. More to come on building family connections and fostering a supportive behind-the-scenes network. Stay tuned!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Proudly powered by Weebly